RAW STORY - Author James Moore: If Rove is Bush's brain, Gonzales may be his 'pathological pal'

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Rove_holds_key_to_Gonzales_future_0731.html

During Monday's edition of Countdown MSNBC host Keith Olbermann asked James Moore, co-author of Bush's Brain and contributor to the Huffington Post, "If we stipulate that Karl Rove is Mr. Bush‘s brain, can we assign a physical organ or mental faculty to Mr. Gonzales?"

"I don‘t know," Moore responded. "Maybe he is his bipolar buddy or his pathological pal, I‘m not sure. He certainly exhibits a certain amount of pathology when interacting with reality. But you know, Keith, the perfect example of this relationship I think is the attorney purge scandal."

According to Moore, Gonzales "can‘t outwit anybody," adding, "I think—it is amazing to me that people actually think that this man is smart. If the administration of George W. Bush has proved anything, it is that you can go to a top flight East Coast school and get an advanced degree and not be a very bright person."

Olbermann pointed out that "in [Gonzales'] five appointments to public positions - spanning over a decade - he has never been chosen by anyone other than George W. Bush."

Moore identified Karl Rove as the key determinant in Gonzales' future. In response to rumored suggestions that this will be Gonzales' last week, Moore said, "I don't really see that happening unless there's a calculus where Rove says to the President, 'We gotta cut him loose.'"

(Go to the hyperlink to see the video from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast on July 30.)

Podcast: Congress vs. the Attorney General and the White House

Here is an excellent podcast on current AG news.

Podcast: Congress vs. the Attorney General and the White House
Diane Rehm Show
Guest host: Susan Page

Members of Congress issue more subpoenas over the U.S. Attorney firings and call for a perjury investigation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Guests

Stuart Taylor, senior writer with National Journal magazine and contributing editor at Newsweek

Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute

http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/07/07/30.php#13124

Datamining at the Center of Gonzales Controversy

Back in 2004, the Bush Administration was developing a massive new program, called "Total Information Awareness," which would allow the government to collect massive amounts of data on ordinary citizens in one large database. The program was so controversial, the conservative (and libertarian) Cato Institute warned that it would "breakdown the stovepipes" that separate commercial and government databases. It so alarmed both liberals and conservatives that it was soon shuttered.

(For more on the Total Information Awareness program, just google the phrase.)

Now the New York Times is reporing that the big dispute Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card had with John Ashcroft in the hostpital was about a much wider surveillance program than just wiretapping. The article doesn't use the phrase, but I assume it must be referring to the Total Information Awareness program.

A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program.

It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate. But such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues.

But Congressional Democrats argue that Gonzales may still have committed purjury, since Total Information Awareness is considered part of the larger program.

But members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who have been briefed on the program, called the testimony deceptive.

“I’ve had the opportunity to review the classified matters at issue here, and I believe that his testimony was misleading at best,” said Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, joining three other Democrats in calling Thursday for a perjury investigation of Mr. Gonzales.

“This has gone on long enough,” Mr. Feingold said. “It is time for a special counsel to investigate whether criminal charges should be brought.”

The senators’ comments, along with those of other members of Congress briefed on the program, suggested that they considered the eavesdropping and data mining so closely tied that they were part of a single program. Both activities, which ordinarily require warrants, were started without court approval as the Bush administration intensified counterterrorism efforts soon after the Sept. 11 attacks.

So it appears the scandal is expanding, but Gonzales may in as much jeopardy as ever.

Why is this So Hard to Understand?

Jonathan Cohn has an interesting article up on The New Republic about how health care in the US compares subscription req'd to other developed nations, especially with regard to high end care, like cancer treatments.

