'LSD: Lame, Spineless, Democrats'

Flashback, 2002: The Perils of LSD: Lame, Spineless, Democrats, Tom Stephens

A plague has seized the Nation. It emanates from Washington, D.C., and is spreading wherever People try to come to grips with the abuse of power there by the most dangerous government corporate money can buy. Symptoms (particularly among People committed to real democracy, social justice, and non-violence in our relations with others) include barely controllable rage, enormous frustration, organization of third parties, and ultimately a sense of total scorn for mainstream electoral politics as anything other than a personal career. The name of this malady is Lame, Spineless Democrats (LSD). Friends don't let friends enter the hallucinatory, pseudo-powerful world of LSD and its pushers in the Democratic Leadership [sic] Council without strong mutual support.

Thanks to leading Democrats who misplaced their spines, their passion, their intelligence, and their guts, the Republican Party seized total power over all three branches of the United States Government in the 2002 mid-term elections. With Republican control of the Senate we face federal courts packed with ultra-right wing ideologue judges (enjoying lifetime appointments) for at least a generation. It has been said that for evil to triumph it is only necessary that good People do nothing. The national leaders of the Democratic Party, the Tom Daschles, Dick Gepharts and Joe Liebermans who have been trying to win elections for 20 years now by beating the Fat Cat Republicans at their own corporate bribery game, let America and the world down. These uncertain trumpeters failed to grasp one very simple and fundamental fact about the type of electoral "democracy" that prevails today in America. If you let your political opponents define the key issues and control the timing of which issues will dominate the agenda, while you avoid providing any clear answers to their inflammatory and flagrantly misleading rhetoric about "freedom," "security," and "evil," you will get your ass kicked. Duh.

Some of the names have changed - today it's the Harry Reids, the Nancy Pelosis and, still, the Joe Liebermans - but the results are the same: lame, spineless Democrats caving to Bush's agenda just as they've done again this weekend.

LSD, circa 2007:

The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government's terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.

The 60 to 28 vote, which was quickly denounced by civil rights and privacy advocates, came after Democrats in the House failed to win support for more modest changes that would have required closer court supervision of government surveillance. Earlier in the day, President Bush threatened to hold Congress in session into its scheduled summer recess if it did not approve the changes he wanted.

The boy king had a tantrum and the Democrats let him have his new toy. It's only a 6 month temporary measure, they said, as they gave more power to the most corrupt AG in US history - Alberto Gonzales.

The poor house Democrats can't stand the pressure either, but it's the politics of the situation - not the civil rights - that they're concerned about.

With time running out before a scheduled monthlong break and the Senate already in recess, House Democrats confronted the choice of accepting the administration’s bill or letting it die. If it died, that would leave Democratic lawmakers, who have long been anxious about appearing weak on national security issues, facing an August fending off charges from Mr. Bush and Republicans that they left Americans exposed to terror threats.

They look weak on security because they keep buying into Republican talking points that portray them as being just that. If they had any actual courage, they would have told Bush to screw himself and would have all gone home.

There was no indication that lawmakers were responding to new intelligence warnings. Rather, Democrats were responding to administration pleas that a recent secret court ruling had created a legal obstacle in monitoring foreign communications relayed over the Internet. They also appeared worried about the political repercussions of being perceived as interfering with intelligence gathering. But the disputes were significant enough that they were likely to resurface before the end of the year.

Democrats have expressed concerns that the administration is reaching for powers that go well beyond solving what officials have depicted as narrow technical issues in the current law.

“They have got us in a vise,” Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the Rules Committee, said as she left a Saturday afternoon meeting where senior Democrats were debating how to handle the issue in the final hours before recess.

No, Louise - you put yourselves in that vise. And make no mistake, you've given the Bush administration carte blanche again to illegally spy on your countrymen - a crime Bush had previously admitted to that should have spurred his impeachment (along with the many other criminal activities he and his administration have been up to) but your party has conveniently, for this war criminal president, taken impeachment off the table. Honestly, what the hell is wrong with you?

Just what does the Bush administration have on these Democrats? Some of us out here would seriously like to know because there just isn't any other way to reconcile this continual pandering to a megalomaniac of a president who would would prefer to be a dictator - which you are enabling him to be.

Democratic lawmakers have been deeply suspicious that the Bush administration was seeking a broader and more controversial expansion of surveillance authority by making changes that were vague on important issues. Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Friday that the administration-supported bill would allow wiretapping without warrants as long as it was “concerning a person abroad.” As a result, he said, the law could be construed as allowing any search inside the United States as long as the government claimed it “concerned” Al Qaeda.

