Justice flies below the radar to get above the law

Thanks for the clarification on that AG Mukasey.

So, a law broken is not necessarily a crime, eh?

Then what do we call it? A transgression? A fuck up? An offense? A reason for a time out?

And shouldn't the justice department, of all the frigging departments in the country, be the one department where even a little lawbreaking, even if it is only "civil service laws," be reason to through someone's ass in the can?

I grew up in a town called New Britain, where transgression of civil service law cost many men their jobs, their careers, their pensions, and in some cases, their health and their lives.

Mukasey is just another suck-up for George Bush.

Mukasey - justice, Bush style

Michael Mukasey won't honor house contempt charges against White House aides Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten because ignoring the Congressional subpoenas did not "constitute a crime."

Interesting choice of words, Mr. Mukasey. The Constitution is derived from the word "constitute," as in the basis for all law. And it's the Constitution which the Bush administration has chosen to ignore again and again. And now Mr. Mukasey, you are among those who conspire to keep the President and his minions above the law.

In the kind of circular logic which has become a hallmark of all White House and Justice Department arguments, Mukasey and the Justice Department won't prosecute the contempt charges because Miers and Bolten were acting on advice from...the Justice Department. In other words, if the Justice Department gives advice which is criminal, it can't pursue prosecution against itself.

It goes hand in hand with the kind of logic which says, we can't investigate administration officials who secretly broke the law in the name of the fight against terrorism, because if we did, we'd have to break the secrecy that allowed them to break the law in the first place.

Down the rabbit hole we go.

Of course, if Congress never approved Mukasey, this imbroglio might have been avoided.

The American squirm

Attorney General Michael Mukasey is demonstrating today, to those of us who had strong doubts about his appointment, that he is a Bush man before anything else. Principle be damned. Rule of law be damned. Freedom and liberty be damned.

Mukasey won't give a direct answer to any question about waterboarding, torture, contempt citations or FISA. He's a mealy-mouth apologist for a criminal administration. In his refusal to answer questions, he's no better than his successor.

Here Senator Kennedy asks him the wrong question about waterboarding. The question should have been, "Would it be torture if it were practiced on your wife, or your son, or your daughter?"

The January cold

The wind chill in Central Connecticut today is -7 degrees, and driving in I noticed the stretch of Connecticut river that forks to the West of Wilcox Island in Middletown has frozen over.

I was listening to a radio report about the Justice Department prosecutor John Durham (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Colin McEnroe) who has been assigned to pursue a criminal case involving the destroyed CIA torture tapes, and I thought about a great Richard Meyer song, The January Cold.

Meyer was one of the talented songwriters who performed on, and helped edit The Fast Folk Musical Magazine, a quasi-monthy subscription magazine and LP (later CD), which was a compilation of songs written by up and comers in folk music. Some who recorded for FFMM, were Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin, John Gorka, Hugh Blumenfeld, Pierce Pettis, Greg Brown and just about anybody, who was anybody, and anybody who was nobody in folk music at the time.

Meyer's song was written on a bet. I can't remember which songwriter he wagered, but the challenge was that each songwriter would challenge the other with an impossible topic about which to write a song. Meyer was challenged to write a song about the Teapot Dome scandal. He did, and The January Cold is magnificent. It first appeared on FFMM 105, May 1984, which also included performances by Jack Hardy, Shawn Colvin and another amazing song, The Sentinel, by John Gorka. The song later appeared on Meyer's album Laughing Scared, and on a Fast Folk Musical Magazine compilation on the Smithsonian Folkways label called, A Community of Singers. The songs is currently available on iTunes. Here are the lyrics:

THE JANUARY COLD

The year was nineteen twenty one
Woodrow Wilson was not well
He was beaten by the aftermath of the ‘War to end all wars’
And handsome Warren Harding stood in the January Cold
And swore to restore America’s God given heart a soul

Harding was an average man whose friends played him for a fool
They abused the nation and the man to keep their pockets full
The consecrated president with a child by an affair
Assured me and my countrymen with his wife who’s name was clear

And how the flappers danced
How the movies flashed
And how the strength of business before the market crashed
And how the modern world was born in the aftermath or war
While the bally-hoo went on and on
before the market hit the floor

We made late peace with Germany and I marched and celebrated’
For Lindbergh’s flight and prohibition we toasted and awe hated
My government in Washington by of and for the people
Isolated and disarmed the country that seemed to have saved the world