Conservatives who argue against universal health care point most convincingly to the success the US has, compared to European countries, in treating cancer. This new study indicates that, while the US has better survival rates in certain kinds of cancer cases (including breast and prostate cancer), compared to Europe overall, when you compare it to developed European countries -- and don't include former Eastern Bloc countries like Poland -- it lags behind in other sorts of cancer cases (like cervical, ovarian, stomach, and Hodgkins and non-Hodgkins lymphoma). Cohn says:

If you really want to know how universal health insurance per se affects the diffusion of cancer drugs, a much more logical comparison would be between the U.S. and some of the countries that more closely resemble us in terms of economic development--and that don't spent quite so little money on their own medical care systems. And guess what happens if you do that? A very different picture emerges: We may be atop the world when it comes to getting new cancer drugs to our patients, but we're hardly alone on that perch. Three other countries--Austria, France, and Switzerland--are right there with us.

Kevin Drum sums the case up nicely, at Washington Monthly:

I suppose you're all getting tired of hearing this, but the conclusion here is pretty much the same as it is every time you look at the U.S. vs. Europe: the differences are almost entirely about money. If you have a national healthcare system but you spend way less than the United States (as Great Britain does), you can provide good but not great service. If you spend modestly less than the United States (as France does) you can provide healthcare every bit as good as ours — and cover every single citizen in the bargain.

And what if you actually spend as much as the United States — but you have to put up with our ragtag private delivery system? Then you get healthcare about as good as France's, except that it doesn't cover everyone, it bankrupts large companies, and it goes away anytime you get laid off. And all for only about 40% more than anyone else in the world pays. Pretty good system, eh?

Why is that so hard for Sanjay Gupta to understand?

USA to World: Our Attorney General Hasn't Been Convicted!

The reputation and integrity of Alberto Gonzales has been damaged beyond repair by his own statements and those of his subordinates--and the facts.

Whether or not specific wrongs have been proved is irrelevant in the country's chief law enforcement officer. The damage to the rule of law is already underway.

The fact that this president continues to express his utmost confidence in the AG implies very few complimentary interpretations that I can see.

Options for Congress to Enforce Contempt Charges

With the White House saying -- out loud and in front of everyone -- that it will instruct the Justice Department not to enforce the law regarding contempt of Congress charges, there has been a flurry of talk on the blogs about what the Democrats can do about it. What makes all this so important, of course, is the fundamental change we would see in our form of government if the White House prevails in this dispute.

If Congressional subpoenas cannot be enforced -- or enforced only at the whim of the "unitary executive" -- then it will in many respects cease to be a co-equal branch of government.

Kind of a big deal.

Kagro X offers a list of possible remedies Congress could pursue. Her summary:

In sum, the options (in no particular order) are these:

1. Try to negotiate a settlement acceptable to both the Congrses and the White House
2. Roll the dice on statutory contempt and see what the U.S. Attorney does
3. Use the inherent contempt procedure, either after statutory contempt has failed, or as a concurrent threat to encourage the U.S. Attorney to move
4. Create some new procedure legislatively, and hope it stands up to court challenges from the "administration" when Congress actually tries to use it
5. Move to impeach, whether the target be Gonzales (as the U.S. Attorney's boss), Bush (for misapplying executive privilege claims), or Cheney (if Congress believes it has established a connection between him and this particular obstruction, which to this point they apparently do not, despite Senator Whitehouse's revelations yesterday)
6. Do nothing, and hope some future administration does the same thing but is in an even weaker position politically when it does so, and can be brought to heel.

And there is short entry on Wikipedia with some good historical information.

And finally, there is a newly-revised report from the Congressional Research Service, "Congress's Contempt Power: Law, History, Practice and Procedure." I haven't read it yet, but it's getting good reviews.

Late Update:Keith Olbermann interviews Bruce Fein, who lays out a pretty compelling case for impeachment. Fein wrote the articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton and worked in the White House during the Nixon Administration. The man knows from impeachment.

SCOTUS Lurching Rightward

Matt e-mailed me this afternoon, noting there are other things happening in the world besides Bush demoting an entire branch of our government. Arlen Specter is calling out John Roberts on assurances he gave the Judiciary Committee, in public and private conversations, during his confirmation process about respecting legal precedent. Specter believes Roberts may not be keeping his promises.

