Author: Marty Aussenberg

 

As the
tooth-gnashing in the halls of Congress continues over the revelation that the
Bush administration violated the black letter prohibition of engaging in


warrantless surveillance ,
the final word in this debacle will obviously be issued, as it always is in
Constitutional crises, by the judicial system.  The political process will wind
its painfully slow way towards the revelation of the truth about this breach of
the law, with hearings that will be hamstrung by partisan bickering, posturing
for the C-Span and nightly news show cameras and chest thumping by the usual
apologists for an administration run amok. 

 

The party in power
cannot be expected, in spite of the courage of some of its members, notably



Arlen Specter, to show the
political will to hold the president accountable for his unlawful conduct.  If
it had that will, it would

call for a special counsel to
investigate the president’s secret program. In the meantime, the truth will come
out in the marble-lined federal courtrooms of our country, beginning with the
one occupied by the court which was legislatively delegated the duty of
overseeing the process of approving surveillance activities.

 

The
FISA
court has already been wracked by the scandal, with


the resignation of one of its judges in
protest over the revelations that its authority was disregarded with impunity. 
That court

has scheduled a session at
which it will be briefed by the administration about the whys and wherefores of
its extra-judicial activities.  The judges of the
FISA
court will want to know whether any of the warrants it did approve were tainted
by the administration’s program of end-around surveillance, but also why the
administration thought it could ignore the court and the law which created it. 

 

Remember that,
constitutionally 


presidents only serve four year terms,
but federal judges are

appointed for life .  In the
battle of tenure, the judges win, hands down, and it is precisely because of the
independence that gives them that they feel comfortable taking on the
occasionally power hungry executive branch of our government.  If it’s “not
nice to fool Mother Nature,”
believe me, it’s a lot less nice to try to fool a federal judge.

 

If the government
cannot convince the FISA
court that it had the authority to go around it, or worse, that it didn’t base
any of its warrant requests on evidence tainted by
warrantless
surveillance, the administration faces the daunting prospect of having sanctions
imposed on it by the court, including referrals to the


Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility
(that department’s internal ethics
monitor), contempt citations against the individual members of the executive
branch and of the justice department who abused their authority, and even
criminal charges, including perjury, for executing false affidavits required for
the issuance of those tainted warrants. 

 

The Court has
already shown a lack of tolerance for government shenanigans when it severely
criticized the FBI for filing misleading
FISA
applications in 75 cases in


a case reported in 2002. 
And, as has already been foreshadowed,

other courts will be asked to perform inquiries
into the use of tainted evidence from
warrantless
surveillance by defendants in a whole host of prosecutions, which may result in
some being abandoned and even in convictions being overturned.    

 

It is well to remember that previous
abuses by presidential administrations were first brought to light, or at least
their discovery facilitated, by the judicial process.  Nixon’s downfall was
catalyzed by the decisions of a


courageous federal judge,
“Maximum John” Sirica, who rejected Nixon’s assertion that “executive privilege”
immunized him from having to comply with a federal grand jury subpoena, a
decision that was


ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court,
And of course, had it not been for the Supreme Court’s decision in


Jones v. Clinton, which
allowed Paula Jones’ suit against the President to proceed, Clinton might not
have ever had to deal with the meaning of the word “is.”

One of the most
significant constitutional confrontations in history between the legislative and
executive branches of government, and in many ways the spitting image of the one
fomented by the current administration, occurred in 1952, when President Truman
sought to nationalize the steel industry during the Korean War, claiming he had
the “inherent” authority to do so as president and commander in chief, in what
was an end-around the

Taft-Hartley Act, Congress’
prescribed manner for resolving labor disputes.  Congress had explicitly
rejected a seizure provision when it considered that law (just as the


current Congress rejected including domestic surveillance
when it considered giving Bush the
authority to use force against al
Qaeda. 
The


Supreme Court disagreed with Truman,
and in a strongly worded concurring opinion, , Justice Robert Jackson uttered
these now-prophetic words:

 

[w]hen
the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of
Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own
constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the
matter. Courts can sustain
exclusive Presidential control in such a case only by disabling the Congress
from acting upon the subject.
Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be
scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by
our constitutional system. [emphasis supplied]

 

Responding to the
argument, similar to the one Bush makes (the “war on terrorism”), that Truman’s
actions were in reaction to exigent circumstances (i.e., the Korean war),
Justice Jackson dismissed that argument as follows:

