Common Cause lists these as issues that need to be investigated and calls for a special prosecutor to be appointed:

* Warrantless spying on Americans.
* Misuse of the state secrets doctrine.
* Preventive detention and secret prisons.
* Use of torture and other interrogation abuses.
* Deliberate flaunting of Congress' oversight role.
* Politicization of the Justice Department.
* Abuse of executive privilege.
* Misuse of signing statements to override laws duly passed by Congress.

That seems to me more than sufficient to mandate an investigation. But I would add one glaring omission:

* Presenting false evidence and lying to Congress and to the American people, as well as the United Nations, as justification for invading Iraq, a sovereign nation which was no imminent threat to the United States.

Ralph

"The rich are different . . . "

F. Scott Fitzgerald, who longed to be rich and hobnobbed with the rich American expatriots in the 1920s Europe, said something like that: "the rich are different from you and me." And some wag later tacked on: "Yes, they have more money."

I was reminded of this when I read a newspaper blurb a couple of weeks back that Bernie Madoff was hiring a prison consultant to help lobby for the selection of the place he will spend the rest of his days.

Prison consultant?

I guess it's a mark of how far he has fallen that, despite having a prison consultant, he did not get his first choice of a minimum security facility full of other white collar criminals. Instead, he got a medium security assignment.

Oh, well. I wonder how that goes over with the poor guy from the ghetto who is serving time for a minor crime in the worst hell hole of a prison, because he couldn't afford a pricey lawyer to get the charges dropped, to say nothing of a prison consultant.

Everyone is equal before the law, no? Except that some are "more equal than others."

Ralph

To investigate, or not to investigate

Mickey Nardo has a thoughtful piece on his blog, 1boringoldman.com, about the pros and cons of investigating the bush administration's many possible crimes and misdemeanors -- brought up anew by the revelation that what we thought was a crime and should be investigated (Cheney ordering the CIA not to tell congress about the assassination plans) may have only been a bad judgment call.

Obama says he wants us "to look forward, not backward." Mickey counters with:

I see no way to repudiate them definitively than by taking action in hearings and in the courts. Otherwise, they become precedents. There’s nothing Conservative or Liberal about these points, nothing Republican or Democrat about them either. These are American points.

To which I would add my two cents:

Those who must decide whether to investigate all this should pay attention to Sonia Sotomayor in her confirmation hearings. Two things stand out that are applicable here:

1. The idea that precedent plays a large role in deciding new cases. I think the way she put it was that prior court decisions set precedent, which then becomes “established law.”

2. The idea that one’s background, identity, and feelings do influence what you pay attention to; but in the end it is the rule of law that compels the decision.

If we follow those guidelines, there is not a shadow of doubt that we should investigate.

Ralph

Latest on the assassination squads

The Washington Post is reporting today that the CIA assassination hit squad plan, supposedly the thing that Cheney had forbidden them to report to the Congressional Intel committees, was about to become operational for the first time. That's what compelled the planners to tell new CIA Director Leon Panetta about it, and he responded by immediately canceling the program and reporting it to the Intel Committees.

This latest information is the missing piece that makes the scenario plausible. But I'm still not entirely convinced. Some say, well of course we've had assassination plots by the CIA before. What's new about this? So I'm still wondering if there's something else.

Anyway, if we can really believe this, then perhaps the lack of reporting to congress is not as bad as it seemed at first. The argument is that they were not required to inform as long as it was only in the planning stage, but that they would report before they put it into practice.

I would argue this back: they say they've worked on it off and on for 8 years, trying to work out all the impediments. So, how much money and manpower time have they wasted on a program that congress would not approve? And they probably knew they wouldn't, given that Cheney ordered them not to tell.

Ralph

Sotomayor's questioners

There was something obscene, offensive - and infuriating - about those smug, white Republican men grilling Sonia Sotomayor (a wise, Latina woman) in yesterday's hearing: Sessions, Kyl, and Graham, repeatedly, one after the other, honed in on remarks she had made in speeches, often taken out of the context of her attempt in inspire minority students to pursue a career in the judicial system, and ignored her actual record of impartiality in her court decisions.

Senator Kyl lectured her for ten minutes about letting her minority identity influence her vote and accusing her of "relativism run amok":

"You seem to be celebrating [the superiority of being a minority judge] . . . You understand it will make a difference . . . And not only are you not saying anything negative about that. But you are embracing [it]."

Finally, after waiting her turn, a somewhat exasperated Sotomayor chimed in, noting that there was little of substance in Kyl's critique.

