Spying on Americans

The neocons tell me it's wrong to question the government's spying. "Anything they do to fight terrorism is OK," they tell me. The Bush administration has concluded that the FISA Court isn't sufficient. Even though the court has approved virtually every wiretap request it has received (the court was created in 1978) and even though the court's rules allow a president to order an emergency wiretap on his authority and then to present supporting evidence to the court within 72 hours, Bush and his cronies felt that wasn't adequate.

That frightens me. It should frighten you, even if you're a Bush supporter.

The problem is that Bush is creating precedent. If this is allowed to continue, then Bush and any future president will be allowed to order wiretaps at will. Would those who support today's excesses by the Bush camp be happy to see these procedures used by President Kerry, President Gore, or President Clinton? I suspect that they would not. The difference between them and me is that I would oppose this kind of activity by President Gore, President Kerry, or President Clinton ("my" presidents) while they feel that anything "their" president does is moral, ethical, legal, and approved by the one true God.

The FISA Court was established to create minimal safeguards for Americans to avoid the abuses the Nixon administration perpetrated. Why does George War Bush feel that he can trample even these minimal safeguards? If he's unwilling to provide the FISA Court with justifications for his wiretap orders, might that justification be missing? Is it possible that Bush, his brain (Rove), and his keeper (Cheney) have created a Nixonian enemies list? (If so, I'm certainly on it.)

Why can't this administration, which claims to be for strict interpretation of the Constitution, abide by the Constitution?

Oh, by the way – if you believe that I think wiretaps and spying should be eliminated entirely, you're absolutely and completely wrong. The government has the right and the duty to protect Americans. But is also has the duty to abide by the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress.

We have a president, not a king, and presidents are not above the law.

The blown presidency

I've seen bumper stickers recently that suggest someone should give George W. Bush a blow job so that he can be impeached. This is absurd, of course, a simple blow job in the Oval Office would never be enough to get Mister Bush impeached. To be impeached, the president would have to do something politically foolish and fiscally reckless such as reducing tax cuts for the wealthy and restoring funding cuts for the neediest US citizens. Or he might propose a national health insurance program. Or suggest gun control.

Simply lying to congress, the people who elected him, and the world isn't sufficient.

But just for my own amusement, I wondered ...



And ...



I wanted to upload these to CafePress, but I knew it would be rejected because they won't allow pictures of celebrities. The photo of the Liar and Thief would be OK, but not the young lady. So this morning (26 December) it occurred to me that there's a way I can make this sentiment acceptable to CafePress:



And ...



These are currently at Bush Remover on CafePress.com.

Notice an increase in the use of "impeach"?

[A]fter former Nixon White House counsel John Dean suggested that the NSA spying was an impeachable offense, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., sent a letter Monday to some legal scholars seeking opinions.
"This is a country founded on the rule of law," [Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Kentucky], "and (Bush) goes around talking about establishing the rule of law around the world, then he flouts the rule of law here on grounds that he's got to do it to fight terror. We're giving away some of our basic freedoms if we continue to flout the law."
Louisville Courier-Journal (25 Dec 2005)

The slippery slope that Bush has embarked upon leads to a police state, plain and simple.
Bush argues that his powers as a president in “times of war” are plenary – that is, full, complete, without limit. Yet the very soul of a democracy is the equal powers that the three branches of government share, each serving as a counterweight to the messianic impulses that any one of the other branches might dare assume.
How can President Bush claim to want to instill a working democracy in Iraq, while at the same time violating our own U.S. laws, our own system of checks and balances? Terrorism is a serious risk to our nation, but a far greater threat is the centralization of American political power in the hands of any single branch of the government.
The Santiago (Chile) Times (21 Dec 2005)

Some adults in the United States believe legal charges should be sought against their president, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports for AfterDowningStreet.org. 32 per cent of respondents believe George W. Bush should be impeached and removed from office, while 58 per cent disagree.
Rasmussen Reports based on telephone interviews with 1,000 American adults, conducted on Dec. 9 and Dec. 10, 2005. Margin of error is 3 per cent.

Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974.
Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter (19 Dec 2005)

Even some of the conservative press -- the ones that understand honor and rule of law -- are talking about impeachment:
Now the president and his lawyers are claiming that they have greater latitude. They say that neither the USA Patriot Act nor the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act actually sets the real boundary. The administration is saying the president has unlimited authority to order wiretaps in the pursuit of foreign terrorists, and that the Congress has no power to overrule him.
Putting the president above the Congress is an invitation to tyranny. The president has no powers except those specified in the Constitution and those enacted by law. President Bush is stretching the power of commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy by indicating that he can order the military and its agencies, such as the National Security Agency, to do whatever furthers the defense of the country from terrorists, regardless of whether actual force is involved.
Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.
It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible Constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law.
Editoral in Barrons (Dec 2005)

Truth at last?