 

[t]he
opinions of judges, no less than executives and publicists, often suffer the
infirmity of confusing the
issue of a power’s validity with the cause it is invoked to promote,
of confounding the permanent executive office with its temporary occupant. The
tendency is strong to emphasize transient results upon policies-such as wages or
stabilization-and lose sight of enduring consequences upon the balanced power
structure of our Republic. [emphasis supplied]

 

So let the games in the halls of Congress begin, but in the meantime, keep your
eye on the halls of the federal judiciary, because that’s where the issue of the
effect of and responsibility for extra-judicial, warrantless surveillance by
Bush and his cronies will be decided first.

Want to respond? Send us an email here.

Experience usually counts, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t take your car to a mechanic who had never owned a car (a principle one of my female friends uses to
explain why she goes to a female ob/gyn).

 

You’d think that same logic would apply to something as
important as, say, a war, wouldn’t you?  But we went to war based on a sales
pitch that was touted by a group of officials none of whom had any personal
experience with war, and most of whom never served in the military.  This group
has famously been called “chicken hawks,” because they were too “chicken” to
fight for their country, but not “chicken” enough not to send others to fight
for them.

 

When it came to the wisdom of the war, the advice of people
with experience was discounted.  Colin Powell, an experienced warrior, warned
that if we invaded Iraq we would own it, a lesson he learned during the first
Gulf War, and successfully taught to Bush 41 (a decorated war veteran in his own
right) during that war.  But other experienced military warriors were
marginalized when they warned that a successful campaign in Iraq would take a
considerably larger force than was eventually deployed, an unheeded warning that
has cost this country dearly.

 

So it’s no surprise that this administration has continued
to resist the advice of experienced warriors in matters pertaining to the war. 
One of them, Congressman John Murtha,  is a decorated Viet Nam veteran, and a
retired Marine colonel. He is generally acknowledged to be one of the most
militarily savvy officials in Washington, and a real hawk, as opposed to the
chicken variety.  And yet, when he recently advocated a prompt redeployment of
troops from Iraq for factually unassailable reasons, he was promptly vilified,
first as a Michael Moore liberal by the White House and then as a coward by a
freshman congresswoman in an infamous incident on the floor of the House. 
Murtha’s experience didn’t count; not to this administration. 

 

Another voice of experience in the wilderness was John
McCain’s in his efforts to outlaw torture.  When it became apparent, following
stories from Guantanamo and elsewhere,  that the chorus of protestations from
the administration that “we do not torture” rang hollow, especially given the
contrary efforts by the administration’s lawyers to justify its use, McCain
mounted his campaign. McCain knew from painful personal experience that torture
was dehumanizing, barbaric and counter-productive.  Yet in spite of his
experience and the resonance of his position precisely because of that
experience, the Bush administration continued to insist that “cruel, inhuman or
degrading” treatment was a legitimate tool in the “war against terrorism,” so
important that the President threatened to exercise the first veto of his
presidency to prevent the McCain amendment from becoming law.

           

Once again, the voice of experience was, at least
temporarily, being ignored by this administration.  Eventually, the Senate’s
veto-proof support of McCain’s position convinced the President to back down on
his opposition to the amendment. This was despite the fact that enforcement of
the new law is in doubt, given the statement issued by the President in
connection with its signing. To wit: He announced his intention to interpret
(and presumably enforce) the anti-torture restriction in the same way he
interprets other laws (i.e., consistent with his constitutional and
commander-in-chief authority).

 

The most recent voice of experience was heard just this
past weekend — this time on Bush’s warrantless spying on American citizens.
During a TV appearance, William Safire, the New York Times columnist and
unabashed apologist for all things Bush, recounted how he became the subject of
an illegal wiretap during his days as a speech writer for President Nixon.
Safire’s home phone, it turns out, was illegally tapped by the FBI because the
Bureau was simultaneously (and illegally, of course)  tapping the phone of a
reporter to whom Safire offered to “leak” advance notice of an upcoming Nixon
speech. 

 

The experience gave Safire, as he put it, a “thing about
personal privacy” and made him an opponent of government’s excesses in the guise
of national security, an attitude that has been echoed by several former (i.e.,
experienced) intelligence professionals.  Call me a pessimist, but my guess is
that these voices of experience will be ignored as well.

