Category: Republicans

Cheney On Fire

Posted on by TL

I know, it’s too easy.

The Washington Post reports:

A two-alarm fire broke out on the White House grounds Wednesday morning, sending 1,000 federal workers scurrying for safety and damaging Vice President Dick Cheney’s ceremonial suite in the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building across the street from the West Wing.

Mr. Cheney was not there when the fire started about 9:15 a.m.; he and President Bush were in the White House Situation Room for an intelligence briefing. The two were informed of the blaze when they returned to the Oval Office, and later went outside together to shake the hands of firefighters who had responded.

And later:

The building’s centerpiece is the second-floor ceremonial office of the vice president, with two Belgian black marble fireplaces and wooden floors designed in a geometric pattern of mahogany, white maple and cherry. The office was used by 16 secretaries of the Navy beginning in 1879. In 1929, after a Christmas Eve fire damaged the West Wing, President Herbert Hoover moved in.

It’s too easy. Cheney was burning old CIA tapes. Cheney was incinerating files. Cheney was cleaning house, setting fire to all the “real” tapes out of Guantanamo.

The conspiracy theorist in me really believes that Dick just had someone torch the joint.  But the realist knows somewhere inside that the fire started for other reasons.

Or did it?

It’s far too easy.

What Can Boy George Say Now?

Posted on by TL

So the President had no idea that the CIA had these torture-tapes? Really?

According to Dana Perino, the President “has no recollection” that he ever saw these tapes:

Q Thanks. On these CIA videotapes, did either the President or Vice President or Condoleezza Rice, when she was National Security Advisor, or Steve Hadley, see them before they were destroyed?

MS. PERINO: I spoke to the President, and so I will have to defer on the others. But I spoke to the President this morning about this. He has no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction before yesterday. He was briefed by General Hayden yesterday morning. And as to the others, I’ll have to — I’ll refer you to the Vice President’s office and I’ll see if I can get the others.

Q Was there any White House involvement in approving or commenting upon their destruction?

MS. PERINO: As I said, the President has no recollection knowing about the tapes or about their destruction, and so I can’t answer the follow up.

Perino darts the question as to whether the President would support an investigation. Then, we get Good Ol’ Boy George once again. Is this President embarrassed? Is this President angry at CIA Chief General Hayden? Not Boy George:

Q Dana, is this something that you would characterize the President’s feeling about — is this something that’s sort of seen as understandable, or is this something that you’re embarrassed about?

MS. PERINO: I would say that the President supports General Hayden. General Hayden made a statement yesterday to his employees in which he said that the decision was made by the agency, it was made in consultation with the agency’s lawyers. And he said — and I quote — that “the tapes posed a serious security risk and were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them and their families to retaliation from al Qaeda and its sympathizers.”

He has complete confidence in General Hayden and he has asked White House Counsel’s Office, as I said, who is already in communication with the CIA General Counsel as the CIA Director continues to gather facts. As you know, General Hayden wasn’t there at this time, either.

The President has “complete confidence in General Hayden.” Of course! Wait for it.  You know it’s coming… “You’re doing a heckuva job, Haydie!”

Now let’s see if Congress has any at all. Senator Dick Durbin has called for the Justice Department to investigate. Full-steam ahead with that one.

Huckabee’s AIDS Problem

Posted on by TL

Mike Huckabee really has issues with AIDS. According to the Associated Press, Huckabee wanted to isolate AIDS patients, according to a 1992 questionnaire he filled out when running for the U.S. Senate.

Huckabee on Huckabee:

Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.

“If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague,” Huckabee wrote.

“It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.”

In 1992, it was common knowledge that AIDS could not be spread by casual contact, the article continues.

And then there was this little gem as well:

Also in the wide-ranging AP questionnaire in 1992, Huckabee said, “I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk.”

The man has flip-flopped considerably on this issue since then.  He now claims that his administration, “will be the first to have an overarching strategy for dealing with HIV and AIDS here in the United States, with a partnership between the public and private sectors that will provide necessary financing and a realistic path toward our goals.”

We can only wonder what that strategy would be.  And hope we never find out.

If any Republicans are reading, consider how a President Huckabee would treat your gay son or daughter.

The End of America – Possible, Says Naomi Wolf

Posted on by TL

Don Hazen has an interview with Naomi Wolf on AlterNet regarding her new book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot.  In it, she warns that history may indeed repeat itself.

When discussing the Bush Administration, it’s easy to glibly toss around names like “Hitler” and “Mussolini”, and throw in a word like “fascism”, but Wolf raises some alarming concerns about the future of our democracy.

What exactly was going on when Hitler and Mussolini were coming to power?  Are there any comparisons with what is happening in America today, and has been for the past several years?