This is leading to much speculation on the Net these days about the direction of the Court, and the best response to it. (Emily Bazelon counsels: "Throw Retraint to the Wind.")

Thanks for the heads-up, Matt!

Feed Update

Just a little blog housekeeping...

I've set up the feedburner account. You can now subscribe to the blog as an RSS feed, or as a daily e-mail subscription. Just click on one of the items in the right-hand column, at the top.

Hope this is useful!

Richard

Why no more attacks, yet?

This is a really good post from Firedog lake:

Here's the gist:

Al Qaeda hasn’t hit us again because they don’t need to. Bin Laden’s big-picture goal, as I understand it, is to eject the United States from the Middle East and turn the entire region into some kind of 12th-century fundamentalist Islamic utopia. This is a bit of a tough sell, but it becomes easier if he can superheat the Muslim world’s anger at the United States from simmering to volcanic, until the entire region erupts and kicks us out, like Iran did 28 years ago.

The purpose of 9/11 was not to scare the United States into withdrawing from the Middle East; bin Laden is not that naive. No, the purpose of 9/11 was to provoke us into an ill-considered, violent overreaction that would enrage and radicalize the Muslim community, and Bush obliged beyond bin Laden’s bloodiest dreams.

The full post is here.

My own view is that the initial strike was extremely lucky, and that their capacity for another similar stike was over hyped.

Leashing the Unitary Executive

Okay, this is what I've been looking for.

With a showdown looming between Congress and the President over the failures of White House employees (and former employees) to obey subpoenas, the coverage has been all about whether the Justice Department, which is part of the Executive Branch, would honor the oversight powers of Congress and enforce the subpoenas. All the betting seems to be that it won't.

It is disturbing -- and not a little frightening -- to think the President can dismantle all the mechanisms of accountability so blatantly, shamelessly in front of everyone, and all the Congress can do is sit back and hope he'll begin to recognize some limit to his power.

On Saturday, Frank Askin, a law professor at Rutgers University, wrote in the Washington Post that Congress does, indeed, have the power to compel witnesses to testify and produce evidence, and can back up its subpoena power on its own, not through the agency of the Executive Branch.

Askin argues that "under historic and undisturbed law, Congress can enforce its own orders against recalcitrant witnesses without involving the executive branch and without leaving open the possibility of presidential pardon."

Based on "the inherent power of Congress to require testimony on matters within its legislative oversight jurisdiction," the House or Senate may instruct the sergeant-at-arms to imprison witnesses who fail to comply with a subpoena. He cites an 1895 case, United States v. Chapman, which determined that judicial enforcement of Congress's inherent power is optional. In the 1934 case Jurney v. McCracken, "the Supreme Court denied a writ of habeas corpus to a petitioner who had been taken into custody by the Senate sergeant-at-arms for allegedly destroying documents requested in a Senate subpoena."

Based on these and other legal precedent, Askin proposes Congress take matters into its own hands.

Thus, the congressional alternative. Instead of referring a contempt citation to the U.S. attorney, a house of Congress can order the sergeant-at-arms to take recalcitrant witnesses into custody and have them held until they agree to cooperate -- i.e., an order of civil contempt. Technically, the witness could be imprisoned somewhere in the bowels of the Capitol, but historically the sergeant-at-arms has turned defendants over to the custody of the warden of the D.C. jail.

That was what was done in the landmark 1876 case Kilbourn v. Thompson, when the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had overstepped its bounds by investigating the private activities of the defendant in a matter in which it had no jurisdiction.

That decision, however, left no doubt of Congress's power to punish for contempt those who defy lawful investigations.

Will Congress do it? Not without first building the case that there is no alternative because Bush has so completely sealed himself off from all accountability. But the Democrats have been moving pretty methodically in building its case against this administration -- not as fast as some would like, but they certainly haven't backed down, either.