 

 

Want to respond? Send us an email here.

When the New York Times
revealed that the President had personally authorized wiretaps in violation of

the law which requires a court order to do so, the President, wisely,
refused to comment on the accuracy of the story.  In his interview with Jim
Lehrer of PBS‛ “News Hour,” the day the story broke December 16th),

he said:

Jim, I
know that people are anxious to know the details of operations, they– people
want me to comment about the veracity of the story. It’s the policy of this
government, just not going to do it, and the reason why is that because it would
compromise our ability to protect the people.

Less than 24 hours later,
the President came out swinging, in his live radio/TV address from the White
House, announcing to all the world that not only was the Times‛ story accurate
in announcing that he had authorized such surveillance,

In the
weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National
Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the
international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related
terrorist organizations…

but that he intended to do
it again.

I have
reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the September the 11th
attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing
threat from al Qaeda and related groups.

In other words, the president’s version of  “I don’t care what FISA (the law
governing electronic surveillance) don’t allow…”

Relying, apparently, on the
advice of his attorneys,

including the Attorney General, the President has asserted that he has the
authority to order such surveillance even without complying with the black
letter of the law which governs such activities, the

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (“FISA”), which requires that
any surveillance, without exception,  be pursuant to a court order.  The law
requires either that a court order be obtained prior to the initiation of the
surveillance, or within 72 hours of that initiation, in special, “emergency,”
circumstances. 

The law does not authorize
warrantless surveillance, under any circumstances, and the president’s assertion
(in an apparent exercise of activism he would criticize if it were a judge doing
it) that his authority to violate this law inheres in the Constitution, or in
the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq has already been thoroughly
and completely debunked by several legal experts, including prominent
conservative (and Reagan Justice Department official), Bruce Fein, who has said:
“President
Bush presents a clear and present danger to the rule of law,” and Jonathan
Turley, a Georgetown law professor, who opined, on the December 19th edition of
Fox News‛ “The O‛Reilly Factor,” that “it
is a crime to order surveillance or conduct surveillance unless you’ve gone to a
judge. Federal crimes can rise to impeachable offenses.”

The law (FISA) provides that
it is a crime to “engage in electronic surveillance under color of law except as
authorized by statute,” and that such a crime is punishable by a fine of not
more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years.  As in the case
of all criminal laws, every act in violation of the law constitutes a separate
offense, and each offense subjects the violator to the prescribed punishment. 
So, if the President authorized (as he has admitted) 30 instances of
surveillance “except as authorized” by the statute, he has admitted to conduct
which, were he an ordinary citizen, would subject him to $300,000 in fines or
imprisonment for 150 years.  That’s even longer than

Scooter Libby may be looking at for five counts of perjury and obstruction of
justice.

The astonishing thing about
the President’s admission is that he didn’t need to make it.  Indeed, any
competent criminal attorney would have advised the President not to admit he had
violated a federal criminal statute.  If he were an ordinary citizen, and had
been accused of committing a criminal act of this sort, he would have the
absolute right to assert his right against self-incrimination under the Fifth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  As any criminal attorney will tell you,
though, the wisdom of asserting the privilege against self-incrimination must be
weighed against the inevitable (if impermissible—at least in court
proceedings) inference that only guilty people make such an assertion.  The
President, however, doesn’t suffer that risk, since he wouldn’t have had to
“take the Fifth;” he could have continued to hide behind “national security,” as
he did when he was first asked about it by Jim Lehrer.

Of course, the President
also could have, as did all his predecessors, denied his conduct.  It worked, at
least for a while, for Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton, in all their
scandals.  The fact that this president chose to confront his critics by
flaunting his disregard of the legal restrictions on his conduct will
undoubtedly contribute to his downfall.  It is almost inevitable, given the
outcry from politicians, pundits, and legal scholars about this latest episode
of presidential hubris, that

impeachment is on the horizon. Indeed,

several members of Congress have already

floated the idea.  Let’s not forget, the illegal use of electronic
surveillance was

one of the charges leveled against Nixon in his articles of impeachment. 
And history, as we know, has a funny way of repeating itself.

If, and when, the
accountability moment comes for this President, I suspect he will be sorry he
didn’t “take Five.” 

 

           

Want to respond? Send us an email here.

