The King Reigns

Vote Part of Effort to Restore Checks and BalancesBy Paul Kiel - July 25, 2007, 3:35 PM
From the Speaker on this morning's vote:
“The contempt proceedings in the House Judiciary Committee today are part of a broader effort by House Democrats to restore our nation’s fundamental system of checks and balances.
"The Constitution gives the Congress a crucial role in overseeing the Executive Branch in order to protect the American people against overreaching, incompetence, and corruption. I am hopeful that today’s vote will help the Administration see the light and release the information to which the Judiciary Committee is entitled.
"For the last six years, under Republican leadership, Congress failed to conduct its proper oversight role, resulting in fiascos such as the mismanagement of our Iraq policy, widespread corruption by contractors such as Halliburton, and the failed response to Hurricane Katrina.
“Congress will act to preserve and protect our criminal justice system and to ensure appropriate Congressional oversight in all areas essential to the well-being of the American people.”
As we noted earlier, the word is that a vote on this in the full House is unlikely before the August recess, pushing it back to September.
House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) followed up the House vote this morning with a letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding, saying that he still hoped the two sides could come to an agreement.

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Steven Weber
Remember in Rosemary's Baby when she realizes that by dumping a bag of Scrabble tiles onto the floor and rearranging the letters of the name of her elderly, sweet neighbor it turns out he was really a pawn of Satan who conjures the Evil One to impregnate a human and otherwise herald the End of Times? It might be a little like that. Only far more more terrible. Because it's real And I know I sound, oh, alarmist and my right wing friends will snort derisively at the sight of my white knees knocking together accompanied by the sounds of a cartoon xylophone, but it really appears that quite soon this country will be very different from the one our parents grew up in. In fact, very different from what was envisioned by those who founded it.
And that change won't come in a blur of brown shirts. It will come with tiny American flags pinned to lapels. It will come with the stern glare of a caring, protective Father and the vacant, soothing touch of a passive, cowed Mother.
It will come while we dither and dote on idols, models and morals. It will come because those that endorse its coming are everything George Orwell said they are and everything the Bible says they are: sheep who make way for the rise of the big brothers, the false prophets and the anti-Christs.
And the assembled facts say the infrastructure for this change has already been laid right in front of our chewing mouths and glassy eyes and "oh-you're-just-another-mincing-liberal-it-could-never-happen-here!!" attitudes, its crystalline structure expanding---doubling and doubling again---to create the perfect environment for a capitalist/fascist regime to thrive and that's not being alarmist and here are the pieces. Let's spill them onto the floor:
a wall to keep out "immigrants and terrorists";

surveillance cameras on every corner;

an ideologically aligned Supreme Court;

a president who signs statements nullifying the legislation that has just passed;

a television-dependent, consumer-obsessed population;

the concentration of information outlets under a single authority;

the marginalization of the middle class and the busting of unions;

the suspension of habeas corpus;

denying the people access to information about government activity by asserting "executive privilege";

the blurring of the lines between science and religion; a faceless, terrifying enemy;

a unilaterally prosecuted War Without End.
Taken at their face, these are disparate elements, each one of them brought into being through reasonably articulate agents, trumpeted within hallowed and respected institutions. And each of them has come under fire as deeply flawed, inefficient or plain weird.
But spill those tiles onto the floor. Put them all together. See what they spell.
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Why Do These Guys Hate America?
Thu Jul 26, 2007 at 02:25:12 AM PDT
Their credentials as patriots, in the sense that the right wing in this country limits that term, are impeccable. General P.X. Kelley was appointed by GOP icon Ronald Reagan as commandant of the Marine Corps, a post in which he served from 1983-87. Robert F. Turner was an attorney in the Reagan White House who has no problem with warrantless wiretapping or presidential signing statements.
But they have a problem – a great big problem – with the executive order that President Bush signed last week interpreting Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions in relation to CIA interrogations. While some observers have praised the order, others have said not so fast – what does this document really say? But most of those critics are what you might call the usual suspects. In other words, groups with words like human rights in their names. Easily ignored, easily mocked, easily smeared. But Kelley and Turner?
In an Op-Ed this morning that Washington Post editors headline War Crimes and the White House: The Dishonor in a Tortured New 'Interpretation' of the Geneva Conventions, the two men write:
But we cannot in good conscience defend a decision that we believe has compromised our national honor and that may well promote the commission of war crimes by Americans and place at risk the welfare of captured American military forces for generations to come. ...
In other words, as long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not "done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual" -- even if that is an inevitable consequence -- the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse." ...
To date in the war on terrorism, including the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and all U.S. military personnel killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq, America's losses total about 2 percent of the forces we lost in World War II and less than 7 percent of those killed in Vietnam. Yet we did not find it necessary to compromise our honor or abandon our commitment to the rule of law to defeat Nazi Germany or imperial Japan, or to resist communist aggression in Indochina. On the contrary, in Vietnam -- where we both proudly served twice -- America voluntarily extended the protections of the full Geneva Convention on prisoners of war to Viet Cong guerrillas who, like al-Qaeda, did not even arguably qualify for such protections.
As has often been said since post-9/11 torture was exposed, even those who have no moral objections should surely pause for consideration of self-interest in the matter. As Kelley and Turner go on to point out, the Geneva Conventions protect American military forces.
Our troops deserve those protections, and we betray their interests when we gratuitously "interpret" key provisions of the conventions in a manner likely to undermine their effectiveness.
Policymakers should also keep in mind that violations of Common Article 3 are "war crimes" for which everyone involved -- potentially up to and including the president of the United States -- may be tried in any of the other 193 countries that are parties to the conventions.
The executive order came about, not because the Cheney-Bush Administration had a change of heart about the CIA interrogation program. Rather it was a consequence of the combined pressure of outrage over the photos from Abu Ghraib and a Supreme Court ruling, plus passage of the deeply flawed Military Commissions Act of 2006. The MCA specifically required the Administration to draft an executive order that places future interrogations inside the parameters of international law. Hence, last Friday’s signing.
Progress? Or just another Cheney-Bush flip-off delivered with more serpentine charm and subtlety than is usually the case