"I have a record for 17 years, decision after decision," she replied. "It is very clear that I don't base my judgments on my personal experiences or my feelings or my biases. All of my decisions show my respect for the rule of law."

And then, a snotty Lindsey Graham, himself known for getting hysterical and ranting from the Senate podium or making wild statements on tv, smugly saying to her, "Do you think you have a temperament problem?" because some disgruntled lawyers, who had faced tough questioning by her in court, had criticized her as being a "bully" on the bench.

But Alabama senator Sessions, himself with a history of blatant racism, was just plain obnoxious in refusing to take in her eloquent explanations and repeatedly going after her about her remarks in speeches that, taken out of context, imply that her feelings might influence her vote.

Dr. Nathaniel Frank, author of the authoritative and carefully researched book exposing the failures and unfairness of Don't Ask, Don't Tell -- and incidentally the son of two psychoanalyst friends of mine -- put it so well in an essay on Huffington Post:

Sessions was unmoved: "So you willingly accept that your sympathies, opinions and prejudices may influence your decision-making." Sotomayor: "Well, as I have tried to explain, what I try to do is to ensure that they're not. If I ignore them and believe that I'm acting without them, without looking at them and testing that I'm not, then I could, unconsciously or otherwise, be led to be doing the exact thing I don't want to do, which is to let something other than the law command the result."

Nathaniel goes on:

This is precisely the value of diversity: it can take people who are not living in the bubble of prosperous white male privilege to recognize how the markings of their identity may shape their actions. To ignore the real ways that our experiences, background, ambitions, and emotions affect us is a recipe for the destructive unconscious behavior -- discrimination, hypocrisy, dishonesty, infidelity -- that so many powerful white men engage in (especially, it seems, politicians). Too many of them live their lives in an emotional closet of which they know not.

The whole show between Sessions and Sotomayor was, of course, a trap. And it was tinged with the destructive cluelessness of white male privilege. The implication of Sessions' inquisition was that, as a white male with no distinguishing "heritage" to speak of, he and his ilk can make judgments totally free of feelings, belief, or experience, that they are not prone to ever make a judgment that could be clouded by who they are. A Latina woman, however, is a dangerous addition to the Court because her "difference" could shape her judgment.

To put the day in balance, Sotomayor had some wonderful support and praise from Democratic senators. And she will undoubtedly be confirmed. Republicans know that. Their goal is not to defeat Sotomayor's appointment but to sow fear and intimidation in future nominees and to warn Obama not to make his next nominee even more liberal (and less able to defend herself).

As for Sotomayor herself, she was remarkable in the directness and candidness of her answers. Anyone who could withstand that all-day grilling -- and not blow up -- can hardly be accused of "having a temperament problem."

Ralph

Drip by drip

It's all coming out, folks. Drip by drip, but still it's adding up to what many of us have felt was true all along: george bush and dick cheney conducted one of the worst presidencies in history.

Now we get Senator Diane Finestein saying on national tv that CIA Director Leon Panetta told the Senate Intelligence Committee that it was VP cheney who ordered the CIA not to disclose the latest-revealed CIA program to the appropriate oversight committees of congress.

That is arguably an illegal act, although there is probably some loophole he can crawl through. Already their spin is that the program was never put into operation and therefore did not meet the criterion for required disclosure. Nevertheless, the assumption is unmistakable that he must have assumed that congress would put a stop to the program if they new about it.

And now, thanks to the eagle eye of Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel blogging fame, we know from released IG documents that it was bush himself who sent Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card to AG Ashcroft's hospital room (actually he was in the ICU in severe pain and under heavy medication) to try to get him to sign the torture authorization. Here's what Marcy ferreted out:

According to notes from Ashcroft's FBI security detail, at 6:20 PM that evening Card called the hospital and spoke with an agent in Ashcroft's security detail, advising him that President Bush would be calling shortly to speak with Ashcroft. Ashcroft's wife told the agent that Ashcroft would not accept the call. Ten minutes later, the agent called Ashcroft's Chief of Staff David Ayres at DOJ to request that Ayres speak with Card about the President's intention to call Ashcroft. The agent conveyed to Ayres Mrs. Ashcroft's desire that no calls be made to Ashcroft for another day or two. However, at 6:5 PM, Card and the President called the hospital and, according to the agent's notes, "insisted on speaking [with Attorney General Ashcroft]." According to the agent's notes, Mrs. Ashcroft took the call from Card and the President and was informed that Gonzales and Card were coming to the hospital to see Ashcroft regarding a matter involving national security.