Want to respond? Send us an email here.

Seldom does a week go by
when the likes of a Bill O‘Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter or
others of their ilk don‘t make some idiotic, antisocial or otherwise sociopathic
public statement over the airwaves.  That‘s what their constituents expect; it‘s
what they tune in for, and what these hucksters of sensationalism are more than
willing to give them to keep them listening/watching.  But why, oh why, must
there always be a response, not only from the blogosphere, but from the MSM as
well, and why must we elevate the worthless claptrap purveyed by these
shlockmeisters to the realm of being discussed, much less debated.
 

Whether it‘s the
manufactured “War on Christmas,” the invitation to Al Qaeda to bomb San
Francisco or, in Robertson‘s case, the curse called down on an entire community
because of its stand against Intelligent Design, the asininity of the statements
by this group of out-there commentators is self evident.  So why does the
blogosphere go ballistic on these idiots every time they make one of their
bizarre pronouncements, and why does the MSM pay them any attention when doing
so only multiplies the impact of statements that so richly deserve to be
consigned to oblivion?  One site, Media Matters for America, has made a career
of contradicting virtually every syllable that comes out of O‘Reilly‘s mouth, as
though anything the man says should really be listened to, much less debunked. 
Some bunk just doesn‘t need to be debunked.

 

On any given day, in any
major city in this country, it isn‘t difficult to find some poor misbegotten
soul ranting on some street corner, be it about the second coming of Jesus, the
imminent end of the world, alien abductions or an occasionally more believable
subject.  “Speaker‘s Corner”in London‘s Hyde Park actually sets aside a space
for these oratorical bloviators. But no one sees fit to dignify these harangues
by responding to them, or even by paying any attention to them.

Are the likes of
O‘Reilly or Limbaugh worthy of any more credence than these lunatics?  So what
if they have audiences that number in the millions?  They‘ve already been turned
into irretrievable mental zombies by O‘Reilly and his ilk, to whom such things
as either facts or logic are utterly irrelevant.  If what H.L Mencken once said
(“no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American
public”) is true (surely our last two national elections proved that), it‘s time
we stopped resisting the fact that there will always be people in this country
who will be credulous enough to believe people like Bill O‘Reilly.

Want to respond? Send us an email here.

WHAT
WOULD FITZ DO?

 

Given the revelations over the weekend that the government
is back in the business of spying on American citizens, and the
gauntlet-throwing admission by Bush that he authorized such action, and

would do it again, the question now is, who can reign in this outlaw
administration, and who can do it before any more damage is done. My answer to
that question is: Patrick Fitzgerald.

 

Sadly, the Special Prosecutor’s mandate does not include
violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which

criminalizes domestic spying, but count me among those who believe that this
straight-shooting, law-enforcing, righteous American hero was probably one of
the most shocked, and possibly even outraged, recipients of the news that our
President believes he is above the law.  As Fitzgerald has already concluded,
this attitude of arrogance and nose-thumbing is endemic in the Bush White
House.  It manifests itself in the leaking of national security information and
in the belief that truth and the rule of law are considered dispensable by the
current occupants of the White House.

 

Fitzgerald already knows that Libby and Rove lie when it
suits them (and, of course, we all know that Bush, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et
al. have a history of doing so as well), and that they regard the law as
something that applies to them only when they decide it does.  He also knows
that Cheney was in the Plame leak up to his ears, and that he knew, when he told
Libby about Plame’s employment, that she was a covert CIA operative (Paragraph
9 of the Libby Indictment). Whether Fitzgerald has enough now, with the
benefit of his second grand jury (and remember, I predicted that he wasn’t
finished

when he announced his first go-round of indictments —  to modify the Libby
indictment, or to indict Rove and/or Cheney, he clearly has the power to send an
arrow through the lying heart of the renegade White House.  An indictment of
Rove, even if it’s only for lying to federal agents and/or to a grand jury, will
burst the balloon inflated by the hubris of an administration that recognizes no
strictures on its conduct, legal or otherwise. 

 

Remember, too, that we still don’t know what Fitzgerald
knows about Bob Novak’s source for the leak which first appeared in his column,
and set off the firestorm that culminated with Fitzgerald’s appointment.  But,
we now have a clue about that, given Novak’s surprising

revelation that Bush knows who his source was, raising the possibility that
Bush himself may have been involved in the leak, and if so, that he may have
some criminal responsibility for breaking that law.  And while Bush can’t be
indicted by a grand jury, he can certainly be named an unindicted
co-conspirator, which is, after all, the treatment Cheney received in the Libby
indictment.

