Criminal Since the Time of Cain

When the complete history of the Bush administration is written, it will reveal a criminal enterprise engaged in brutality every bit as revolting as --

• Japanese interrogators during W.W. II, whom we prosecuted for "waterboarding" and illegal torture";
• "Indonesia" and "Iran", which for years we have publicly condemned for engaging in "psychological torture" and "food and sleep deprivation" of prisoners;
  
• "Egypt" whose torture of prisoners we have condemned because it involved "stripping and blindfolding victims, suspending victims from a ceiling or doorframe with feet just touching the floor, beating victims... and dousing victims with cold water"; and
  
• "Algeria" for using the "chiffon method" of "placing a rag drenched in dirty water in someone's mouth."

The examples, above, come from "legal memoranda" written by high-ranking Bush administration lawyers which explicitly approved torturing prisoners.

Four of those memos were publicly released yesterday:

The four legal opinions, released in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the A.C.L.U., were written in 2002 and 2005 by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the highest authority in interpreting the law in the executive branch.

To be sure, President Obama revoked these very memos on his "second day in office" and "condemned what he called a "dark and painful chapter in our history." He's also promised "the interrogation techniques would never be used again."

Until the next time, that is. Because even as he released the evidence of war crimes, Obama also promised "that C.I.A. officers who were acting on the Justice Department’s legal advice would not be prosecuted."

It simply is not enough to leave each new presidential administration to decide which laws of humanity it will follow and which it will discard. In a democracy committed by Constitution and Treaty to being a republic governed by laws, crimes against humanity should not be treated like mere agency regulations or presidential signing statements, to be issued and revoked at will.

As our own nation argued successfully at the Nuremburg trials, "civilization cannot tolerate" acts which have been regarded as criminal "since the time of Cain." Those ultimately responsible for approving this must be prosecuted and, if found guilty, punished. Even if -- no, especially if -- some of them like Jay Bybee, now sit as federal judges, judging others.

At Nuremberg, we prosecuted the lawyers and judges who were complicit in the Nazi depravities. We owe it to ourselves to do no less when those depraved lawyers and judges are our own.

Dept. of Further Amplification
4-17 pm

Scott Lemieux properly points a finger at Senate Democrats who, in 2003, lay down on the job of 'advising and consenting' to give Torture Memo author-in-chief Jay Bybee a lifetime federal judgeship.

How can this be permitted to stand? Imagine the hundreds, even thousands, of lawyers who over the coming years will have to appear, in this or that case, before "the honorable" Jay Bybee, now unmasked, himself, as a key figure in the Bush cabal of war criminals. It would be like enduring proctology exams by Dr. Josef Mengele, year after year, until the criminal is, at last, hustled off to his eternal reward.

Dems Cave on Drilling But Exempt Florida

So, once again we see the national Democratic Party "reluctantly" caving in to terrible ideas from White House and congressional Republicans, purely out of fear that "the political climate rendered it impossible to try to retain the [near-shore oil] drilling ban this year." By "political climate," they mean you, dear Americans, who insist "something" must be done about gas prices even if that 'something' is very stupid.

The one saving grace is that House majority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who announced the change in Democratic party position even though she is a long-time vigorous opponent of expanding offshore drilling, apparently intends to see that the Florida panhandle remains protected:

The emerging deal on a compromise energy bill would forbid drilling within at least 125 miles of the Gulf coast of Florida.

It also would preserve the ban on drilling on the east side of what is called the ``military mission line,’’ which runs south from Pensacola. That line marks an area where aircraft training takes place and drilling is discouraged.

The military mission line pushes back drilling as much as 230 miles from much of Florida’s Gulf Coast. The net result is a big no-drill-zone extending at least 125 miles from the Florida Panhandle and is much broader elsewhere.

That would be good news for the people and businesses of the Florida Panhandle, but bad news for panhandle congressman Jeff Miller (R-Chumukla), who has been doing everything he can to put oil rigs just off Pensacola Beach. Still, one can't get one's hopes up too much.

Having betrayed the nation and its own party principles by repeatedly enabling Gorge's Bush's efforts to fund the Iraq War of Choice, endorsing torture, and eroding our Constitutional freedoms, it's hard to trust Democrats -- especially when they know expanded drilling won't do a thing for gas prices at the pump.

We'll be pleased to see Pensacola Beach exempted from drilling if the Pelosi compromise comes to pass. But it is transparent that the congressional Democratic leadership changed positions not out of a principled conviction that they weren't right in the first place to oppose off-shore drilling, but out of abject political fear that you, the voters, aren't smart enough to realize it.

With an opposition party like this, to whom principles are only a sometime thing, how long can the Democratic Party be trusted to continue protecting even Pensacola Beach?

Dangerous Setback

The Pensacola News Journal gets it spot-on:

The intelligence "compromise" working its way through Congress has one major impact: It sanctions lawbreaking at the highest reaches of the federal government, guaranteeing there will be more of it. For a nation born under the powerful impetus of the Founders' intent to limit governmental power — especially executive power — it is a dangerous and far-reaching setback.

There's more.

Change You Can't Believe In

Remember the days when every Fourth of July Republican and Democratic politicians around the nation would take to the hustings and proclaim that they, more than their opponents, revered the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? That they would defend them to their dying day?

Times have changed. Some are noticing.