We have known the rest of the story, Ashcroft refused and told them that he was not AG at the moment because he had put Comey in charge; Comey refused to sign the authorization and threatened to resign; they backed down and made some changes.

It had to have been either bush or cheney -- but this makes the picture even more vivid: the president ignoring a wife's plea to leave her critically ill husband alone and instead sending his goons to try to force his compliance: all simply to try to cover their culpability in authorizing illegal acts of torture.

Keep the drips coming, please. Every little bit adds to the flood that might eventually force the appointing of an investigative prosecutor.

Ralph

Health care refusal

Bob Cesca has a blog piece dripping with irony about the Republican opposition to a public plan.

He says the public plan probably won't cost as much as estimated by the OMB, because obviously no Republicans will be signing up for it.

I mean, no Republican would dare sign up for inexpensive, easily portable health insurance. Not when red, white and blue All American for-profit health insurance is available. . . .

Please explain, conservatives and wingnuts, why you wouldn't seriously consider switching to the public option if it turned out to be more affordable and portable from job to job -- not to mention the fact that you wouldn't be turned down for a preexisting condition; you wouldn't be randomly booted from the plan as soon as you needed it most; and you would never have to worry about health insurance coverage ever again. Employed or unemployed. Sick or healthy.

Simply put: it's Medicare, but for anyone who wants it. And this is somehow a nightmare scenario -- one that we must never be allowed to experience even though it would cost much less than our current system, it would cover everyone who wants it, and it would be accountable to the American people. This is somehow a terrible idea. Terrible to the private health insurance mafia, that is. They simply can't allow you to have an affordable public option because they need your financial support. Face it, $1.4 million a day to lobby members of Congress isn't cheap.

If Obama and the Democratic leadership don't use their political capital to get this passed this summer, or if they pass a watered down version without the public plan in order to garner a few Republican votes, this may be the last good opportunity for some time.

And, it will not have done much to fix our broken system. And it will leave a lot of people disillusioned with the possibility of reform, because it will have been defeated by the money paid out by insurance companies to preserve their lucrative broken plan.

This is not the time for tinkering. This is the time for bold action. The people will reward you, politicians.

Ralph

Investigations galore

From the way things are going with bad news for the bush administration leaking out every day, it looks like investigation may become a growth industry. Maybe it will even help the economy.

Eric Holder is rumored to be about to decide on appointing a special prosecutor to look into the torture mess. The sources say he hasn't decided, but it has all the aura of the kind of leak you do as the last step before announcing something big. Sort of like clearing your through and getting everyone's attention. I'd be astounded if he now announces that he's not going to investigate this.

Now, in the wake of CIA Director Leon Panetta's bombshell last week that the CIA had withheld information about some unnamed counterterrorism program from the required oversight Congressional leaders -- and yesterday's revelation that the withholding was on direct orders from VP Cheney, Democrats are calling for an investigation into this whole miscarriage of reporting to the oversight authority of Congress. This would be an entirely separate investigation, by Congress, whereas Holder's would be by the Dept. of Justice or an independent prosecutor.

Republicans are doing damage control, insisting that the program (whatever it was) was never implemented, that it was something they thought about and did some planning on, but it never actually reached the point that met criteria for requiring reporting to Congress, and that, really, "it was no big deal."

To my thinking, that is patently false. A member of the House Intelligence Committee who was briefed by Panetta, and knows what the program consisted of, says they were all shocked -- both Democrats and Republicans.

But to my thinking the two most telling clues that it was bad and had reached a much more serious stage than just ideas and planning are the extraordinary secrecy they kept on it and Panetta's reaction when he was finally told.

Why would they keep toying with it, or whatever, for 8 years -- in strictest, even illegal, secrecy -- if there was never a serious consideration of using it? Why did they not even tell the new boss, Panetta, about it until after he had been in charge of the CIA for months?

And, if it really was "no big deal," as some have tried to spin it, why did it require VP cheney to "order" that the CIA not tell the Gang of 8, to whom they have a legal duty to report? And if it was no big deal, why did Panetta immediately, on the spot, order the program ended -- after 8 years in the making? And why did Panetta then, within 24 hours, call meetings with the two Intelligence Committees and report it -- apparently with his full emotional reaction to it -- to the full committees, not just to the Gang of 8 leaders?

No, this can't be whitewashed and miminized. Their own actions prove that it was big and bad. Congress cannot ignore this.

Ralph