 

Given that the Republican congress has shown itself to be
nothing more than a rubber stamp for Bush’s policies, whether it was treatment
of prisoners in Guantanamo, sweetheart contracts with Halliburton, kissing the
oil companies’ butts or the other demonstrable excesses of this administration,
there is absolutely no reason to believe the congress will be any more effective
at reigning in, much less holding to account, the Bush domestic wiretapping
program.  This is especially so given that

some congressional leaders were, in fact, informed of this illegal program and
did nothing to stop it. The last thing we need here is another congressional
show hearing, as

Senator Specter is promising to do.

Mr.  Fitzpatrick, where are you now that we need you?

 

           

 

Want to respond? Send us an email here.

Did you notice the great hue and cry emitted by the
administration and its shills when Howard Dean announced his view that the war
in Iraq was probably unwinnable.  The RNC immediately posted its 

“Retreat and Defeat” ad, superimposing a waving white flag over a larger
than life picture of Chairman Dean.

The administration’s attack dogs followed up with the likes
of Tony Blankley, the British ex-pat, former Gingrich slash-and-burn expert and
current Moonie disciple,

comparing Dean’s statement to a pre-civil war slaveholder, who, in the guise
of wanting what was best for his slaves, kept them nonetheless.  And, of course,
the administration and its messengers continue to

marginalize Congressman Murtha for his call to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq
“with all deliberate speed,” including Senator McCain’s criticism that Murtha
isn’t a “big thinker,” and has become “too emotional,” about the war.  Would
McCain, I wonder, accept the same criticism of his impassioned campaign to
outlaw torture, or, indeed, of his

famously emotional display of support for GWB?

But, the most interesting thing about this “winnability”
issue is that Bush himself, in one of his unguarded, un-ventriloquized moments,
stated his belief that the war can’t be won.  For those of you who’ve forgotten,
let me remind you that when GWB was campaigning to fool us again in ’04, he gave
an interview to Matt Lauer of NBC “Today Show” fame in which he

said the war on terror couldn’t be won. It was probably the most honest
thing that man has ever said.  He was referring, of course, to the “war on
terror,” for which, as we know, the war in Iraq is the “central front.” He tried
to take back his words subsequently, after his handlers told him what a bad
thing candor is (something he has diligently avoided since), but by then the
damage had been done. 

The fact is, no one in a position to know thinks this war
can be won militarily, not the people closest to the people fighting the war
(e.g., Murtha), or the people who have devoted the most careful analysis to the
question (e.g.,
General William Odom), and all the bullying, insulting and political
posturing to the contrary won’t change that fact.

Want to respond? Send us an email here.

 

The events of the past week in the U.S. House of
Representatives have been rather dramatic.  When Congressman John Murtha, from
my old home territory of Western Pennsylvania, called for a withdrawal of troops
from Iraq “at the earliest practicable date,” it set off a tidal wave in
Washington.  This wasn’t, after all, a wild-eyed liberal, like Russ Feingold,
the Wisconsin Democrat

who had previously called for a timetable for withdrawal. This was a blue
collar Democrat, with a history of supporting the Pentagon in all of its
warmongering activities, including increasing defense budgets, new weapons
systems, “star wars” missile defense, and other pet projects so dear to defense
hawks.  Lest his conservative bona fides be questioned, he even offered a
resolution this year seeking an

amendment to the Constitution to allow voluntary prayer in public schools.

 

While it isn’t clear whether or not Murtha was an
independent contractor in launching his broadside attack, or just the canary in
the mine for the Democrat caucus in the House, testing the  to see whether there
might be support for a rapidly-phased withdrawal, it is clear that Murtha’s
announcement caught a number of folks by surprise, mostly the members of his own
party.  Not, however, the members of the majority, who quickly figured out a way
to relegate Murtha’s proposal to parliamentary oblivion. 

Murtha’s resolution was quickly referred to a committee so it couldn’t be
promptly considered or voted on by the House.