If the Democrats can hold together, this solution holds a number of appealing elements. First, the action could be taken with a simple majority of the House or Senate -- less than the two-thirds majority an impeachment would require. And it would have a much greater impact on the way the Bush administration does its business. Rather than the symbolic gesture of impeachment (we'd never see the Senate convict), we would likely see the inner workings of the Bush White House finally cracked open for all to see.

What a sight that would be! And Conyers, with the backing of Pelosi, or Leahy, with Reid's support, could pull it off, I think.

(Note: Kagro X weighs the politics of this at Daily Kos.)

Little Signs

Coming off the plane in Denver, I saw a welcome sight: a person who had set up a little site with a sign and fliers recommending that Cheney be impeached. As far as I know, DIA is a private space, so this speaks well of free speech in my city.

In contrast, on eastern Long Island in a small town along the north fork I saw a general store window which had lettered the window with the words: "Everything Hillary says is a lie."

Different places, same time.

Limits Against Imperium

Adam Cohen has a remarkably cogent piece up at the New York Times about the power of the president and the intentions of the drafters of the Constitution, called "Just What the Founders Feared: An Imperial President Goes to War." In the current struggle over the war in Iraq, Cohen concludes "the founders and the Constitution are firmly on Congress’s side."

The founders would have been astonished by President Bush’s assertion that Congress should simply write him blank checks for war. They gave Congress the power of the purse so it would have leverage to force the president to execute their laws properly. Madison described Congress’s control over spending as “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”

The framers expected Congress to keep the president on an especially short leash on military matters. The Constitution authorizes Congress to appropriate money for an army, but prohibits appropriations for longer than two years. Hamilton explained that the limitation prevented Congress from vesting “in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.”

He also makes an interesting point about the title "Commander-in-Chief," suggesting the power to make policy is vested in the Congress, while the President is simply charged with implementing it:

The Constitution does make the president “commander in chief,” a title President Bush often invokes. But it does not have the sweeping meaning he suggests. The framers took it from the British military, which used it to denote the highest-ranking official in a theater of battle. Alexander Hamilton emphasized in Federalist No. 69 that the president would be “nothing more” than “first general and admiral,” responsible for “command and direction” of military forces.

Why people have waited until now to make such points is beyond me. But there is undoubtedly a cascade of opinion against Bush and his leadership right now. If only that translated into changes in policy -- and a change in the role Congress plays in the decision-making process.

Cheney is President -- This Weekend Only!

For a preview of the weekend's highlights, click here!

Pot v. Kettle

Glen Greenwald dug up a 2003 State Department report deploring human and civil rights violations in Russia. He bullet-points eleven serious issues, including "lengthy pretrial detentions," torture (noting, "Allegations of torture are difficult to substantiate because of lack of access by medical professionals and because the techniques used often leave few or no permanent physical traces"), violations of due process, concentration of media ownership (!), and warrantless wiretapping and surveillance.

Then, in an update, he quotes a portion of the report:

The law states that officials may enter a private residence only in cases prescribed by federal law or on the basis of a judicial decision; however, authorities did not always observe these provisions.

The law permits the government to monitor correspondence, telephone conversations, and other means of communication only with judicial permission and prohibits the collection, storage, utilization, and dissemination of information about a person's private life without his consent. While these provisions were generally followed, problems remained. There were accounts of electronic surveillance by government officials and others without judicial permission, and of entry into residences and other premises by Moscow law enforcement without warrants. There were no reports of government action against officials who violated these safeguards.

Hmmm, the report came out in 2001. Maybe Rove thought it was a how-to manual, rather than an admonition.

"U.S. attorneys are emanations of a president's will"

The Washington Post reported yesterday on the President's announcement that assertions of executive privilege are not reviewable.

