In Short Words, Without Too Many Syllables.

NTodd does, as is often the case, a better job of making the point that I was trying to make in last night's post about Senator Coburn (R - Soulless) telling a sobbing woman that she should look to her neighbors to provide skilled nursing home care for her very ill husband and just SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP about expecting any help from her insurance company or from its wholly-owned subsidiary, the United States Congress.

I'm a lawyer and, we lawyers, we're big believers in reading the actual words in the actual law. The actual Constitution of the actual United States of America begins with these actual words: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

"Promote the general welfare." The snarky, bitchy side of me wants to say: "The defense rests," and call it a blog post. But I'll spell it out anyway, since about 20% of our population doesn't get it.

There's a reason why people form governments and it isn't, recent evidence to the contrary, to make Haliburton and Blackwater rich, to engage in immoral wars against people who never attacked us, or to conduct the sort of sick, vomit-inducing, soul-destroying torture that has recently been the calling card of the United States of America. As our Founders explained, we create governments to, inter alia, insure domestic Tranquility and to promote the general Welfare.

I know from neighbors helping neighbors.

I think the notion of neighbors helping neighbors is charming. Recently, a friend of mine was diagnosed with breast cancer and I was honored to take off work in order to accompany her to her biopsy on one day and her appointment with a surgeon on another day, to buy her lunch and some over the counter meds, to take her for her surgery and sit with her until some other friends came to get her through the night, to meet with a group of her friends and set up a website to coordinate help for her, to buy books that she wanted to read concerning her condition. Others helped her to care for her pets, rehab her home, deal with her own mother's death. This summer, when I underwent surgery, a dear friend showed up to help me to do laundry, to pick my lavender, to cheer me up. The other day, I baked some lemon bars for a neighbor up the street who had a baby. I regularly read Tarot for strangers who want a reading. One of my dear neighbors organizes every year's block party for which I bake a big, special cake; I take herbs from my garden to all of the folks who live around me. I know from neighbors helping neighbors.

That's all beside the point.

We, as neighbors, citizens, fellow travelers, what have you, band together and form governments so that these matters can be taken care of in an efficient and fair manner. Let's talk about efficient. None of us could have given my friend the chemo treatments that she needed. My dear friend couldn't have done my laundry on a permanent basis. When I had breast cancer, no friends could have done for me what the visiting nurses did: advise about dressings and medications. That poor sobbing woman's neighbors can't give her husband, no matter how well-intentioned they may be, the care that he could get in a nursing home from trained professionals. And, yet, we, not only as neighbors who want to see our sisters taken care of, but as people who know that we, ourselves, will benefit from the care that others receive, that we, ourselves, will benefit from domestic Tranquility, have ways of "promoting the general Welfare."

We do that by paying taxes and having our government provide services for everyone. Here, in my county, we pay taxes that provide a Fire Department. They buy v expensive fire trucks and ambulances, they train people in emergency medicine, they install fire hydrants all through the neighborhoods. As a result, if my neighbors' house catches fire, they won't have to hope that I'm home and can run over with water from my rain barrel. And my own home won't be in danger. I pay taxes so that when Katrina hits New Orleans, or fire hits Southern California, or a toxic waste site makes people sick anywhere in the country, the government can show up and insure domestic Tranquility. Kali Fuck, is this too difficult for Republicans to understand?

Of course, it isn't. They understand it. They just don't like it.

I believe that there are two reasons why they just don't like it. The first is that they don't want to care for their neighbors, and Coburn is just a lying sack of shit about this. They believed Gordon Gekko that "Greed is good," they think, "I've got mine; fuck everyone else," and they aren't capable of realizing that other people with Swine Flu can infect them, that a woman whose husband gets no care will impact their own bottom lines, that their neighbor's flaming house may turn their own into cinders.

And, the second is that they'd willingly see their own homes burn to the ground, see that woman's stress levels give her breast cancer even if she works for them, see those illegal immigrants who can't get shots infect their own children with Swine Flu before they'd ever see "the other" get some help. Patriarchy. They're soaking in it.