 

But the republicans’ simultaneously presented their own
version of the Murtha resolution, considerably abbreviated from the one Murtha
submitted, and notably lacking the qualifying language “at the earliest
practicable date,” of Murtha’s resolution, substituting instead the word
“immediately.” Here’s what the GOP resolution says:

 

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of
United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately.

 

This resolution was submitted by Rep. Duncan Hunter, the
powerful chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, whose finest moment was
undoubtedly when, at a press conference, he served (literally)

examples of the culinary delights the prisoners at Guantanamo were being
served to contradict the by-then ubiquitous assertions that those prisoners were
being abused.

 

The Republican resolution put the issue in the starkest
terms, and eliminated not only the important qualifier on Murtha’s resolution
(“at the earliest practicable date”), but also eliminated a detailed preamble
Murtha had placed in his version which recited all the reasons he had listed
during his press conference for his belief it was time for American forces to
leave Iraq (e.g., no progress, 2,079 deaths, G.I.’s the target of insurgents,
$277 billion appropriated, etc.). 

 

Murtha’s resolution reflected

the reasoning that had already been expressed by military intelligence
experts
for prompt withdrawal, and also served to further debunk the notion that
withdrawal should be conditioned on the state of preparedness of the Iraqi army,
an illusory goal, according to

the authoritative piece by James Fallows in the December issue of The Atlantic
Monthly. And let’s not forget that the majority of Americans now favor a
short-term withdrawal from Iraq: http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm. 

 

But the Republicans couldn’t be bothered with such
details.  They wanted to put the question, down and dirty, to the House, knowing
that, reworded as it was, there was no way their resolution would pass, and even
more importantly, that they could avoid a debate on the war that wasn’t based on
phony jingo-patriotism (the American equivalent of “Islamo-fascism”), which is
precisely what the “debate” that ensued on the House floor degenerated into. 

 

In other words, the Republicans really weren’t interested
in debating the wisdom of a withdrawal on the terms, or for the reasons, Murtha
suggested; they wanted to rub Murtha’s face in the very idea of withdrawing
troops at all, in essence saying to the Democrats, “so you want withdrawal, do
you; well, we’ll give you withdrawal,” or as Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee
put it:

 

Since they [Democrats] have been wanting it [debate], we’re going to have it.
They’re going to take the heat and take the debate.

 

The same resolution which shoved Murtha’s resolution off
the House agenda also placed the substitute resolution on that agenda for
immediate debate, without the necessity for committee action, one of the
privileges of majority rule. The Democrats, realizing they had been outflanked,
vociferously protested the substitution of the Republican resolution for
Murtha’s.  “Give us a real debate, don’t bring this piece of garbage to the
floor,” said Rep.  James McGovern of Massachusetts.

 

And, of course, the flashpoint of the debate came when Rep.
Jean Schmidt (they don’t call her “mean Jean” for nothing) made her now-infamous
statement accusing Murtha of being a cut and run coward.  Which, to his credit,
caused my congressman, Harold Ford, Jr.,  according to the account in the New
York Times, to “charge across the chamber’s center aisle to the Republican side
screaming that Ms. Schmidt’s attack had been unwarranted.” Unwarranted!  Not
exactly “give me liberty or give me death,” but a fighting word nonetheless.

 

A different account of Ford’s outburst appeared in the
Washington Times: “Say it to Murtha,” Mr. Ford supposedly shouted at Rep.
Tancredo while he [Ford] was being restrained by other members. Ford also, by
some accounts, supposedly menacingly jabbed a finger at Tancredo during their
confrontation, coming dangerously close to kicking some Republican butt (now,  that
would have been worth the price of basic cable C-Span).  Ford, in spite of
his willingness to storm the Republican ramparts in support of his fellow
congressman, wasn’t willing to support him in a much more important way—by
co-sponsoring the bill, which 13 of his Democrat colleagues, including Reps. 
Rangel, Jackson-Lee and the outspoken Rep.  McGovern (see above), found the
kojones to do.  Putting his vote where his mouth was apparently didn’t
interest Mr.  Ford.

 

And as if to emphasize the point, here’s how Congressman
“Finger Jabber” Ford, characterized the discussion on the House floor during his
appearance on “Hardball:”

 

The Murtha, or should I say the withdrawal, resolution that J.D. [Hayworth]was a
part of bringing was the first time in more than three years that we‘ve had
an open, honest and essential debate about Iraq.

