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To: American Spirit who wrote (54167)	1/9/2006 1:52:42 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361732

Every Vote Counts? huffingtonpost.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (54167)	1/9/2006 2:05:56 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361732

How to Stay Out of Power _________________________________________________________ Why liberal democrats are playing too fast and too loose with issues of war and peace By JOE KLEIN Columnist TIME Magazine House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat, engaged in a small but cheesy bit of deception last week. She released a letter, which quickly found its way to the front page of the New York Times, that she had written on Oct. 11, 2001, to then National Security Agency director General Michael V. Hayden. In it she expressed concern that Hayden, who had briefed the House Intelligence Committee about the steps he was taking to track down al-Qaeda terrorists after the 9/11 attacks, was not acting with "specific presidential authorization." Hayden wrote her back that he was acting under the powers granted to his agency in a 1981 Executive Order. In fact, a 2002 investigation by the Joint Intelligence Committees concluded that the NSA was not doing as much as it could have been doing under the law—and that the entire U.S. intelligence community operated in a hypercautious defensive crouch. "Hayden was taking reasonable steps," a former committee member told me. "Our biggest concern was what more he could be doing." The Bush Administration had similar concerns. In the days after 9/11, it asked Hayden to push the edge of existing technology and come up with the best possible program to track the terrorists. The result was the now infamous NSA data-mining operation, which began months later, in early 2002. Vast amounts of phone and computer communications by al-Qaeda suspects overseas, including some messages to people in the U.S., could now be scooped up and quickly analyzed. The release of Pelosi's letter last week and the subsequent Times story ("Agency First Acted on Its Own to Broaden Spying, Files Show") left the misleading impression that a) Hayden had launched the controversial data-mining operation on his own, and b) Pelosi had protested it. But clearly the program didn't exist when Pelosi wrote the letter. When I asked the Congresswoman about this, she said, "Some in the government have accused me of confusing apples and oranges. My response is, it's all fruit." A dodgy response at best, but one invested with a larger truth. For too many liberals, all secret intelligence activities are "fruit," and bitter fruit at that. The government is presumed guilty of illegal electronic eavesdropping until proven innocent. This sort of civil-liberties fetishism is a hangover from the Vietnam era, when the Nixon Administration wildly exceeded all bounds of legality—spying on antiwar protesters and civil rights leaders. Henry Kissinger even wiretapped his own aides. But the "all fruit" assumption doesn't take into account the strict constraints placed on the intelligence community after the Nixon debacle, or the lethally elusive nature of the current terrorist threat. The liberal reaction is also an understandable consequence of the Bush Administration's tendency to play fast and loose on issues of war and peace—rushing to war after overhyping the intelligence on Saddam Hussein's nuclear-weapons program, appearing to tolerate torture, keeping secret prisons in foreign countries and denying prisoners basic rights. At the very least, the Administration should have acted, with alacrity, to update the federal intelligence laws to include the powerful new technologies developed by the NSA. But these concerns pale before the importance of the program. It would have been a scandal if the NSA had not been using these tools to track down the bad guys. There is evidence that the information harvested helped foil several plots and disrupt al-Qaeda operations. There is also evidence, according to U.S. intelligence officials, that since the New York Times broke the story, the terrorists have modified their behavior, hampering our efforts to keep track of them—but also, on the plus side, hampering their ability to communicate with one another. Pelosi made clear to me that she considered Hayden, now Deputy Director of National Intelligence, an honorable man who would not overstep his bounds. "I trust him," she said. "I haven't accused him of anything. I was, and remain, concerned that he has the proper authority to do what he is doing." A legitimate concern, but the Democrats are on thin ice here. Some of the wilder donkeys talked about a possible Bush impeachment after the NSA program was revealed. The latest version of the absolutely necessary Patriot Act, which updates the laws regulating the war on terrorism and contains civil-liberties improvements over the first edition, was nearly killed by a stampede of Senate Democrats. Most polls indicate that a strong majority of Americans favor the act, and I suspect that a strong majority would favor the NSA program as well, if its details were declassified and made known. In fact, liberal Democrats are about as far from the American mainstream on these issues as Republicans were when they invaded the privacy of Terri Schiavo's family in the right-to-die case last year. But there is a difference. National security is a far more important issue, and until the Democrats make clear that they will err on the side of aggressiveness in the war against al-Qaeda, they will probably not regain the majority in Congress or the country.