All of the talk about government inefficiency, about high taxes, about liberty and not allowing the gov't to "interfere" in "private" lives (unless it's a brain-dead woman or a woman who wants an abortion or a liberal who doesn't want Bush/Cheney to read their emails) is, IMHO, complete bullshit. They're willing to run deficits to make Blackwater and Enron rich, but not to pay for nursing home care for that woman's husband. They care about liberty to carry guns, but not for a woman to control her own body. They're all about the Second Amendment, but happy to confine people trying to exercise their right to assemble peacefully to First Amendment zones. The only constant principles motivating their actions are patriarchy, pissing off liberals, and nastiness.

Let's talk about fair. I'll just add, that domestic Tranquillity and Justice involve providing services to everyone, not just the neighbors we know or like. That's something else that our Constitution does. People who live in big cities (currently, most Americans) and don't even know their neighbors, or the Muslim, lesbian, Wiccan, or black neighbors who move in, but aren't yet well-beloved by the people who live around them, may not get help from their neighbors. But they can get it from the government that we all fund and for which we all provide. And that contributes to Justice and the General Welfare.

I call upon Republicans to stop shitting on the entire notion of government. I call upon and invoke America's founders to aid Republicans to see what this country and this government is all about. And if the Founders can't turn their hearts, then I call upon the Founders to turn their ankles so we'll know them by their limping. Coburn, I'm looking at you.

Photo by the author; please link back.

My New Name For A Blog

What Susie Said

Picture found here.

My New Name For A Blog

What Digby Said:

There was a time when the Village clucked and screeched about "defiling the white house" with an extra marital affair or hosting fund raising coffees. I would say this leaves a far greater stain on that institution than any sexual act could ever do. They did this in your name, Americans.

The vice president, national security advisor and members of the president's cabinet sat around the white house "choreographing" the torture and the president approved it. I have to say that even in my most vivid imaginings about this torture scheme it didn't occur to me that the highest levels of the cabinet were personally involved (except Cheney and Rumsfeld, of course) much less that we would reach a point where the president of the United States would shrug his shoulders and say he approved. I assumed they were all vaguely knowledgeable, some more than others, but that they would have done everything in their power to keep their own fingerprints off of it. But no. It sounds as though they were eagerly involved, they all signed off unanimously and thought nothing of it.

Naturally, the saintly General C. Lukewarm Powell was his usual evasive self when asked about it. (And if I hear one more person say he should be on the Democratic ticket I'm going to have an aneurysm):

Powell said that he didn't have "sufficient memory recall" about the meetings and that he had participated in "many meetings on how to deal with detainees." Powell said, "I'm not aware of anything that we discussed in any of those meetings that was not considered legal."

The Attorney General(!) also present and approving, was concerned that this was being done inside the white house:

Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

That's what passes for integrity in the Bush white house.

He's certainly right about history not judging this kindly. Neither would a war crimes tribunal.


Derrick Jensen has a wonderful piece that he does about a time when he was still reluctant to use the word "apocalypse" to describe what's happening to our environment. A friend asked him, "What would it take for you to use that word? Would it take chemicals in the breast milk of every mother on the planet? We're there. Would it take dead zones in the Pacific Ocean? We're there. Would it take the extinction of carrier pigeons who were once so plentiful they darkened the skies? We're there. Would it take polar bears dying because they can't swim far enough to find the increasingly-scarce ice floats? We're there." And on an on.

I wonder what it will take for Americans to break themselves away from American Idol and Dancing With The Stars and America's Next Supermodel and take to the streets demanding consequences for this evil junta. Would it take the death of habeas corpus? We're there. Would it take warrantless domestic spying (almost certainly used on the media and Democrats)? We're there. Would it take lying the country into an illegal and immoral war that drained our economy of so much money that we had to go hat in hand to the Communist Chinese and look the other way while they slaughter Tibetan monks? We're there. Would it take the president of the United States of America shrugging and saying, "Well of course we discussed the sickening, obscene details of how to torture people"? Because, well, because we're there.

The Emperor Must See No Dissent. The Emperor Must Hear No Dissent. The Emperor Must Be Aware Of No Dissent.

He's the boy in the bubble and the baby with the babboon heart.

Today's WaPo reports on a WH manual, recently come to light, that described the ways in which Emperor Bush must be protected from the merest chance of coming in contact with anyone who dares to disagree with him. It's pretty disgusting. Here are a few examples:

Any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers.

Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs.

Any anti-Bush demonstrators who manage to get in anyway should be shouted down by "rally squads" stationed in strategic locations. And if that does not work, they should be thrown out.

But that does not mean the White House is against dissent -- just so long as the president does not see it. In fact, the manual outlines a specific system for those who disagree with the president to voice their views. It directs the White House advance staff to ask local police "to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in the view of the event site or motorcade route."

Kali on a cracker. This is America. The president works for us. We have a right to let him know when we're not happy with his job performance and, contrary to what George Bush thinks, he as, like every American worker, thousands of "accountability moments" -- not just one. Allow demonstrators to demonstrate only in a seclued area outside of the view of the president no more complies with the First Amendment that my boss giving me my performance review off in a secluded room out of my sight and hearing complies with good business practices. MBA president, my sweet ass. The whole point to their demonstration is to let the president know that they're not happy with the job that he's doing. And if his pissy, fragile ego can't handle that, then he really has no business in this job. (But, then we knew that. It's why we elected Al Gore. Thanks, again, Sandra Day!)

But the report makes clear that there was another reason, beyond the boyking's gentle feelings, why the WH decided to trash the First Amendment: a Leni Riefenstahl-like desire to control how the event "looked" to the press, thereby controlling the press.

The manual offers advance staffers and volunteers who help set up presidential events guidelines for assembling crowds. Those invited into a VIP section on or near the stage, for instance, must be " extremely supportive of the Administration," it says. . . .

Advance teams are advised not to worry if protesters are not visible to the president or cameras: "If it is determined that the media will not see or hear them and that they pose no potential disruption to the event, they can be ignored. On the other hand, if the group is carrying signs, trying to shout down the President, or has the potential to cause some greater disruption to the event, action needs to be taken immediately to minimize the demonstrator's effect."

If they're not visible to the press, then they don't exist. Which is why the WH tries to get them shuffled off to "Free Speech Zones" (War is Peace, Slavery is Freedom), in the first place.

I hate these fucking people.

It's As If She'd Never Heard The Old Saying That You Put Your Hand On The Bible And Swore To Defend The Constitution; Not The Other Way Around

My Congresscritter: I Think I'll Keep Him

Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Madam Chairwoman, I first want to thank the chairman of the Armed Services Committee and his superb staff for helping redraft portions of this language so that it might be considered. The final language represents a common-sense agreement that I think we should all reach consensus on.

The amendment's purpose is to shed some light on what has become an increasingly invisible world down at Guantanamo Bay.

The first detainees were brought to Guantanamo in 2002 to bypass the U.S. legal system and avoid international conventions and public scrutiny. Since that time the detainment facility has become a blight on American ideals and principles.

We have captured, tortured and interminably held men that we call enemy combatants, some of whom are guilty of crimes against our Nation and should be punished. Others, however, are only guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We have created closed military tribunals that offer the false impression of justice, but they fall woefully short of what we should expect from our American system of justice.

Like Abu Ghraib, we've created an unnecessary rallying cry and recruitment tool for al Qaeda and militant Islamists throughout the world. I strongly believe that the continued operation of Guantanamo Bay puts Americans in harm's way and threatens the safety of any of our captured military and civilians abroad.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Rice have agreed that Guantanamo Bay represents a serious problem if we are to prevail in the global war on terror. They both advocated shuttering Guantanamo Bay's detention facilities. Even President Bush expressed a desire to see Guantanamo Bay closed.

This amendment offers a first step in giving the President, the Congress and the Department of Defense policy alternatives to Guantanamo Bay. This amendment will require the Department to develop a plan to transfer detainees from Guantanamo Bay.

The report must estimate how many detainees the Department will charge with a crime, how many will be subject to release or transfer, or how many will be held without being charged with a crime, but whom the Department feels that it must detain.

Lastly, the report would include a description of actions required by the Secretary and Congress to ensure that detainees who are scheduled for release are, in fact, released.

This last piece is particularly important, as the Department of Defense has scheduled release of 82 detainees. DOD and the State Department, however, face obstacles releasing these men to their home countries, and in some instances their home nations won't accept their return. In other instances, the State Department won't return detainees to their home nations for appropriate reasons. But we need to know what policy tools Congress can provide to expedite the release of innocent detainees.