The Bushwhacker admits that his administration plays fast and loose with our privacy. (Isn't this what got Nixon busted?) And, of course, his supporters (the same folks who went ballistic when Clinton did anything that threatened their privacy) will now look at him and say, "Look! He always levels with the American people, even when he has to lie to do it."

And they will fucking believe it!

The party of honesty and ethics?

Yesterday Republican Representative Duke Cunningham (San Diego) admitted that he's a war profiteer who engaged in bribery, fraud, and tax evasion -- profiting from the war in Iraq. Classy, eh?

Republican Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, has been indicted by a grand jury for treason.

Republican Tom DeLay, former majority leader of the House of Representatives has been arrested after a Texas grand jury indicted him.

Republican Senator Bill Frist, still the majority leader in the Senate, is under investigation on civil and criminal charges.

White House chief of staff Karl Rove is still under investigtaion for treason.

Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff is probably going to be charged with several ethics violations now that Michael Scanlon, a former aide to Tom DeLay (see above) has admitted to crimimal acts.

"Ethical Repubican"? What a fucking oxymoron!

Absurdities & Atrocities

On The Writer's Almanac today, Garrison Keillor quoted François-Marie Arouet (aka "Voltaire") who said, "People who believe in absurdities will eventually commit atrocities."

"George Bush!" was my first thought. And I found myself wishing that John Kerry had quoted Voltaire during the election. Oh, sure, that would be good. Quote a heathen Frog! That'd go over well, wouldn't it! But several of Voltaire's statements are so appropriate to today's United States:

• "All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
• "As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities." (A variant of what Keillor quoted.)
• "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
• "It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind."
• "Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them."

Voltaire also said, "An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination," but I would abhor that if for no reason other than it would leave the country in the hands of the vice president.

FBI, CIA, & Secret Service please note: I hereby expressly state that I do not support assassination of government leaders -- ours or anybody else's despite what that great man of God, Pat Robertson, says.

Am I asking for too much?

Dwight David Eisenhower issued a strong warning about the military-industrial complex. He was speaking from the perspective of seeing what government by big business did to Europe -- specifically Germany -- in the 1940s. With the Bush II administration, we have finally achieved government of, by, and for Halliburton.

Many Americans were terribly shocked when Eisenhower was caught in a big lie: He had flatly denied that the US was operating planes over the USSR only to have the Soviets produce not only the plane, but also the pilot in 1959.

The government can't always tell the truth. In time of war, deception is an important ally. The War Magician, a book I read many years ago, recounted some of the tricks a magician designed to help the Allies misdirect the Germans. Even during peacetime, the government can't tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

But the government can't always lie, either.

Bill Clinton lied about sex in the Oval Office, but was generally straight with the American people when it came to his political agenda. George Bush, on the other hand, has probably never told the American people a lie about his sex life, but has lied about, twisted, or spun nearly every point of public policy put forward by his administration.

I would be delighted for my country to once again be respected for its principles, but even a cursory examination of the world press and the current administration suggest that this will not happen in my lifetime.

A disturbing thought

Yesterday I ran across a quotation from Herman Goering following the end of World War II. During the time he was at Nuremburg for his war crimes trial, Goering commented on the ease with which the Nazis were able to convince Germans that the war was just.


“Of course the people don’t want war,” Goering said. “But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”


You won't find these words in the transcript of the trial at which Goering was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death. He did not speak them when he was on the witness stand. But he did speak them. Goering’s comments were made privately to Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist who was granted free access by the Allies to all the prisoners held in the Nuremberg jail. Gilbert kept a journal of his observations of the proceedings and his conversations with the prisoners, which he later published in the book Nuremberg Diary. The quote offered above was part of a conversation Gilbert held with a dejected Hermann Goering in his cell on the evening of 18 April 1946, as the trials were halted for a three-day Easter recess.
(Source: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm)

Is it possible that the United States will be considerd to be guilty of war crimes because of the war in Iraq? If so, will George Bush, Richard Cheney, et al., be tried for their behavior?

For many decades we’ve said “It can’t happen here!” How sure are we?

The graphic shown above is available as a mouse pad or a wall poster at: http://www.cafepress.com/bushremover/417451

Liberal commie pinko freak cop hater?