I worked the naval oil reserve in Wyoming’s Teapot Dome
When the Secretary of the interior sold the navy down the road
From the oil fields to Canada where the corporate deals were made
Or secret loans and gifts before the Congress learned the game

Chorus

So how did free American take the selling of her oil
And the butchering of offices by appointed criminals
They called the Senate committees scandal mongers malicious and unclean
Bolsheviks and Partisans that the country did not need

The Harding I remember our hail-fellow well met
Abused by native faith in friends and naïve unworldliness
Died poisoned in Alaska when the scandals came to fame
Some say it was his wife’s revenge or mercy for his name

The song readily brings to mind the many problems and scandals of the current administration, not the least of which is the alleged involvement in the destruction of evidence in the CIA torture case. Yesterday, bipartisan members of the 9/11 commission published an accusatory op-ed in the New York Times, and today the Times an encouraging editorial on Attorney General Mukasey's appointment of Durham to investigate the case. The Washington Post believes Durham is the right man for the job because of his integrity and his dogged pursuit of other cases.

Jonathan Turley, a constitutional expert from George Washingon University, speaking with Keith Olbermann on Countdown last evening, is not as confident about the effectiveness of the investigation, since Durham is not being assigned as an independent prosecutor. Turley claims that it is the Justice Department investigating itself, and in the end, Durham's boss is Mukasey, and Mukasey's boss is the President.

To be sure, there is no evidence to cast aspersions on Durham's reputation. He's brought down the mob, the FBI in Boston and Connecticut governor John Rowland, and several other Connecticut political slimeballs.

Projections are that there will be claims of executive privilege and state secrets, and that the investigation will likely extend beyond George Bush's presidency. Still, the jails will be ready to embrace all whom Durham is able to identify as culpable. As Martin Luther King said, the arc of justice is long, but sure.

TiVo the torture, or how to say "no" without saying "no"

Did George Bush see the torture tapes he has denied knowledge of until a few weeks ago?

New suspicions suggest that Bush indeed saw one or more of the tapes, and was apprised of their destruction. The tapes could hold evidence that this administration is guilty of war crimes for torture.

And Michael Mukasey, who issued a material witness warrant for Jose Padilla, based on information obtained from Abu Zubaydah during those torture sessions, may be compromised as the leader of a Justice Department investigation into the destruction of the tapes.

Predetermined justice courtesy of Michael Mukasey

This is really no surprise, thought there are Congressman who will appear to be abashed. Michael Mukasey has authored an op-ed for the LA Times in which he defends the FISA bill, including immunity from lawsuits for telecoms.

If you somehow thought that Mukasey would bring a judicial impartiality to the job, this little PR piece should convince you that he's just another mouthpiece for Bush.

In the essay, he leads with the fear card, minus any real evidence:

Intercepting the communications of terrorists and other intelligence targets has given us crucial insights into the intentions of our adversaries and has helped us to detect and prevent terrorist attacks.

Of course, he invokes the specter of 9/11:

...it would provide protections from lawsuits for telecommunications companies that have been sued simply because they are believed to have assisted our intelligence agencies after the 9/11 attacks.

And it defends the conditions of immunity by claiming that, after all, it's not blanket immunity:

The bill does not, as some have suggested, provide blanket immunity for those companies. Instead, a lawsuit would be dismissed only in cases in which the attorney general certified to the court either that a company did not provide assistance to the government or that a company had received a written request indicating that the activity was authorized by the president and determined to be lawful.

First of all, it's not "blanket immunity" that's at issue. It's retroactive immunity. Providing immunity for a crime (and remember, right now it's still a crime to spy on American citizens), that was committed in full knowledge of those who permitted the crime.

To say that a company will receive immunity if it had written permission from the president and was assured that the act was not a crime, is ludicrous. George Bush thinks that everything he does, or says is above the law. Who among us thinks that he won't provide whatever letter is necessary to protect his corporate co-conspirators, and to protect his own sorry ass from prosecution against treason.

In today's NY Times, a piece on the connection between the government spying and the telecoms, demonstrates that the big communication companies are now reluctant to break the law on the word of this administration.

We all have to consider the possibilities when a rogue government allows itself to invade the privacy of its citizens with impunity.