All of this information is absolutely necessary for Congress and the administration to make informed decisions about what to do about Guantanamo Bay.

Whether you like it or not, whether you believe that Guantanamo Bay is a blight on our international standing, or whether or not you believe that these detainees should be held and tried in the United States, we should all agree that the policy options before the President and Congress should not be limited by a lack of information.

To opponents of shutting down Guantanamo Bay and my colleagues who believe its closure is a sign of weakness, I suggest that upholding our American principles of justice are not incongruent with our war against terror.

And in a speech before the Republican National Convention in 1992, I would remind my colleagues President Reagan emphasized that our greatest strength as a Nation comes not from our wealth or our power, but from our ideals.

I ask all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this common-sense amendment, to move forward in our battle against anti-American sentiment, and to provide the President and Congress with real policy options for shutting down Guantanamo Bay.

I Want Habeas Corpus Back And I Want It Back Now

People Of Faith

The term "people of faith" has always been a kind of Trojan Horse, designed to sneak one concept into public discourse while pretending to be another, particularly when it's used as a criterion for public office, as in: Would you vote for someone who was not a "person of faith"? Although it sounds somewhat inclusive, it's always been understood to exclude, for example, Wicca, which isn't a religion based on faith, but on experience. In actuality, it's never really stood for anything other than, at most, the three Abrahamic sects, xianity, Judiasm, and Islam. Since 9/11, it's clearly stood for, at most, xianity and Judiasm. And, as the recent kerfluffle over Barak Obama's religion indicates, it really only includes certain types of xianity, to wit, mainstream (white) and evanglical xinity.

Obama may think that he can win the votes of "people of faith"; he "began his presidential announcement with the phrase 'Giving all praise and honor to God,'" and he's tried in various ways to make himself attractive to evangelicals, but he's mistaken. And, as the picture of Obama's stepgrandmother (that's right, that's how far they're willing to stretch to find the "taint" of Islamic faith, all the way to a stepgrandmother, for Goddess sake) shows, it's not only the fact that he's the wrong type of xian that disqualifies Obama as a "person of faith," it's also the fact that somewhere in his family tree, there may be "people of the Islamic faith."

There are excellent reasons that our Founders wrote separtion of church and state into the Constitution. One reason for that important separation is that no matter what Trojan Horse phrases they may use, the majority religion will discriminate against anyone who doesn't share their "faith" by turning membership into a requirement to hold public office. And that's a big mistake.

Really, This Isn't All That Complicated

Via Witchvox comes an editorial from the North County Gazette, Serving New York State and Beyond that touches on the recent settlement reached with the Veterans Administration that will allow the use of the Pentacle on gravestones. It also discusses a story that I'd missed:

A few days earlier, on April 17, a religious group called Summum won a key round in its fight to place monuments in Utah city parks alongside Ten Commandments monuments. (Summum, founded some 30 years ago, is difficult to summarize, but the group describes its beliefs as consistent with Gnostic Christianity.)

. . .

In the Summum case, a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an injunction that would allow Summum to place its Seven Aphorisms in a public park in Pleasant Grove, Utah. The park already has a Ten Commandments monument donated years ago by the Fraternal Order of Eagles. Summum had argued that if the city allows one group to put up a monument in a public park, it must allow other groups the same opportunity.

Pleasant Grove officials could have avoided the problem entirely by not allowing any private groups to put up monuments in the park. Instead they decided that the Ten Commandments monument should be treated differently because of "historical relevance" to the city.

The court unanimously rejected that argument and ruled that "the city may further its interest in promoting its own history by a number of means, but not by restricting access to a public forum traditionally committed to public debate and the free exchange of ideas."

The story reminds me of the one this past December in southern Virginia where local Pagans took advantage of a 4th Circuit opinion that required the local school board to send home notices about xian bible classes. The Pagans sent home notices about a Yule program and the xian parents went ballistic. The message, though, was the same as in Utah. If you're going to allow some religions to have access to government-run spaces and services, you're going to have to allow all religions -- even the ones that most Americans don't like, such as Wicca or Islam -- the same access.

