Lest we forget, there's a whole lot of problems besides Abramoff

We can hope that the New Normal is smacked down to size by outcomes from the Abramoff debacle, but the U.S. is still at the mercy of these Bushling initiatives:

In Iraq, people continue to die in a land in utter turmoil. Boy, thank God for elections.

VP Cheney is still lying through his teeth. Wow, Cub Scouts, did you know that the VP has made a career out of being honest?

P Bush is, according to leading conservative Andrew Sullivan, no better at doling out the truth. Andrew has it spot on, as they say over there. Quotable:

"But when you could have done all of that [NSA warrantless wiretaps] in line with precedent and under existing law, why take this moment to push the constitutional envelope? Why undermine public trust and bipartisan consensus when you gain nothing but making an old point in an ancient, bitter argument?

"The added irony is that Bush’s unilateral expansion of presidential power has backfired. His insistence on the right to torture detainees deeply wounded American moral standing, outraged allies, set back democratisation in Iraq, and yielded useless intelligence. Moreover, the president was forced into a humiliating defeat in December when Congress insisted that detainees be treated humanely.

"Congress refused in the same month to extend the Patriot Act and will re-examine the issue in the next few weeks. Many Republicans are troubled by some of the powers now granted to the president in a war that has no formal end-point and no formal enemy.

"On the bright side, of course, Rummy and Cheney get to stick their fingers in a few judges’ and senators’ and liberals’ eyes.

"They’ve waited three decades to get their revenge on all those Vietnam peacenik hippies; and they’ll be damned if they give an inch now. Who says old men don’t bear grudges? And who says they don’t eventually get to carry them out?"

Real mature, guys.

And deadly for America. Real patriots, guys.

Note to VP Cheney: If breaking the law with NSA (and what else?) has stopped all kinds of terrorist attacks, where are all the suspects? Oh, yeah, I forgot.

That's legal, right? Oh yeah, I forgot, Condi said so, just before we moved the prisons real fast as soon as the world found out. And how do you get these tough guys to talk? Oh, I remember. Just "enhance" the interrogation techniques. Gosh, America is sooo special.

Bush has grit, but he has no shame: Torture ban does not apply to him

The Boston Globe is bright enough - where was everyone else? - to notice that W.'s signing statement of the bill that contained the celebrated John McCain torture ban indicates that he will follow the law or not as he feels is his right as president.

Bush pulls a power grab with illegal wiretaps by NSA, which then shares the information with investigatory bodies and spy agencies across the board. The vast majority of public and legal opinion finds this activity illegal, and so does this debate by conservative Federalist Society members. Where, then, is the outrage and the blowback? Pretty weak so far. That doesn't make it right. It makes America appear weak in the world, not strong. We are becoming Bush's bitches.

Today, Bush makes seventeen recess appointments. He doesn't need Congress, its rules, its laws, its Constitutional obligations.

We can only hope that though the law moves slowly, truth - and the Constitution - will out. Everyone, and I do hope everyone, will work to make it so.

Abramoff dragging more into his web - or is Abramoff in a primarily Republican web?

The rats are jumping the ship fast. There's a growing list of knuckleheads returning money given by Jack Abramoff, now including: Republicans Tom DeLay; Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert; current House Majority Leader Roy Blunt (sitting in for DeLay due to his indictment in Texas); George W. Bush himself; Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio; Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon; Reps. Bud Shuster and Melissa Hart, both of Pennsylvania; Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia; Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist; Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana; Rep. John Sweeney of New York; and more to come.

Democrats with dirty money are: Sen. Max Baucus of Montana; Sen. Byron Dorgan of Montana; Rep. Nita Lowey of New York; and probably more to come, as well. A number of legislators, including Hillary Clinton, have received small amounts from various tribes but haven't decided to return the money, presumably because it's unclear if the money is connected to the Abramoff scandal.