Glenn Greenwald has a great post up today following up on it. According to Bush, no court can over-rule him, nor can a US Attorney be compelled by Congress to prosecute an Executive Branch employee for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena. The "reasoning" rests largely on a memorandum by Ted Olson in 1984, who was then legislative counsel to Ronald Reagan. The claim was never affirmed by a court, but Bush's lawyers refer to as though it provides some sort of legal basis. Said Olson, 23 years ago:

The President, through a United States Attorney, need not, indeed may not, prosecute criminally a subordinate for asserting on his behalf a claim of executive privilege. Nor could the Legislative Branch or the courts require or implement the prosecution of such an individual.

Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer, explains on his blog why this falls plainly outside the realm of the American form of government. Put simply: this announcement closes the circle on positions the Administration has put forth in the past, finally stating explicitly that there is no mechanism to hold a "unitary executive" accountable -- not the Congress, not the courts.

That means that if Congress and the administration end up in court over enforcement of the criminal contempt statute, and the court rejects the administration's theory and finds that Congress does have the authority to compel the U.S. Attorney to present its contempt citations to a Grand Jury, the administration would be free to defy that judicial finding, and continue to block its U.S. Attorneys from prosecuting, since -- they claim -- courts lack the authority to "require or implement the prosecution" of an Executive Branch employee who defies a Subpoena at the President's direction.
The theory they are touting places criminal Executive Branch employees beyond the reach of courts, and means that they would have the right to defy any court which rejects their theory and rules against them. Though they have not yet explicitly exercised that court-defying power, they clearly believe they possess it.

This strikes me as something truly new in this Administration. When the Republicans ran Congress, the President acted as though he had vast powers, beyond anything we'd seen before in this country. But without a Congress to challenge this assertions, the legality of what he was doing could never be vetted, in any official way. Now, with the Democrats threatening to expose a series of apparently criminal operations in the White House, the scope of these powers is on full display, and it is breathtaking. Says Greenwald:

Just contemplate what that actually means. One of the primary, defining attributes of a civilized society that lives under the rule of law is prosecutorial independence. Without that, political opponents of those in power can be prosecuted for political rather than legal reasons. And worse still, our most powerful political leaders are free to break the law with impunity because they control the prosecutorial process, which -- in this warped view of our republic -- means that presidents have an absolute power to block criminal prosecution of their subordinates who break the law, provided it was done at the President's behest.
The administration's theory is an absolute denial of prosecutorial independence. It means that federal prosecutors are nothing more than obedient servants of the President. They are not merely appointed by the President, but their specific decisions about whether to prosecute executive branch officials for criminal acts are controlled and dictated by the President. They are nothing more, as Rifkin said, than "emanations of the president's will."
It is hard to overstate how threatening that posture is to the defining attribute of a government that lives under the rule of law.

Bruce Fein offered a suggestion to the logjam on Slate yesterday. It seems a little jury-rigged to me. But at least he's looking for a solution.

TPM Muckraker explores a couple of other options, none of which look very plausible to me: either employ the House or Senate Sargeant at Arms to detain the offending parties and hold a "trail" in one of the congressional chambers, or file civil motions, which would take years to sort out.

Marty Lederman, on his blog, Balkinization, makes some suggestions of his own.

It's disturbing, though, how much casting about is going on as people grapple with the fact that Bush is calling Congress's bluff with regard to its real authority. Is it really based on a "gentleman's agreement," or can Congress back it up? I'm waiting to see someone explain how Congress -- now that it's not controlled by Republicans and is actually engaged in efforts at oversight -- can exert its powers on its own, without having to ask the President to enforce them on their behalf.

Once you have a president who believes his power (if not his authority or his legitimacy) comes from something other than the will of the governed, it's amazing what's possible.

"E. Coli Conservatism"

Rick Perlstein coins the term to describe the price we're all paying for 30 years of Republican tax cuts. The explosion in New York this week that killed one person and sent the city into panic was the result of crumbling infrastructure nearly a century old.

The mayor said, "'There is no reason to believe whatsoever that this is anything other than a failure of our infrastructure,' [Mayor Bloomberg] said of the 24-inch steam pipe installed in 1924."