Or, you could act like grown-ups and respect the separation of church and state that the Founders wrote into the Constitution precisely to avoid this sort of nonsense over which religions get favored treatment.

Now, who's up for a monument with the Wiccan Rede for that nice little park in Utah? I'd contribute.

The Better Part Of Valor

Took them a while, but WaPo finally managed to get up an article about the huge win for Wiccans.. Remember the guy who quit Bush's "Faith-Based Initiative" program and who said that everything was political for these people?

The settlement stipulates, however, that the plaintiffs must not keep or disclose any documents handed over by the government during the discovery phase of the lawsuit. Lawyers familiar with the case said that some documents suggested the VA had political motives for rejecting the pentacle.

During his first campaign for president, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush told ABC's "Good Morning America" in 1999 that he was opposed to Wiccan soldiers practicing their faith at Fort Hood, Tex. "I don't think witchcraft is a religion, and I wish the military would take another look at this and decide against it," he said.

Lynn, of Americans United, said references to Bush's remarks appeared in memos and e-mails within the VA.

"One of the saddest things is to learn that this wasn't just a bureaucratic nightmare, there was a certain amount of bigotry," he said. "The president's wishes were interpreted at a pretty high level. . . . It became a political judgment, not a constitutional judgment."

I'd have settled, too, VA. I'd have settled, too. Think what you put widows of our veterans through just to placate Bush who was placating the fundies. Disgusting.

E-Mailgate

My brilliant friend E and I both have birthdays in March and we try to get together for an annual birthday lunch at the Palm. This week, when we finally managed to get together, we were discussing how Bush simply has no experience, at the federal level, dealing with a co-equal branch of government. (When SCOTUS has told him "NO" (as, Goddess knows, they should have done in 2000) he and his lapdog Congress have simply ignored SCOTUS.)

Today, E calls my attention to Sid Blumenthal's very good article in Salon concerning the Bush administration's too-cute-by-half practice of doing their dirty work on non-governmental servers in an effort to prevent Americans from knowing what their government is doing. (I've trademarked the name for this scandal, E-Mailgate, and I predict that it, rather than torture or warrantless spying, is what will bring Bush down. It's a bit like getting Al Capone for tax evasion, but, at this point, I agree with Victor Anderson: "White magic is poetry; black magic is anything that actually works," and I've quit holding out for white magic. I just want Bush gone.) But it's the closing paragraph of Blumenthal's article that I think is most striking. He says:

For six years, Bush had a Republican Congress whipped into obedience -- and it provided him his only experience in legislative affairs. The rise of the Democratic Congress, reviving the powers of oversight and investigation, is a shock to his system. But he is not without an understanding of his changed circumstances. Bush sees the new Congress as the same beast that ensnared his father in fatal compromise and as a monstrous threat to the imperial presidency he has spent six years carefully building.

As the return of oversight suddenly exposes pervasive corruption throughout the executive branch, Bush struggles against Congress as though it were an alien force. Bush has no sense that the Framers, wary of the concentration of power in the executive, deliberately established the powers of the Congress in Article I of the Constitution and those of the president in Article II.

Today's NYT makes a similar point discussing Bush's reaction to the Democratic demand for a timetable in Iraq: Americans expect to see the disaster in Iraq brought to an early and responsible end.

President Bush’s reaction was instantaneous, familiar in its contempt for views that do not follow his in lockstep, and depressing in its lack of contact with reality. Mr. Bush threatened to veto the spending bill needed for this year’s military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan rather than accept language calling for most American combat troops to be withdrawn from Iraq sometime next year.

Earlier this week, as I blogged, the NYT discussed Bush's refusal to shut down Guantanamo and said: It was distressing to see that the president has retreated so far into his alternative reality. The NYT, as I noted, was a huge cheerleader for Bush's War in Iraq, so when they begin to call him out of touch with reality every couple of days, you know that he's in trouble.

What's funny is that, when he was first running for office, the spin was that Bush had done such a good job of working with Democrats in Texas, that he was a uniter, not a divider, yadda, yadda. Blumenthal seems to think that Bush came to the WH planning to overthrow the three-separate-but-coequal-branches model that our Founders put in place, but I have to wonder if it didn't happen as an emotional reaction to the fact that he's known all along that he wasn't legitimately elected. Either way, it will be quite something if our form of government is saved, in the end, by the fact that Karl Rove thought it was cute to use his RNC Blackberry rather than the WH computers.