To: American Spirit who wrote (54167)	1/10/2006 6:26:54 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361732

Bush Is Endangering Our Lives - 2: The Psychology By Fred Branfman huffingtonpost.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (54167)	1/15/2006 2:24:52 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361732

Alito Hearings: Democrats' 'Katrina' By Robert Parry consortiumnews.com <<...For a constitutional confrontation at least five years in the making, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee looked as prepared to confront Samuel Alito as FEMA chief Michael Brown did in responding to Hurricane Katrina...>>

To: American Spirit who wrote (54167)	1/15/2006 3:00:36 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361732

The Imperial Presidency at Work _________________________________________________________ Editorial The New York Times Sunday 15 January 2006 You would think that Senators Carl Levin and John McCain would have learned by now that you cannot deal in good faith with a White House that does not act in good faith. Yet both men struck bargains intended to restore the rule of law to American prison camps. And President Bush tossed them aside at the first opportunity. Mr. Bush made a grand show of inviting Mr. McCain into the Oval Office last month to announce his support for a bill to require humane treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and other prisons run by the American military and intelligence agencies. He seemed to have managed to get Vice President Dick Cheney to stop trying to kill the proposed Congressional ban on torture of prisoners. The White House also endorsed a bargain between Mr. Levin and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, which tempered somewhat a noxious proposal by Mr. Graham to deny a court hearing to anyone the president declares to be an "unlawful enemy combatant." The bargain with Mr. Levin removed language that stripped away cases already before the courts, which would have been an egregious usurpation of power by one branch of government, and it made clear that those cases should remain in the courts. Mr. Bush, however, seems to see no limit to his imperial presidency. First, he issued a constitutionally ludicrous "signing statement" on the McCain bill. The message: Whatever Congress intended the law to say, he intended to ignore it on the pretext the commander in chief is above the law. That twisted reasoning is what led to the legalized torture policies, not to mention the domestic spying program. Then Mr. Bush went after the judiciary, scrapping the Levin-Graham bargain. The solicitor general informed the Supreme Court last week that it no longer had jurisdiction over detainee cases. It said the court should drop an existing case in which a Yemeni national is challenging the military tribunals invented by Mr. Bush's morally challenged lawyers after 9/11. The administration is seeking to eliminate all other lawsuits filed by some of the approximately 500 men at Gitmo, the vast majority of whom have not been shown to pose any threat. Both of the offensive theories at work here - that a president's intent in signing a bill trumps the intent of Congress in writing it, and that a president can claim power without restriction or supervision by the courts or Congress - are pet theories of Judge Samuel Alito, the man Mr. Bush chose to tilt the Supreme Court to the right. The administration's behavior shows how high and immediate the stakes are in the Alito nomination, and how urgent it is for Congress to curtail Mr. Bush's expansion of power. Nothing in the national consensus to combat terrorism after 9/11 envisioned the unilateral rewriting of more than 200 years of tradition and law by one president embarked on an ideological crusade. ------- truthout.org

To: American Spirit who wrote (54167)	1/16/2006 1:52:19 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 361732