Are you an American thinking of e-mailing me, a Canadian? Well all Gonzales has to do is claim your e-mail somehow "concerns" al Qaeda and bingo - your communications will be under surveillance - as will mine. Think that's far-fetched? Just look at what they did to Maher Arar. You can't trust these Republican bastards with any power.

Just what will it take for the Democrats to realize that? An illegal war? No. Torture? No. Bush burning that "god damned piece of paper" (as he refers to the constitution)? No.

And just when will the majority of Democratic party fans - too many of whom believe that "winning" actually solves anything - actually wake the fuck up and realize that their party is nothing but Republican-Lite?

Have they even seen the latest poll numbers outside of the little orange bubble that they live in as they all hail their Democratic leadership at their YearlyKos convention this weekend? (It's true: willfully ignorant partisanship kills brain cells.) Democrats OUT: Apply directly to the forehead.

You really might need to read this twice to believe it if you're once of those brainwashed partisan hacks:

Oh this is hilarious. I thought Bush’s approval at 34%, Democratic Congress 14% was funny, but the new numbers from the Zogby poll are ridiculously low.

Nelson Muntz said it best.

The survey said:

Survey shows just 3% of Americans approve of how Congress is handling the war in Iraq; 24% say the same for the President

Bush’s Iraq policy has 8 times the support the anti-Bush policy of Pelosi-Murtha-Clyburn-Reid-Byrd.

And it gets worse: 94% of Democrats polled absolutely detest, loathe and hate how the Democratic-led Congress is handling the war in Iraq.

Yet the Democrats think the way they can increase their poll numbers is to roll over and play dead whenever Bush puts pressure on them?

3%??

Does it get any more insane than this?

With these Democrats, you can count on it.

Related: ACLU Condemns Senate for Passing Spy Law Changes

“We are deeply disappointed that the president’s tactics of fearmongering have once again forced Congress into submission,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. “That a Democratically-controlled Senate would be strong-armed by the Bush administration is astonishing. This Congress may prove to be as spineless in standing up to the Bush Administration as the one that enacted the Patriot Act or the Military Commissions Act.”

The legislation that passed would allow for the intelligence agencies to intercept – without a court order – the calls and emails of Americans who are communicating with people abroad, and puts authority for doing so in the hands of the attorney general. No protections exist for Americans whose calls or emails are vacuumed up, leaving it to the executive branch to collect, sort, and use this information as it sees fit.

“It seems that political cover is more important to our senators than the rights and privacy of those they represent,” added Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The administration is on the verge of reviving a warrantless wiretapping program even broader than the illegal one it conducted before.

So the White House Got Subpoenas...

And I found that news to be exciting - for about a minute and a half. Yes, Patrick Leahy - one of the two Dems who's actually getting anything done this term - scored another point for taking this step, while the WH spokespuppet Tony Fratto wagged his finger:

"We're aware of the committee's action, and will respond appropriately," spokesman Tony Fratto said. "It's unfortunate that congressional Democrats continue to choose the route of confrontation."

You see, "unfortunate" is about the maximum level of upset one can use to describe exactly how much Bush and Cheney care about this. They have lawyers who'll fight against this with guns blazing. (As long as Cheney stays away from the guns, no one will be shot in the face.) And besides that, they're above the law - as they've repeatedly reminded the congress, the American people and the rest of the world.

So, really, what is there to be excited about? That Leahy showed that at least one Dem had a spine this week? Well, yippee. Or maybe that he somehow got Orrin Hatch to vote for the subpoenas? (That's the bigger part of the story, afaic. Hatch is a cranky partisan bastard who would cut off his left pinky if party loyalty demanded it of him - so inquiring minds want to know if he was secretly drugged into voting for them or not...developing...)

Let's face it. Pelosi took impeachment off the table in May 2006. The Dems knew about the warrantless wiretapping program illegal spying then. So what are they going to do if the WH doesn't comply? Issue a search warrant? Storm the offices? Arrest the boy king and Darth Cheney? Now that would be exciting for more than a minute and a half. Too bad it's not going to happen.

It's just another day in BushcoLand™.
 

Impeach Gonzales

A visibly shaken James Comey testified before the senate judiciary committee on Tuesday about the cold-heartedness and heavy-handedness of Alberto Gonzales and the White House who tried to convince a very ill and hospitalized John Ashcroft to reauthorize the warrantless wiretapping program back in 2004.