Wolf does not see much hope for a transparency in the next Presidential election:

We would be naive given the historical patterns to have hope that there’s going to be a transparent, accountable election in 2008. There are various ways the blueprint indicates how events are much more likely to play out. Historically, the months leading up to the national election are likely to be unstable.

What classically happens is either there will be a period of provocation, and we have a history of this in the United States — agitators who are dressed as or act like activist voter registration workers, anti-war marchers … but who engage in actual violence, torch property, assault police officers. And that scares people. People are much less likely to vote for change when they’re scared, and it gives them the excuse to crack down.

In addition, I’m concerned about the 2007 Defense Authorization Act, which makes it much easier for the president to declare martial law.

What are the plans for 2008?  Lower gas prices, and heightened terrorist threat alerts?  Martial Law in the United States?

The First Amendment Tasered

Posted on by TL

I’ve been considering the Tasering of student Andrew Meyer during an appearance by Sen. John Kerry at the University of Florida since I first heard about it.  Some of the first accounts sought to discredit Meyer right away, asserting that based on videos he had posted previously on You Tube, this may have been a stunt.

Nevertheless, here was a man Tasered in the United States of America.  As a refresher, here’s the Amendment placed First in the Bill of Rights:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Now, freedom of speech does not mean that we get to say what we want to say where we want to say it all the time.   If I started shouting the the gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives, as did this “Christian” person when a Hindu chaplain was invited to pray, I would be removed.  And, no, this is not a violation of my right to free speech.

But tasering someone asking a question?   This is troubling.

The weird right has sought to criticize Senator Kerry, and that’s just wrong.  He was completely innocent in this case.  This was a choice of the police.

Joe Conason comments on the tasering in Salon.com, making reference to the recently unearthed “how to stop free speech” manual from the White House:

As Matthews noted on Tuesday evening, the Bush White House standardized those methods for squelching speech in a manual for presidential advance teams. “By the way, 80 percent of the country disagrees with him,” Matthews quipped, “so you’ve got to have this manual handy.” Then he quoted a telling section: “If demonstrators appear likely to cause only a political disruption, it is the advance person’s responsibility to take appropriate action. Rally squads should be dispatched to surround and drown out demonstrators immediately.”

That October 2002 manual — obtained in heavily redacted form last June by the American Civil Liberties Union in the course of litigation against the Bush administration — includes copious instructions for ensuring that dissension need never be seen nor heard. Its repetitive themes include “the best method for preventing demonstrators,” “deterring potential protestors from attending events,” and “designat[ing] a protest area … preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route.” Potential protesters are to be ignored only “if it is determined that the media will not see or hear” them.

Unfortunately for the White House, such strategies are patently unconstitutional and violate several provisions of the Bill of Rights. It is unlawful to bar individuals from public events because they have the wrong bumper stickers on their cars, or wear the wrong T-shirts, or belong to the wrong organizations, or have written the wrong letters to the editor of their local newspaper, as the president’s advance agents have repeatedly done over the past six years.

This will be a country in recover for some time after these Bush Republicans are gone from the White House.  They’ve done more damage than trash the economy, the dollar, and raise the national debt to an obscene $9 Trillion and counting.

John McCain Seems Ready to Blow

Posted on by TL

Watching Sen. John McCain on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, I’m struck by his attempt to convey a controlled, soft-spoken, and soft-spoken he tries to be. His began the interview sounding measured and reflective, almost pensive. Soon, however, he was apologizing for barely raising his voice above a whisper. His exaggerated efforts at restraint are evident.

But that famous McCain temper is evident just below the surface.

“I apologize for firing back at you like that,” he said after he barely raised his voice in response to a question by Stephanopoulos.

Apologize? For what? Answering a question? Disagreeing?

McCain spent a good portion of the interview trying to convince the American people that he’s everybody’s favorite grandfater, and Gen. David Petraeus is simply misunderstood, and, gosh, really a great guy.

McCain will boil over soon. As his numbers drop, he’ll explode.

Fred Thompson Changes His Mind Again

Posted on by TL

Fresh into the race for the office of President of the United States, Fred Thompson is revealing a sneaky mean streak as he begins his campaign. The issue is homosexuality, or “deviancy” as one Iowa voter put it this week. Thompson did not correct the white-haired gent who uttered the “D” word, but took advantage of the opportunity to demonstrate his deadly position on human rights, reversing his previous position against a Constitutional amendment against gay marriage. And let’s not forget his not-so-subtle appeal to “States Rights,” the old rallying cry of the southern racists who wanted to preserve slavery.

From Salon.com’s War Room:

It’s not every day that a presidential candidate gets asked point-blank what to do about “deviancy.” But there was Fred Thompson in Sioux City Friday morning, taking this question from a voter: “My question is what society’s position should be on deviancy, including homosexuality?” asked an older, white-haired man.