I have moved this post to my Random Thoughts blog.

Remember Teapot Dome?

An open letter to George W. Bush:

Mister President, I know you're not much of a student of history. That much is clear from your foreign policy. But I wanted to call to your attention an event that came to light early in the 20th Century. That's the 1900s, Mister Bush. The century number is always one higher than the first two digits of the year (excepting the years ending in 00, of course.) I point that out because you clearly weren't much of a math student, either. Just look at the budget!

But I'm writing today about history. Because of what came to be known as the Teapot Dome Scandal, the Warren Harding administration earned the reputation as the most corrupt administration in the history of the country. That record has held up pretty well over the years. Lyndon Johnson challenged Harding with the bogus Tonkin Gulf Incident, Richard Nixon nearly claimed the prize with Watergate and the follow-up stonewalling, and Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra deals certainly made him a contender.

Compared to you, sir, they're all pikers.

It's really clever of you to be elected on a platform of compassion and ethics and then to stand both compassion and ethics on their heads.

Teapot Dome was largely about oil and ethics. Your administration is all about oil and ethics. Some of the members of Warren Harding's administration learned that being federal officials didn't mean that they were above the law. They paid large fines and a few of Harding's Ohio Gang went to prison. It's beginning to appear that some of your little Texas gang of thugs and thieves could end up there, too.

You really should have paid attention in school, Mister Bush. You would have learned that people in high places can get away with crimes for a long time, but eventually they bring themselves down.

Do you think that you and Mister Cheney will have adjoining cells?

The Little Fish

Scooter Libby (Liddy?) resigned today after being indicted for what the Bush administration would call treason if anyone else had done it.

Will Libby take any of the larger fish with him? Might Dick Cheney have been involved in treason? What about Karl Rove? Maybe even George Bush? I guess that starting a war based on lies isn't illegal or treasonous, but how much did the Liar in Chief know about the outing of a CIA undercover operative?

Could it be that most of the top brass as the White House should be in the Graybar Hotel?

We can only hope!

Rosa Parks

I note the passing of a true American heroine, a woman who decided that enough was enough, Rosa Parks. For a black woman to do what she did in 1950s Birmingham took more guts than are possessed by the occupants of the entire Bush White House executive suite.

What Rosa Parks did could have cost her life. When has any member of the Bush administration stood bravely for anything that hadn't already been vetted by a poll?

We need more people like Rosa Parks. More people who look at things the way they are, decide that something is wrong, and say "Bullshit!" Not that Rosa Parks ever said that. But she probably did.

Today the entire country is a lot like 1950s Alabama. There's a lot that's wrong, but too many people are just standing around, whistling, and averting their eyes. Afraid to say that the administration used lies to pull us into a war that has now cost 2000 lives. Afraid to admit that members of the Bush administration traitorously revealed the identity of a CIA agent for political purposes. Afraid to say that the neocons who are running the country are a bunch of sycophants who have their eyes on nothing more than what's in it for them.

Afraid of what? The truth?

Well, bullshit! Rosa, we'll miss you.

For another point of view on Rosa Parks and the meaning of her life, be sure to visit the "Editor Mom" blog.

Secret Service protects Bush from high school Bill of Rights project

It's good to know that the Secret Service has the nation's high schools covered. Not alone, mind you, but with the help of the “patriots” at Wal-Mart (the company that buys much of what it sells from China).

The Progressive reports an incident on September 20 at Currituck County High School in North Carolina. Selina Jarvis, chair of the social studies department, had assigned the senior civics and economics class a Bill of Rights project. The assignment: Take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights.

The magazine report quotes Jarvis, who says one student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb’s down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.”

The right to dissent is supposed to be one of our rights, but when the student took his film to the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, an employee called the Kitty Hawk police who turned the matter over to the Secret Service. No big surprise there. Some yahoo in a Wal-Mart wants to make trouble for a student and turns the kid in to another yahoo at the police department. So the Secret Service got the tip, realized it would be pointelss to visit the kid, and filed it as "unfounded", right?

Wrong!

The Secret Service sent agents to the high school on September 20 and Jarvis told The Progressive that the Secret Service took his poster. The agents then called on the teacher, who explained what the project was all about.

Wasn't the poster a little suspect, the agents wanted to know. Jarvis: “I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!” The agents told Jarvis that the student's poster “would be interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could be indicted.”

Fortunately, the U.S. Attorney's elevator goes at least most of the way to the top, the student was not indicted, and the Secret Service drorpped the case.

Jarvis, quoted in The Progressive, has a 1-word description of the incident: “ridiculous”.