Via the WaPo:

JAMES B. COMEY, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source. The episode involved a 2004 nighttime visit to the hospital room of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft by Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff. Only the broadest outlines of this visit were previously known: that Mr. Comey, who was acting as attorney general during Mr. Ashcroft's illness, had refused to recertify the legality of the administration's warrantless wiretapping program; that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card had tried to do an end-run around Mr. Comey; that Mr. Ashcroft had rebuffed them.

Mr. Comey's vivid depiction, worthy of a Hollywood script, showed the lengths to which the administration and the man who is now attorney general were willing to go to pursue the surveillance program. First, they tried to coerce a man in intensive care -- a man so sick he had transferred the reins of power to Mr. Comey -- to grant them legal approval. Having failed, they were willing to defy the conclusions of the nation's chief law enforcement officer and pursue the surveillance without Justice's authorization. Only in the face of the prospect of mass resignations -- Mr. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and most likely Mr. Ashcroft himself -- did the president back down.

As Mr. Comey testified, "I couldn't stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis." The crisis was averted only when, the morning after the program was reauthorized without Justice's approval, President Bush agreed to fix whatever problem Justice had with it (the details remain classified). "We had the president's direction to do . . . what the Justice Department believed was necessary to put this matter on a footing where we could certify to its legality," Mr. Comey said.

The dramatic details should not obscure the bottom line: the administration's alarming willingness, championed by, among others, Vice President Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, to ignore its own lawyers. Remember, this was a Justice Department that had embraced an expansive view of the president's inherent constitutional powers, allowing the administration to dispense with following the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Justice's conclusions are supposed to be the final word in the executive branch about what is lawful or not, and the administration has emphasized since the warrantless wiretapping story broke that it was being done under the department's supervision.

No wonder Bush wanted Gonzales to be the new AG. He should never have been confirmed.

Watch Comey's testimony:



Earlier this month, Comey also testified before the house judiciary committee regarding the US attorneys scandal:

James B. Comey, the Justice Department's second in command from 2003 until August 2005, also told a House Judiciary subcommittee that although he was the "direct supervisor" of all U.S attorneys, he was never informed about an effort by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and his aides to remove a large group of prosecutors that began in early 2005.

At that time as well, Gonzales circumvented the regular government hierarchy to get what he and the White House wanted:

The testimony from Comey, a highly regarded former prosecutor who is now general counsel for Lockheed Martin, further undermines assertions by Gonzales and his aides that dissatisfaction with the prosecutors' work led to their dismissals. It also underscores the extent to which the firings, which originated in the White House, were handled outside the normal chain of command at Justice.

It's obvious that Gonzales has never moved on from the mindset of his previous job as WH counsel and that he still operates at the behest of Bush and Cheney while bowing to the concept that anything this president wants, he gets - no matter what. We saw it on the issue of torture, which Gonzales sanctioned by whatever legal means he thought he could get away with, and now we have confirmation that the WH was bound and determined to circumvent the FISA court - a court that did its bidding anyway - even to the point where their lackeys would pressure an extremely ill Ashcroft in the ICU to fall in line.

Unconscionable.

I don't know what more the Democrats are waiting for before they decide to impeach Gonzales. If Bush won't fire him and he won't resign, it's up to them to wrest back control of the Justice department from a man who fashions himself to be a quasi-dictator with absolutely no conscience. Gonzales is a menace to society. Reid and Pelosi have already said that impeachment is "off the table" for Bush. The least they could do is to get rid of his footsoldier.

Update: The Justice department has issued the standard denial.

The Justice Department said yesterday that it will not retract a sworn statement in 2006 by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that the Terrorist Surveillance Program had aroused no controversy inside the Bush administration, despite congressional testimony Tuesday that senior departmental officials nearly resigned in 2004 to protest such a program.

And, more Gonzales lies...

The Justice Department considered dismissing many more U.S. attorneys than officials have previously acknowledged, with at least 26 prosecutors suggested for termination between February 2005 and December 2006, according to sources familiar with documents withheld from the public.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified last week that the effort was limited to eight U.S. attorneys fired since last June, and other administration officials have said that only a few others were suggested for removal.

In fact, D. Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales's chief of staff, considered more than two dozen U.S. attorneys for termination, according to lists compiled by him and his colleagues, the sources said.