 

Open and honest?  Debate? Oh really, Mr.  Ford?  I guess,
despite your theatrics, that scamming the congress into considering a resolution
that was not Murtha’s in an effort to discredit the resolution that was his, and
thereby evading the discussion of a responsible “exit strategy,” was your idea
of “open and honest.”

 

To show how “open and honest” the debate was, J.D.
Hayworth, Ford’s Republican counterpart on “Hardball,” during his remarks in the
well of the house floor displayed the front pages of the New York Times and
Washington Post from that day (November 18th), both of which led with headlines
that characterized Murtha’s announcement as calling for “immediate” withdrawal. 
That the MSM got it wrong is one thing (we’re used to that), but the fact that
Hayworth didn’t have the integrity to refer to the actual wording of the Murtha
resolution speaks for itself.  (I’m convinced Hayworth and Schmidt have their
hair wrapped too tightly—have you seen their “do’s”—and that’s what makes
them so bitter). 

 

Ford’s remark may be why one of Matthews’ other guests on
the program, Stuart Rothenberg, of the Rothenberg Political Report,

said of Ford’s appearance:

 

[T]hey [Democrats) are divided.  When you listen to Harold Ford and compare that
to Ted Kennedy or something, how many parties do we have here?  Their problem is
that they don‘t have a single message.

 

Ford ‘s statement undercut his party’s righteous position
on the Murtha withdrawal proposal, and worse, contradicted his party’s leaders
on the floor, none of whom wanted a bogus debate on the  bogus Hunter
resolution. 

Nonetheless, when it came time for a vote, only three of the over 400 who voted
on the Hunter resolution voted in its favor. The rest of the Democrats ran
for cover, fearing that in the war against un-patriotism being waged so much
more successfully by the GOP than the war against terror, they would be the
victims, when they could (and should) have maintained their righteousness on the
Murtha proposal and refused to vote at all on Hunter’s. Six representatives
(including New York’s Jerry Nadler) did precisely that, bless their hearts (as
we say down here).

 

Sadly, as fractious and fractionated as the Republicans
have become, as low as the president’s poll numbers may be (or may be likely to
go), and as graphic as the picture of the party in power’s corruption is
becoming, the Democrats still haven’t figured out how to capitalize on their
adversaries’ weaknesses.  And if Rep.  Ford’s performance on “Hardball,” is any
indication, they won’t be ready to do so until they’ve figured out how to
minimize their own.

Want to respond? Send us an email here.

“There are only two families in the world, as my grandmother used to say; the
haves and the have-nots.” —Sancho Panza in Don Quixote de la Mancha,
by Miguel de Cervantes

 

Hey, you!  Yeah, you, sitting in front of your TV or
computer screen, watching pictures of France burning.  Maybe you’re not all that
upset that the French are getting what you consider to be their comeuppance for
thumbing their nose at “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”  You may even revel in the
Franco-bashing statements made by Bill O’Reilly, including about the French
people’s supposed aversion to personal hygiene, and the fact that THEY DON’T
SPEAK ENGLISH (the uncivilized bastards).  You’re probably smug in the assurance
that the French riots are just another one of those disasters that only happen
in some other part of the world.

 

I have some news for you: the same conditions which gave
rise to the rioting in France exist right here in the good old U.S. of A.  In
fact, in some ways they’re even worse here than they are in France. We know that
racial and economic tensions can, and have, reached flashpoints in this
country.  Los Angeles in 1992, the unrest in New Orleans that followed the
“natural selection” of African Americans as the victims of government ineptitude
following Hurricane Katrina, and the rioting in Toledo last month in response to
a hate group’s demonstration are just the most recent examples of a phenomenon
with a rich history, much of which has had a racial etiology.

 

The rioting in France is a manifestation of the
disenfranchisement of a significant subculture in that country, African and Arab
immigrants (i.e., black people in a white society), whom the government has
taken great pains to marginalize and relegate to second class citizenship
status.  These immigrants, despite being French citizens, are already the
victims of a form of apartheid not unlike what existed in South Africa.  But it
didn’t help that situation much when the French interior minister referred to
the rioters using a word as inflammatory to them as the “n” word would be to
African Americans here.