What a relief, it's not terrorism! It's just walls exploding around us because we decided to elect leaders who favor tax cuts for rich people over paying the dues to live in a developed country.

Perlstein says the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates we need to spend $1.6 trillion on instrastructure repairs over the next five years to catch up on the lack of investment we've been making in things like roads, bridges, sewer lines and water mains.

So how'd you spend your $300 from Bush's tax cut?

Surveying the Republican Field

Josh looks high and low (or, low and lower) and finds few viable prospects in the Republican field:

McCain's campaign has imploded. Giuliani's the fading pro-choice contender, which is sort of redundant. People seem to be catching on to the fact that Fred Thompson is a one-term senator and lobbyist not Reagan 2.0. And that leaves you with Mitt Romney, the avatar of transcendent phoney-baloneyism.

Okay, I'm done.

The man can turn a phrase.

Lady Bird Departs

We lost a treasure last week, and Austin has been mourning. Lady Bird Johnson was one of those people whose contributions -- and character -- have been largely forgotten by the national media, but she has meant a lot to the locals in this area since the 50s.

Bill Moyers offered a beautiful euology at her memorial service. He told stories of times they spent together, reflected on the significant impact she had on the civil rights movement in the 60s, and the complicated and intimate life she and Lyndon shared. Here is a short clip from it -- but go read the whole thing. Moyers is part journalist, part preacher, part poet.

"Yes, she planted flowers, and wanted and worked for highways and parks and vistas that opened us to the Technicolor splendors of our world. Walk this weekend among the paths and trails and flowers and see the beauty she loved. But as you do, remember — she also loved democracy, and saw a beauty in it — rough though the ground may be, hard and stony, as tangled and as threatened with blight as nature itself. And remember that this shy little girl from Karnack, Texas — with eyes as wistful as cypress and manners as soft as the whispering pine — grew up to show us how to cultivate the beauty in democracy: The voice raised against the mob . . . the courage to overcome fear with convictions as true as steel. Claudia Alta Taylor — Lady Bird Johnson — served the beauty in nature and the beauty in us — and right down to the end of her long and bountiful life, she inspired us to serve them, too.

Find Moyer's entire eulogy here.

There's lots more in the Austin American Statesman Web site

The Obfuscation Precedent

WWHD?

What would Hillary do?

One wishes that every scheme hatched by this administration to classify, hide, and reroute information would be posed to Republican die hards as potential M.O.'s for the Hillary Clinton administration. How would they feel about those tactics then?

The abandonment of some of our democracy's most cherished *procedural* methods should give pause to many Republicans and cause for something like bipartisanship. The notion that political ideology has permeated every mechanism and agency of the public administration aspect of government--usually in the service of extraordinary secrecy and the enrichment of individuals and companies--is so anti-democratic on its face that those who are silent before it will be judged even by amatuer historians as early 21st century proto-facists.

Why Hillary Can't Win

Because we're tired of this couple. We've had dinner with them for eight years, and just because they switch seats at the table, they're still the same damn couple.

Too boring to do it all over again.

And seriously, does anyone believe we can take two terms more of the Clintons?

Thursday Night Goes Bloggy

After years of existing as a listserv, the Thursday Night Group is finally being re-tooled as a blog. The new format has a number of advantages -- cheifly among them is the addition of new voices. You can view the whole blog on the main page, or click on the "labels" st the end of each post to see things only on that topic.

Please try out the comments section, so we can make sure it's working, and let me know about any changes you'd like to see on the site.

We're trying to set up an RSS feed, so you can continue to receive things by e-mail, if you prefer, or have posts sent to your Web browser. I'll let you know when we work that out.

Hope you enjoy the new blog -- if you do, please share it with your friends!

Richard

Kids and their damn cell phones

"Where are you?"
"And I was, like, nuh-uh, and she was like, uh-huh."
"Dude, I was like so wasted."
"Really? You're talking on your cell phone? What a coincidence! So am I! Luv you 4 ever!"