Well-known Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem received donations from Abramoff but doesn't intend to return the money because he apparently believes he remains untainted. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has been rather testy about his large number of donations from Indian tribes that appear tied to particular votes. He maintains that he's in the clear, but the pressure is on.

It bears repeating that this is primarily a Republican scandal because they're in power, and they've grown arrogant and believe themselves to be above the law (as has Bush in the presidency). That a few Democrats who live in states with large Indian populations have gotten ensnared is an embarrassment, and they should face the same music. But let's not let the focus shift from Republicans in power to all of Congress. When the Dems were in power there were corruption scandals for sure, but this is more like the Titanic than the House Post Office.

Update: DailyKos puts the number of members of Congress tied somehow to Abramoff's Indian tribes at 210.

Late Update: Andrew Sullivan offers this find of a "complete" list of Abramoff-only (i.e. not from Indians) recipients. Looks pretty darned Republican to me. (Hint: Everyone is Republican or Independent.)

The Day After: There really is a nuclear option...

...and it may blow up the Republican majority.

The three things I get most out of the Abramoff scandal is that, one, it represents the worst of what Congress has become since the Gingrich Republican Revolution in 1994; two, how likely it is that the Republicans will use this debacle in a Rovian way to "clean up" Congress; and, three, how likely it is that three central figures, Grover Nyquist, Ralph Reed and Karl Rove, will slip through the legal net.

Before I get to the particulars, it pays to read the NYT for how shaken both the lobbying and Congressional worlds are. The NYT emphasizes how the Republicans will spin it, try to divert attention by reforming itself, but how this might not work. This somewhat fraudalent process will still be good for America as needed reform happens, in fact is already happening, as everyone ducks and covers.

The WaPo take is decidedly, well, Washingtonian. I used to admire Jeffrey Birnbaum's reporting but lately on this particular story he's been particularly centrist. I consider that a part of the New Normal in that reporters, not necessarily by their nature but rather by some insidious new understanding of objectivity, have fled to the center and gutted true reporting.

In Birnbaum's case, it's demonstrated by how he uses polls to make the Abramoff scandal appear to be a bipartisan affair when it's decidedly not. That's a disservice to the public because it confuses inside-the-beltway takes on voter confusion with actual news, which is that this is largely about Republican born-and-bred corruption. And what's more, Birnbaum - along with co-author Dan Balz - raise Newt Gingrich once again to elder statesman status when they report his take as valid criticism and sage advice, forgetting that he ushered in the Abramoff Era as leader of the 1994 coup, not to mention forgetting that Gingrich was forced out of Congress by his own corruption scandal involving his PAC!

This WaPo story today is better reporting. It emphasizes the six Republican figures deepest in trouble and why. It does it with facts, not polls or spin. It also tells us which way the affair is moving, with emphasis on how the FBI will follow every lead.

Not a happy new year for Jack Abramoff

I hope the friends you partied with these past years are ready for the fun they'll have this coming year after your guilty plea in both the Washington lobbying corruption case and the casino ship debacle in Florida.

On top of guilty pleas by Michael Scanlon - one-time Abramoff partner and former aide to Tom DeLay - and SunCruz partner Adam Kidan, as well as Former top procurement official in the Bush White House Office of Management and Budget Michae Safavian, who pleaded guilty to false statements in the Abramoff invesigation, the Abramoff plea is expected to rock Washington legistative circles throughout 2006, a midterm election year.

See these handy interactive guides to who's who in the Abramoff universe:

MSNBC

WaPo

The Original, at DeLay's House of Scandal (mostly about DeLay, but Abramoff et al loom large)

Now, I want Abramoff and his ilk to either do time or go away in disgrace, nipping their part in the New Normal in the bud while bringing down the hegemony of the current crop of corrupt Republican thugs mascarading as public servants. However, this post at Talking Points Memo is a good reminder that we shouldn't get carried away, a la Kenneth Starr.