 

The uprising in France is also the natural consequence of a
worldwide phenomenon, but one which has gotten, and is getting, progressively
worse in this country: the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

A recent study by the United Nations Human Development Report Office shows
the bad news that of the 124 nations studied, the U.S. ranks 74th, behind
Vietnam, but the good news, that it still ranks slightly ahead of Iran.  France
comes in at 34th.  This mirrors similar

studies done by the World Bank and by

the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the latter of
which shows that, of the 27 member countries, the U.S. ranks 24th. The disparity
is no more graphically illustrated than in the comparison of executive to worker
compensation.  According to

a recent survey, executive compensation in the U.S. is over 400 times what
line workers make.  That same comparison is only 15 times in France.

 

On virtually any measure you care to name, the equivalent
subculture in the U.S. to the one rioting in France enjoys a much lower quality
of life than the middle class.  Unemployment levels, incarceration levels,
income levels, education levels, health levels are all disproportionately higher
among African Americans.  The natural consequence of this increasing gap is,
inevitably, disaffection (to put it mildly), and, ultimately, violence.

 

Now, would you like a serving of “freedom fries” with that
dose of reality?

 

 

 

           

Wall Street and conservative pundits have started their nail biting and talking points campaign in advance of the impending appearance of oil company executives who are being called before congress this week to account for profits that rival the GNP’s of many smaller industrialized nations. Dire consequences are predicted if a much-touted windfall profits tax is enacted (one analyst went so far as to predict a return to Communism), but there is a much easier way to assure that the oil companies share the lagniappe they’ve been enjoying at the consuming public’s expense: a gasoline price rollback.

There’s no question that a windfall profits tax would make wonderful window dressing for a congress suffering from all-time low public opinion, at the expense of the Bush-Cheney oil cabal (yes, there’s more than one cabal in Washington). But it won’t do much for consumers who have lined oil companies’ pockets with billions in profits made by manipulating both the supply and the pricing of refined petroleum profits . As the windfall profits tax of the ’80’s showed, very little of the tax actually trickled down to the folks who needed it most. The tax didn’t raise nearly as much money as was projected, it did nothing to lower the cost of gas, it was a bureaucratic nightmare for the agency charged with administering it (the IRS—’nuff said), and it gave the oil companies an excuse to cut production and raise prices to compensate for the effects of the tax. As a result, the tax was repealed in 1988.

Hence my modest proposal: Beginning on a date to be decided by mutual agreement between congress and the oil companies, every gasoline pump in the U.S. will be rolled back to the number it displayed on July 25th, 2005 (just before Congress passed the energy bill, the starting gun for the first heat in the gas price run-up, the other being August 29th, the date Katrina hit the Gulf Coast). It won’t be difficult for gas station operators to roll back the numbers to those dates, since they keep records of what they were charging — if for no other purpose for the collection of various state and federal taxes on gasoline. The oil companies will reduce the cost of refined product to their retail suppliers (be they company owned or otherwise) to compensate for the reduction in the pump price.

The rolled back prices will remain in effect for as long as it takes to compensate Americans for the artificially inflated prices the oil companies charged us.

Using the government’s own statistics on fuel prices, the big run-up in prices took place between July 25th and September 5th, during which time the price of all grades of gasoline went up 78.2 cents per gallon (that’s right—a 34% increase in barely more than a month). That makes it easy: the price rollback would be 78.2 cents.

The hard part is, how long to maintain the rollback. July 25th to September 5th was the height of the driving season (something you can be certain didn’t elude the oil companies when they reached into our pockets), and we’re now in a period of driving hibernation, relative to the peak-driving season. So, to make up for the slackened demand, the price rollback will have to be for longer than the price rip-off took place—January 5th ought to do nicely. That way, all the trips to grandmothers’ house for the holidays are covered, and the extra money left in folks’ pockets helps the economy during the crucial holiday buying orgy.

This price rollback will accomplish the desired result: it will punish the oil companies for their avarice, and it will give Americans back (albeit on a pay-as-you-go basis) the money that was stolen from them when they were mercilessly rolled by the oil industry; it involves no elaborate bureaucratic apparatus (every person who buys gas becomes an instant gas price inspector—possibly with a bounty for turning in violators); and it will give every person who drives a car immense, and immediate, gratification every time they squeeze that gas pump handle to know that during the rollback they’ll be returning the favor to the oil companies for having squeezed them.

Want to respond? Send us an email here.