And the reply:

Thompson answered the deviancy question with a considerable lack of specificity. “Well, society’s position and the government position, and what the government ought to do to exercise the power of the federal government, is not necessarily the same thing,” he said. Then he said that the government should treat everyone the same way, and that “we should not set aside categories to give special set-aside treatments” to specific groups. This is the language, more or less, of the religious right, which argues that laws that protect gays and lesbians from discrimination amount to unjustified special legal privileges.

Then Thompson took further opportunity for gay bashing when Steven Carlson, a director of the Iowa Christian Alliance, raised his hand and asked whether Thompson would support a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, the dance began:

In the past, Thompson has opposed a federal amendment to ban gay marriage on federalist grounds. Like Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, he has said that he does not believe the federal government should be involved in an issue that should be left to the states.

But on Friday, he said he would support a different type of amendment to the Constitution. “I would support a constitutional amendment which says some off-the-wall court decision in one state that recognizes the marriage in one state, like Massachusetts, just to pick a state, cannot go to another state and have it recognized in that state. You are not bound by what another state does.” He was not done. “The second part of my amendment would also state that judges could not impose this [gay marriage], on the federal or state level, unless a state legislature signed off on it.”

This second part of his amendment is novel, if a bit ponderous. He has said before that he is against the federal government inserting itself into state matters like marriage. But he supports the federal government inserting itself into state courthouses, when they take up the issue of marriage. He did not immediately explain this conflict.

So keep the federal government out of state matters like marriage, but permit the federal government to assert itself into state courthouses should they take on the issue of marriage.

I just had to restate that for myself so I could try and wrap my mind around it, and I can’t.

DA Arthur Branch would probably have a problem with that one as well.

Patriot Act Unravels

Posted on by TL

Some of the most controversial portions of the U.S. Patriot Act have been declared unconstitutional.  Thursday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero is a setback for the Justice Department, but quite a victory for the ACLU, which filed the lawsuit.

The Washington Post reports:

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in New York said the FBI’s use of secret “national security letters” to demand such data violates the First Amendment and constitutional provisions on the separation of powers, because the FBI can impose indefinite gag orders on the companies and the courts have little opportunity to review the letters.

The secrecy provisions are “the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values,” Marrero wrote. His strongly worded 103-page opinion amounted to a rebuke of both the administration and Congress, which had revised the act in 2005 to take into account an earlier ruling by the judge on the same topic.

The ACLU should be commended on this one.  The slippery slope to from freedom to tyranny chosen by the Bush Administration is not worth the price.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the ruling. “We are reviewing the decision and considering our options,” said spokesman Dean Boyd.

But Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit in the case, said the ruling “is yet another setback in the Bush administration’s strategy in the war on terror and demonstrates the far-reaching efforts of this administration to use powers that are clearly unconstitutional.”

Let’s hope it’s not the last setback for the Bush Administration.  The rest of us have suffered far too many.

The Dems’ “Alberto Moment”

Posted on by TL

So what happens to this guy now?  Alberto Gonzales is finally out as Attorney General, and we’re all wondering who will replace him.  But what happens to Alberto now?  Does he get a free ride?  Is the president so sure that he’s safer now?

Ruth Marcus at The Washington Post muses on what finally convinced AG it was time to flee:

Did Gonzales finally decide he preferred to leave, or was it decided for him? Based on Gonzales’s previous insistence on staying, I’d guess he was pushed, in one of those Washington, no-fingerprints ways.

We’ll never know for certain.   But Marcus nails the most convincing reason for Gonzales’ departure:

During the attorney general’s last, disastrous appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee a month ago, Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl asked the question that was on the mind of anyone watching, and wincing, at Gonzales’s pummeling: “What keeps you in the job, Mr. Attorney General?”

“Ultimately I have to decide whether or not it’s better for me to leave or just stay and try to fix the problems,” Gonzales replied. “I’ve decided to stay and fix the problems.”

This captured precisely why Gonzales needed to go. The notion that Gonzales could “fix the problems” ignored the fact that these were problems of his own creation — in many ways, he was the problem. Gonzales tended to talk about himself as if he were having an out-of-body experience, saying, for example, about the firing of U.S. attorneys: “I am not aware that it certainly was in my mind a problem or basis to accept the recommendation that they be asked to leave.”

Gonzales was the problem, and two major problems remain in Bush and Cheney.   Which brings me to a theme I’ve explored before on Turning Left: Where are the Democrats?  Are they having a collective “Alberto Moment” and forgetting what they were elected to do?  Where is their leadership?

Everyone is so concerned about being in on stage right now.  Seems like half the party is running for president.  Some of our best leaders right now are too concerned about image, too concerned about polls, too concerned about fund raising, too concerned about Iowa, that they’re forgetting to lead.  Some of our best leaders are focusing on the center, trying to be everybody’s lover, everybody’s buddy.

I’ve said this before: We need the Democrats now.  NOW.