No, the context of whatever glee I feel at someone else's misfortune is that, deep down, as both a rational patriot and a concerned citizen of the U.S., I believe that good will out. Those who have been following the rise and possibly imminent fall of the Republican Party circa Contract with America will have noted that they do not resemble the revolution they rode to power. They are not true conservatives.

I may be a true liberal and thus despised by many on the right. I, however, have nothing against true, rational conservatives. What's mascarading in Washington as conservatives are, for the most part, phonies, more pigs to the slop than promoters of conservative policy.

One look at the budget deficit and the recent transportation bill is enough to turn a real patriot into a revolutionary.

Let's forge a counterstrike against this New Normal. A blow was struck today against Jack Abramoff. Let the chips fall where they may. We'll be the better for it.

A weekend full of Say What?

While I was coming back from a week's trip to Philly, NYC and Connecticut -- with a layover in Sonoma because I could not gain entry into the flooded Napa Valley -- I missed a weekend's worth of blogging.

In the meantime, W. tries to justify his illegal activities in the face of news that Justice Department officials weren't in lockstep with the NSA program, while knuckleheads at Newsweek who don't grok the Constitution -- as pointed out with suitable outrage by Armando at DailyKos -- actually say:

"In a perfect democracy trying to strike a balance between civil liberties and national security, there would be reasoned, open debate between representatives of the different branches of government. But human nature and politics rarely work in neat and orderly ways. In moments of crisis, presidents, if they believe in executive power (and most inevitably do), will do almost anything to protect the country. Only after the crisis ebbs does the debate begin over the proper means and ends, and by then the people and their representatives are often shocked to find what the president has done in the name of protecting them."

C'mon Evan Thomas, read the Constitution and notice that this has been decided and is not open to debate only after a crisis has passed. We don't need a "perfect democracy" to honor the rule of law. We need a president who will not search for a Justice Dept. hack who will tell him anything he wants to know.

We also learn from a Walter Pincus WaPo story that the Defense Intelligence Agency, along with the FBI, CIA and DHS, has gained access to information gathered by the NSA warrantless wiretap/data-mining efforts and taken that information to justify new domestic surveillance. The DIA and the CIA are legally bound not to engage in domestic spying.

Those of us who lived through the antiwar movement of the 60s and 70s remember how the NSA, DIA and FBI spied on antiwar activists, leading to the FISA law being enacted. Now, the same agencies are violating FISA when they engage in the activities that led to the law in the first place. Duh.

How plain does it have to get before Americans are outraged at a gross violation of the law? And where is Congress? Hopefully only on vacation and not permanently passive.

WaPo's Dana Priest still getting the goods on Bushlings and the CIA

Here's another whopper of a tale about the ever-expanding CIA counter-terrorism intelligence efforts.

Enough CIA and other operatives feel bad enough about the dubious legal nature of these activities that they keep spilling the beans to Dana Priest.

We have to keep a drumbeat going that Congress can't ignore. It must exert oversight.

UK (surprise!) is complicit in torture renditions

Here are some courageous Brits ready to stand up against Britain's more Draconian anti-leak laws to keep a torture/rendition story alive for all of us -- and the world -- to see. Kos is keeping it alive too.

Not a pretty story but quite fitting with the times. We've got to keep the pressure up on this stuff, on both sides of the pond.

Bush cut down to size

The most interesting thing about this WaPo dissection is how it reveals Bush to be what he is: a petty, weak man used by others to write their political dream stories. What's left -- since Bush as president could actually make decisions -- is a legacy of war and tax cuts leaving the U.S. with little to pay for it. Grover Norquist would be proud, but few else. After all, Grover is the great destroyer of federal governments. He's nearing his goal.

Most quotable line: "Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University specialist on wartime public opinion who now works at the White House, helped draft a 35-page public plan for victory in Iraq, a paper principally designed to prove that Bush had one."