• Democrats Cave to GOP On Spying Bill
• Democrats Cave on Telecom Immunity
  
• Obama Caves to Bush on Domestic Spying
• Obama Silent As Democrats Give Bush More Spying Powers
  
• Congress Gives In On Wiretapping
• Congress Makes A Bad Deal on Wiretapping
  
• House Democrats Capitulate To White House -- Again
  
• FISA Compromise: It's Christmas At The White House
• We Modeled It After the Very Successful Little Big Horn Compromise
  
• 'Change' Is Just Another Word For 30 PIeces of Silver
• The New Surveillance Bill: Worst of Both Worlds
• Democrats Have Legalized Bush's War Crimes
• Carte Blanch To Illegally Spy on Americans
• House Falls Down on the Job
• A Bad Deal On Surveillance
• Compromise? Try Cop-Out
• New Wiretapping Bill Called 'Repugnant' and a 'Capitulation'
  

Constitutional Crime

The U.S. Constitution was mortally wounded today by 293 hit-and-run drivers. Eyewitnesses report it was a bipartisan crime, involving both Republicans and Democrats.

Knowledgeable investigators say the forensic evidence points to multiple motives for the crime. Republican perpetrators left evidence at the scene openly advocating for a more authoritarian government that treats individual liberties as expendable.

Tire tracks reveal their Democratic co-conspirators were craven go-alongs, following orders. First, because they are terrified of what Republican gang members would say about them to the voters; and second, because "the Democratic leadership fears the consequences of their previous complicity in Bush’s illegal spying programs."

Spitzer the Spoiler

Is the imminent resignation of Eliot Spitzer good news or bad news for Brooke A. Masters? Well, "The Rise of Eliot Spitzer" has been in the remainder bins for some months now, so maybe neither. But as for a sequel, a Volume II perhaps? Hmmm. Whatever could be its title?

What Were the Spitzers Thinking?

Many are remarking about Eliot Spitzer's extraordinarily brief and uninformative press conference yesterday, after it became known wiretaps had exposed him as a customer of an international prostitution ring. The presser amounted to little more than a 45-second photo-op, a chance for the New York governor to hold hands with his wife in public and announce his vacation plans.

Wouldn't you like to know what they were really thinking during that excruciating stage show? Well, now it can be told. The U.S. Justice Department, relying on super-secret spying technologies which the White House assures us do not require a judicial warrant, has now publicly released a transcript of the couple's thoughts as they left yesterday's press conference:

Truly, men are from Mars.

New Hampshire Effects

So, how to explain the New Hampshire surprise? Some posit the "Bradley effect."

White voters who said that they were undecided break in statistically large numbers toward the white candidate, and many of the white voters who said that they were likely to vote for the black candidate ultimately cast their ballot for the white candidate.

Digby, channeling Pam Spaulding, says it might be the "Tweety effect."

where the misogyny of a talking head in the MSM so enrages a demographic that they go out and vote in a manner that will put egg on the face of the talking head.

Jane Hamsher wonders if it the unexpected vote surge was due to what might be called the Edwards effect.

Clinton took them from Edwards. Did his pivot against her during the last debate and his comments yesterday contribute to what happened?

Brad Friedman is worried it might be the Diebold Effect. It seems three quarters of all paper ballots in New Hampshire --

are counted on hackable Diebold op-scan systems, with completely hackable memory cards, all programmed and managed by LHS Associates.

We don't have enough facts to form a useful opinion, other than this: There is much to be thankful for in seeing both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama take their erudite, informed, and important dialog on the issues of the day out of the cornfields of Iowa and New Hampshire's woods into the heart of the nation.

An early end to the Democratic primary season, as the mainstream media was predicting, would not have been in the public interest.

Choice Words for Democrats

Lambert over at Corrente Wire nails the Democratic congressional leadership, more specifically Nancy Pelosi, Jay Rockefeller, and Jane Harman. They deserve it:

Since the voters put them back in power, the Democrats have taken impeachment off the table, punted on the war, never figured out a way to hold Republicans accountable for filibusters and obstructionism, so legislation is in the toilet, and never managed to use oversight power to do anything more than chip away around the edges of the Bush regime—though they have written a great number of Sternly Worded Letters.

And now, top Democrats turn out to be enablers of war crimes by our lawless executive. What a surprise. Harry, Nancy, nice work.

For a few choice four-letter words, if you're not easily offended, read the rest. Or, give Glenn Greenwald a read. He makes the same point in lawyer-like multi-syllables:

Torture didn't become an American policy despite the best efforts of a righteous Democratic leadership to stop that. Torture became an American policy precisely because a meek and often outright supportive Democratic leadership continuously allowed it.
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I wish none of this were true. I wish we had a genuine, vibrant opposition party. It would be indescribably beneficial if the rare, isolated and usually marginalized voices within the Democratic Party (and the even rarer and more marginalized voices in the GOP) were predominant. But they just aren't. That's just a fact that can't be ignored. The Democratic Party in Congress is largely controlled and led by those who have enabled and affirmatively supported the worst aspects of the Bush foreign policy and the most severe abuses of our country's political values.
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Whether it's the war in Iraq or illegal surveillance or the abolition of habeas corpus and now the systematic use of torture, it's the Bush administration that conceived of the policies, implemented them and presided over their corrupt application. But it's Congressional Democrats at the leadership level who were the key allies and enablers, never getting their hands dirty with implementation -- and thus feigning theatrical, impotent outrage once each abuse was publicly exposed -- but nonetheless working feverishly the entire time to enable all of it every step of the way.