And, since the Bush junta hasn't been using them, those computers better all have their "H" keys intact come January 20, 2009.

Of Course They'd Say That Torture Is A State Secret -- Duh.

The NYT, after years of cheerleading and enabling the Bush junta, finally stumbles over its conscience, picks it up, dusts it off, holds it up to the light, and goes, "Oh, yeah. I remember now. This used to be America."

George Bush does not want to be rescued.

The president has been told countless times, by a secretary of state, by members of Congress, by heads of friendly governments — and by the American public — that the Guantánamo Bay detention camp has profoundly damaged this nation’s credibility as a champion of justice and human rights. But Mr. Bush ignored those voices — and now it seems he has done the same to his new defense secretary, Robert Gates, the man Mr. Bush brought in to clean up Donald Rumsfeld’s mess.

Thom Shanker and David Sanger reported in Friday’s Times that in his first weeks on the job, Mr. Gates told Mr. Bush that the world would never consider trials at Guantánamo to be legitimate. He said that the camp should be shut, and that inmates who should stand trial should be brought to the United States and taken to real military courts.

Mr. Bush rejected that sound advice, heeding instead the chief enablers of his worst instincts, Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Their opposition was no surprise. The Guantánamo operation was central to Mr. Cheney’s drive to expand the powers of the presidency at the expense of Congress and the courts, and Mr. Gonzales was one of the chief architects of the policies underpinning the detainee system. Mr. Bush and his inner circle are clearly afraid that if Guantánamo detainees are tried under the actual rule of law, many of the cases will collapse because they are based on illegal detention, torture and abuse — or that American officials could someday be held criminally liable for their mistreatment of detainees. [That's exactly right. American officials, coughBush,Cheney,Rumsfeldcough ought to be held criminally liable for, inter alia their torture of illegally-held detainees. No one -- NO ONE -- is above the law. And it's far more important for presidents to know that than it is for some petty street criminal or some kid selling pot.]

It was distressing to see that the president has retreated so far into his alternative reality that he would not listen to Mr. Gates — even when he was backed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who, like her predecessor, Colin Powell, had urged Mr. Bush to close Guantánamo. It seems clear that when he brought in Mr. Gates, Mr. Bush didn’t want to fix Mr. Rumsfeld’s disaster; he just wanted everyone to stop talking about it.

If Mr. Bush would not listen to reason from inside his cabinet, he might at least listen to what Americans are telling him about the damage to this country’s credibility, and its cost. When Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — for all appearances a truly evil and dangerous man — confessed to a long list of heinous crimes, including planning the 9/11 attacks, many Americans reacted with skepticism and even derision. The confession became the butt of editorial cartoons, like one that showed the prisoner confessing to betting on the Cincinnati Reds, and fodder for the late-night comedians.

What stood out the most from the transcript of Mr. Mohammed’s hearing at Guantánamo Bay was how the military detention and court system has been debased for terrorist suspects. The hearing was a combatant status review tribunal — a process that is supposed to determine whether a prisoner is an illegal enemy combatant and thus not entitled in Mr. Bush’s world to rudimentary legal rights. But the tribunals are kangaroo courts, admitting evidence that was coerced or obtained through abuse or outright torture. They are intended to confirm a decision that was already made, and to feed detainees into the military commissions created by Congress last year.

The omissions from the record of Mr. Mohammed’s hearing were chilling. The United States government deleted his claims to have been tortured during years of illegal detention at camps run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Government officials who are opposed to the administration’s lawless policy on prisoners have said in numerous news reports that Mr. Mohammed was indeed tortured, including through waterboarding, which simulates drowning and violates every civilized standard of behavior toward a prisoner, even one as awful as this one. And he is hardly the only prisoner who has made claims of abuse and torture. Some were released after it was proved that they never had any connection at all to terrorism.

Still, the Bush administration says no prisoner should be allowed to take torture claims to court, including the innocents who were tortured and released. The administration’s argument is that how prisoners are treated is a state secret and cannot be discussed openly. If that sounds nonsensical, it is. It’s also not the real reason behind the administration’s denying these prisoners the most basic rights of due process.