Talking about a Bushling legacy, we can pretty much be certain that much of what remains of the 2nd term will be mired in scandal. Former Republican Congressman and arch-conservative Bob Barr -- famously a member of the House Judiciary Committee that reported out impeachment charges against and oversaw the prosecution of Bill Clinton -- opines that Bush is caught in the same trap of either lying, which can't solve his problems, or telling the truth, which will only deepen them.

The comparison to Clinton is only valid in the depth of the troubles, not the seriousness of them.

Daily Dose of Abramoff

The prosecutors in the Abramoff cases are amping up the pressure to get Abramoff to roll over before his January trial in Florida. The WaPo has a story of his rise and fall that makes pretty interesting reading. I liked the line, "This could be the Enron of lobbying." I'd hate to think what is if this isn't.

We spy on the U.N. Word is that's nothing new...

...but it doesn't make it right. Raw Story has the report of how we expanded our surveillance of U.N. Security Council members as the vote for a resolution recommending war in Iraq approached in early 2003. If you recall, the Bushlings cancelled the vote when it was obvious that we couldn't win it, especially because of the defection of Mexico and W.'s great friend Vicente Fox.

The report makes interesting reading. I don't know how much of this is new, but in light of the recent NSA stories, another example of the misuse of the NSA points out an agency out of control and an administration willing to work outside of both the law and international protocols and customs. It's no wonder our allies continue to hold us in distain.

Add to the mix that the CIA is investigating its own "mistaken" renditions. Rumfeld once famously said something to the effect that "war isn't pretty," but do we have to make our movie script so completely sordid? Are we bungling, ruthless Romanians? Apparently. (Sorry, Romania. Just using an old cold war image.)

Part of my concern with this New Normal so basely crafted by the Bushlings is the amount of work needed over time by future administrations to repair the damage to our international reputation and standing. I've had readers, who may have been international, point out that America's standing has been pretty debased, going all the way back to the Vietnam War. I, however, like to point out that Carter raised our human rights credentials, Reagan, to his credit, strengthened ties to Europe, and Bush 41 may have strengthened for a time our ties to Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Morroco, et al. Clinton worked well with Europe, however haltingly at first, over Bosnia and Kosovo. We've always had up-and-down relations with the U.N., but we've maintained an ongoing involvement and discourse with the body and never worked openly to undermine it until John Bolton, in spite of the Jesse Helms faction that worked against it in past years.

Now we're approaching a total breakdown of our international image on all levels. Our domestic spying scandal only perpetrates the breakdown. Add increased surveillance of U.N. members in New York, who are supposed to have diplomatic freedoms, and you have us increasingly viewed as a rogue nation.

This is nothing new, I agree, but more indiscretions add up to more diminishment. When will this ugly trend stop?

The truth about Rove is: Avoid the truth

Here's a message to the Bushling message machine: The press may want to control the message now that it's found a little courage. How long can our "free" press stand up to the withering assault?

We don't know. WaPo's Eugene Robinson thinks there's a line that shouldn't be crossed by Bush. I can't tell if he thinks Bush can be stopped.

A WaPo editorial speaks to the Bushling habit of lying about greenhouse gases and efforts to lowering them. Just like the WMD claims, the Bushlings have rarely relied on the truth.

Since the truth hasn't worked in Iraq, the Pentagon works to alter that, too. It's called Information Operations. Used to be called propaganda.

If you see a pattern, find a way to counter it. Letters to editors, anyone?

Besides mastering the craft of taking the 35% who would follow any Christian conservative to the gates of hell, Rove discovered you can capture the other required 16% by a constant assault on the truth.

That's the New Normal in action. Let's forge an alternative theory of the politcal universe and create and sustain a healthier Normal where the truth means something again and the 35% of the nation who are poised at the gates of hell might stay there, marginalized as they ought to be.

BTW, I always meant to introduce my theory of the 35% earlier, but I'll flesh it out in another post.