Conservatives are finally catching on to Bush

The American Conservative is about as far from my political point of view as a publication can be, but I agree with the October 24, 2005, issue.

In an article titled "Money for Nothing", Philip Giraldi takes the Bushies to task for the billions (with a B) of dollars that have just disappeared in Iraq. The money has "gone to bribe Iraqis," the article says, and to "line contractors’ pockets." Contractors such as the one that Dick Cheney used to work for? Giraldi, by the way, is a former CIA Officer. He is now a partner in Cannistraro Associates, an international security consultancy.

Key quotes from a conservative's conservative publication:

• "When the final page is written on America’s catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure—corruption."


• "The American-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority could well prove to be the most corrupt administration in history, almost certainly surpassing the widespread fraud of the much-maligned UN Oil for Food Program."


• "Some of the corruption grew out of the misguided neoconservative agenda for Iraq, which meant that a serious reconstruction effort came second to doling out the spoils to the war’s most fervent supporters." I know this sounds like something Ed Schultz would say, but it's from the cover article in The American Conservative. Wow!


• "The 15-month proconsulship of the CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] disbursed nearly $20 billion, two-thirds of it in cash, most of which came from the Development Fund for Iraq that had replaced the UN Oil for Food Program and from frozen and seized Iraqi assets. Most of the money was flown into Iraq on C-130s in huge plastic shrink-wrapped pallets holding 40 'cashpaks,' each cashpak having $1.6 million in $100 bills. Twelve billion dollars moved that way between May 2003 and June 2004, drawn from accounts administered by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The $100 bills weighed an estimated 363 tons." I don't know about you, but this is corruption far beyond what I suspected. When it comes to thievery, these guys are professionals.


• "Once in Iraq, there was virtually no accountability over how the money was spent." This is a Republican administration and the Republicans are supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility.


• "Money also disappeared in truckloads and by helicopter. The CPA reportedly distributed funds to contractors in bags off the back of a truck. In one notorious incident in April 2004, $1.5 billion in cash that had just been delivered by three Blackhawk helicopters was handed over to a courier in Erbil, in the Kurdish region, never to be seen again. Afterwards, no one was able to recall the courier’s name or provide a good description of him." Wait a minute! Earlier I said these guys are professionals when it comes to thievery. Maybe not. Maybe they're just astonishingly stupid.


• "Paul Bremer, meanwhile, had a slush fund in cash of more than $600 million in his office for which there was no paperwork."


• "Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, has a no-bid monopoly contract with the Army Corps of Engineers that is now estimated to be worth $10 billion. In June 2005, Pentagon contracting officer Bunny Greenhouse told a congressional committee that the agreement was the 'most blatant and improper contracting abuse' that she had ever witnessed, a frank assessment that subsequently earned her a demotion." Where is the Congressional investigation? Where is the special prosecutor?


• "Another U.S. firm well connected to the Bush White House, Custer Battles, has provided security services to the coalition, receiving $11 million in Iraqi funds including $4 million in cash in a sole-source contract to supply security at Baghdad International Airport. The company had never provided airport security before receiving the contract."


• "Another American contractor, CACI International, which was involved in the Abu Ghraib interrogations, was accused by the GAO in April 2004 of having failed to keep records on hours of work that it was billing for and of routinely upgrading employee job descriptions so that more could be charged per employee per hour. Both are apparently common practices among contractors in Iraq, and audits routinely determine that there is little in the way of paperwork to support billings."

These are just small snippets from a huge (2800 words) article. If you can read this without being outraged, without feeling that everyone in the White House should be in prison, then you are stronger than I am.

And again I point out that is not from some goof-ball lefty publication. This article is from The American Conservative: Scott McConnell founded The American Conservative with Pat Buchanan and Taki Theodoracopulos in 2002. A Ph.D.in history from Columbia University, he was formerly the editorial page editor of the New York Post and has been a columnist for Antiwar.com and New York Press. His work has been published in Commentary, Fortune, National Review, The New Republic, and many other publications.

Why another anti-Bush blog?

George W. Bush is a liar. He even lies about having lied to us. Then the back-story changes again when someone points out the lies. The administration is all spin and little substance. So now it's time for us to "byte" back.

I occasionally post new material to www.BushLiedAgain.com and I try to keep up with the latest disasters of the Bush Administration on my "Bush Remover" site at CafePress.

Patriotism is all about doing everything you can to ensure that your country is headed in the right direction. In this case, it has everything to do with pointing out this corrupt administration's missteps, lies, abuses, and mistakes.