The Bush administration has so badly subverted American norms of justice in handling these cases that they would not stand up to scrutiny in a real court of law. It is a clear case of justice denied.

Maybe this is too obvious to say, and yet, I think that it needs to be said:

The Bush junta is pure evil. These people torture, they spy on Americans without any cause, much less due cause. They sat back and allowed a lovely, unique American city to be destroyed and left its inhabitants to float, dead and bloated, for weeks. They sent billions of dollars -- money collected from middle-class American taxpayers who can't get health care or afford to send their kids to college -- over to Iraq ON PALLETS and then "lost" the money. Literally. Just don't know what happened to it coughCheney'sSwissaccountcough. They've "outsourced" every government function possible, allowing Haliburton to provide our soldiers with everything from substandard medical care at Walter Reed to contaminated water in Iraq. They've de-regulated every industry that our ancestors realized needed to be regulated, including services as essential as the provision of electricity and food inspection. They've brought in industry lobbyists and jejune true-believers and allowed them to control, undermine, and re-write the works of experienced government scientists. They've told the scientists not to speak to the press and, when those scientists persisted in telling the truth, they've intimidated and persecuted them via their evil Congressional minions. They've pissed all over and tried to erase the separation of church and state that our Founders considered so important, giving the tax dollars of those same middle-class Americans to whackjob fundies so that they could promote their monotheistic, patriarchal hatred of life and sex -- often in America's public schools. They've made the richest one percent of Americans much, much richer and have made many Americans much poorer than when the junta seized power.

This is a small, partial, incomplete list.

And I just need to say this: Everyone who enabled this junta is to blame. The Supreme Court, which ordered Florida to STOP COUNTING AMERICANS' VOTES and installed this evil junta is to blame. Diebold is to blame. Fox News is to blame. The oil industry is to blame. The MSM, which cheered the illegal and immoral Iraq War is to blame. NYT, I'm looking at you. Americans so fucking stupid and gullible and shit-their-pants scared of a few Saudi fanatics that they actually voted for George Bush and Congressional Republicans are to blame. Evangelical xians and the catholic church are to blame. (Culture of Life my sweet, round ass. Culture of death and torture, more like. Well, big surprise. Check out your most prevalent religious symbol.) And, I'm to blame. I didn't riot when SCOTUS declared that Americans would no longer be allowed to select their leaders by voting for them. I didn't riot when the junta initiated "faith-based funding." I still pay taxes. I still drive on the right side of the road and pay the fine when my library books are overdue. I keep trying to go on living as if I weren't in the middle of a nightmare; yet I know that denying reality never works in the long run.

This junta has got to be stopped. Anyone who doesn't think that they can do much, much worse damage than they've already done, who believes that they'll just run out the clock without unleashing even more evil on the world is wrong. Wrong. Wrong and to blame for what follows.

Shhhhhhh!

This is not a democracy. This is what it's like to live in a junta. Fuck this shit.

Constitutional Crisis. Bring It, Bitches.

I think that, as he so often does, NTodd has called this one just right. We've been in a Constitutional crisis. I think we've been there ever since five justices on the Supreme Court, including those appointed by his father, ordered Florida to stop counting Americans' votes and to selected Bush to be "president." The Constitutional crisis has continued for years, with this illegitimate "president" issuing signing statements saying that he's above the law. With warrantless spying on American citizens coughtheKerrycampaigncough. With an Attorney General disputing the fact that Americans have an inalienable right to habeas corpus. With, as NTodd notes, a rubber-stamp Congress that provided NO oversight of the executive branch of our government. So, like fish who were unaware that they were swimming in water, we've been living in a Constitutional crisis for six years. The difference is, now we know it.

I think that when Bush instructs his staff to be in contempt of Congress, and possibly a district court, he is then in violation of his consitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed and has to be impeached. It's not that the founders didn't forsee this sort of problem and provide a remedy. They did. It's called impeachment.

This plays out and, at the end, either we have something that calls itself America, but isn't, or we have our country back. Either way, it's time. Let's all pray the Dems have the ovaries for this.