BTW, Mukasey has had time to understand the complex details of the FISA bill, but still hasn't determined if waterboarding is torture, or if our government has engaged in torture.

Torture, a new American tradition

Scott Horton, who writers for Harpers, brings together the strings of a story which prove that torture is institutionalized in our government, that approval for torture goes right to the desk of George Bush, and that the new Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, seems already complicit in a plot to cover the tracks of the torturers.

It's disheartening and disgusting, and it's hard to believe that it's being practiced by Americans.

Dodd wants to know if Mike meant it

According to Chris Dodd's website, he's issued a statement about the revelations in Scott McClellan's book.

Now Dodd wants Mike Mukasey to prove his independence.

The 60 vote Senate myth

Yesterday I put blame for the confirmation of Attorney General nominee directly at the feet of Senators Schumer and Feinstein. After reading Glenn Greenwald's astonishing analysis of the lack of filibuster on the vote, I'm more convinced than ever that, as Ralph Nader said when he made his run for President, "there's not a dime's worth of difference" between the parties. It's obviously about power, politics, incumbency and doing what they damn-well please.

If you don't believe it, listen to this debate between liberal radio show host Ed Sculzt and Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman about the way in which Democratic leadership (Nancy Pelosi) blocked Dennis Kuchinich's resolution to impeach Dick Cheney.

We have a new torture czar

The US Senate stayed up late to confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General of the United States. The vote would never have happened if Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer hadn't confirmed him in committee. They betrayed their party, their constituents and the constitution.

Amidst cries of anti-semitism, some commentators are suggesting that Feinstein and Schumer were unduly influenced in their vote by the powerful Israel lobby AIPAC. James Fallows of the Atlantic, commenting on these accusations and the backlash which followed, defends the legitimacy of questioning the influence of any political lobby which represents a foreign nation.

DAILYKOS made the accusation and retreated from it.

People are rightfully careful about making accusations that may stem from, or appear to stem from anti-Israeli predjudice, but if there is a suspicion that such nationalistic influence on US lawmakers exist, it seems legitimate to raise the question.

The Democratic Senate, upholding freedom to capitulate

Judge Michael Mukasey is apparently not morally or legally grounded enough to reveal whether he thinks waterboarding is torture, yet now two key Democratic Senators have decided he's good enough to be Attorney General because he's not Alberto Gonzales.

It's beginning to look like the Democrats like the way things are going, after all.

Not fair, not fair, I'm telling Mommy

This administration's sense of fairness is so askew that they grab an innocent traveler out of airports, lock them in chains, hand them over to torturers, realize they're wrong, release him and refuse to even apologize.

Now that's unfair.

So when it's the crybaby in the bully pulpit who's shouting "unfair" about the foundering nomination of Michael Mukasey, who can't figure out that making someone think they're drowning, is torture, then let's just turn our backs on his whining. Let him take his ball and go home.

The question remains, what if they did it to your son or daughter

Michael Mukasey answered hundreds of questions, on record, and in writing, to try to secure his nomination as Attorney General. Among them are his response to the question "Is waterboarding torture." As expected he danced around the issue, and in the end, refused to acknowledge that it is.

As I've said before, a simple reframing of the quesiton might solicit a different answer.

So, Judge Mukasey, would waterboarding be torture if they did it to your son Marc, or your daughter Jessica?

Threats, threats and more threats

Those scary Democrats are threatening to block the nomination of Attorney General nominee Mukasey.

I'm sure the Bush administration is quaking.

Unfortunately Democratic Senators have threatened before, and still we have FISA and war funding.

I'm about ready to see the Dems finally make good on a threat.

That's more like it

We're so used to Bush nominees who twist reality into a charade of the truth, that yesterday, we watched Attorney General nominee Mukasey and hoped dreamily that he was the exception.

When he reverted to tautology in answering the committee's questions about what constituted torture, he began to dance down the lane of infinite regress often traveled by Bush associates.

Good for RI's Senator Sheldon Whitehouse for putting the screws to Mukasey. One more example of why Whitehouse's defeat of moderate Republican Lincoln Chafee was so important.

Has George Bush cooked his own goo...er, ass?

Could it be that Attorney General candidate Michael Mukasey is a man of integrity? Could it be that he'll stand up to George Bush and Dick Cheney? Could it be that we'll get America back again?