The Party of 'Patriotism and the Military' Smears the Service of Another Military Patriot By Bob Cesca huffingtonpost.com 01.15.2006 Isn't it awesome that Republican Party operatives can get away with smearing the patriotism and service records of one combat veteran after another, all the while painting themselves as the more patriotic, pro-military faction? It's the perfect illustration of how the Bush/Cheney/Rove era has fostered an atmosphere of non-reality-based deception and propaganda. Politics over all else. This weekend, the swift-boating of John Murtha's service record began in an article which questions, amongst other things, Murtha's Purple Heart commendations. I would link to the ridiculous GOP propaganda "news" source which posted the first volley, but refuse to dignify their legitimacy. The same goes for the popular right-wing blog that dittos these claims. Suffice to say, the article fits perfectly into the template used against other combat veterans who at one time opposed the president and his policies. And pundits dare to ask, "Why don't the congressional Democrats stand up?" The answer to this question is remarkably simple. If the patriotism and service records of Max Cleland and John Murtha are fair game, how can any non-veteran Democrats possibly stand up without suffering a far more brutal fate? Meanwhile, the Republicans will continue to be labeled the party of patriotism, the military, and national security. For the life of me, I can't figure this one out. They've completely bungled and botched the first large-scale war since Vietnam. They bungled, botched, and have since all but ignored the first major national disaster since 9/11. As a matter of course, they engage in covert plots to take down "unfriendlies" who have served meritoriously while very few of the GOP power players have ever served in a combat zone. They refuse to properly equip the soldiers serving in Iraq, leading to casualty figures close to -- if not beyond -- the 20,000 mark. Furthermore, if it's not clear to you right now, it will be soon: they will scapegoat the military commanders and soldiers fighting the Iraq War just as shamelessly as they have the others. President Bush, via the calculated strategy of his Round Table, likes to say from the comfort of his bubble that he's leaving military decisions up to the commanders on the ground. Clearly and conveniently, this allows him to dodge accountability, which can easily be shifted to those soldiers. Abu Ghraib and Al-Qaqaa, for example -- both of which were blamed, not on policies of the administration, but on the soldiers on the ground. Sure, the "all-new and all-responsible for 2006" George W. Bush will say publicly that he's responsible for the decision to go to war, but that's obviously where his responsibility ends. Everything that goes wrong and has gone wrong isn't truly his fault, of course. Even if he were to miraculously take a hit for a specific mistake, we all know from past experience that any admission by the president would be tempered and diluted with some sort of underground swift-boating of a political opponent. Like John Murtha. Republican operatives like to say that by criticizing the president and his policies, progressives and Democrats are denigrating the troops and undermining the war. But ask yourself, what undermines the war and the military more severely: dissecting the president, or literally dissecting combat soldiers and veterans? I would suggest that an administration which inadequately supplies soldiers currently in a war zone, and a party whose underground operatives routinely besmirch the records of combat veterans are, in fact, doing far more to damage the war effort and the military than any amount of negativity directed toward President Bush. Every American, regardless of political affiliation, should be ashamed of what's being done to Murtha and others like him -- ordinary Republicans and military families especially, whose votes and support are being subverted by their leaders for heartless and immoral political points. And those constituents who don't mind these kinds of tactics should be asked point-blank: is this how you prefer to debate Iraq? George W. Bush said in another staged and pre-screened town hall meeting last week that he welcomes a debate on the issues surrounding the war and his administration. But the swift-boating of John Murtha, preceded by the president's hilariously artificial town hall meeting, proves that Bush has no such intention. Instead, the party and movement of which he's the leader would rather assassinate the character of another decorated combat veteran. The only thing more outrageous than the swift-boating of John Murtha is that "the party of patriotism, the military, and national security" continues to be taken seriously. UPDATE. The following comment says it all: I am a Marine currently serving at 4th Marine Aircraft Wing in New Orleans. Right now my fellow Marines and I are watching as we slowly slouch towards war with Iran. If deployed to the area, I promise you this: we will fight together, and we will fight valiantly. We will fight for those we do not know and for a cause we might not share. But we will fight. And when we come home, we may continue our fight, in the halls of power, the state capitols, and DC, if we so choose. We have earned it in blood and sweat. No one, and I mean no one, has the right to impugn our service, or our credentials without expecting a defense. I am defending Mr. Murtha because he did in Vietnam what others would not do. And I thank God for giving me the chance to make my mark as he has. And when I come home, will you be there to slander me too?