Look at what lane closures in New Jersey have just wrought (updated)

Read this very, very closely.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie was ensnared in a billowing political furore on Wednesday when newly released emails connected one of his top aides to a decision to block lanes on the approach to a busy bridge, causing traffic chaos, apparently in an act of revenge against a political enemy.

 So what, you say. Dirty U.S. politics. Meh! Read a little more.

The suggestion that his top staff might have been actively involved in a vindictive move against a Democratic small-town mayor that caused grief for thousands of New Jersey residents could be toxic for the governor, who is trying to position himself ahead of 2016 as a new-look Republican able to reach across the aisle to Democratic and Independent voters. Even more problematic could be evidence, if any emerges, that the governor’s office took part in a cover-up of its involvement.

Christie has consistently denied that his staff had anything to do with the lane closures and the ensuing traffic snarl up, and insisted that the events on the bridge were instigated as part of a traffic study of the flow of vehicles over the bridge.

...

Already two heads have rolled: Wildstein resigned on 6 December and was followed soon after by Bill Baroni, Christie’s appointee as deputy director of the Port Authority, who is also copiously referenced in the new email chain.

Does any of this, any of it at all, sound remotely similar to anything happening in Ottawa? If not, let me provide you with the statement New Jersey governor Chris Christie released this afternoon:

"What I've seen today for the first time is unacceptable. I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge. One thing is clear: this type of behavior is unacceptable and I will not tolerate it because the people of New Jersey deserve better. This behavior is not representative of me or my Administration in any way, and people will be held responsible for their actions."

Now, it's starting to sound vaguely like the Harper/Duffy/Wallin/Wright cover-up scandal, $90,000-gate, coming out of every Conservative political baseboard on Parliament Hill. The lack of any form of personal accountability or apology is stunningly familiar.

Lane closures? Not even in the same league, you might say. Fraud, bribery, not to mention voter suppression, would surely be considered a thousand times worse than playing jiggery-pokery with traffic on the George Washington bridge.

You'd be wrong.

The New Jersey "bridge-gate" scandal has just killed Christie's 2016 bid for the Republican nomination for President. He must be in awe of Harper right now.

(If I can get the show opening monologue from tonight's Jon Stewart, Daily Show, in which he shreds Christie, I'll post it here as an update).

Got it! Right here.

Ralph Nader Speaks . . . .

On the Canadian election, U.S. politics, the "security perimeter" and proportional representation.

All in less than 8 minutes.

Concentrated, rational analysis . . . .

Maher Rules . . . .

(Playing off Edstock's post below:)

Bill Maher has a New Rule posted at The Huffington Post today.


Go.

Read.

Chuckle.

Snicker.

Guffaw.




Shake your head in astonishment.

A sampling:

A few weeks ago I was asked by Wolf Blitzer if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. It was amazing - in the minute or so between my calling America stupid and the end of the Cialis commercial, CNN was flooded with furious emails and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!!

_______________

At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.

_______________

Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators and more than half can't name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife's name right on the first try.

I repeat:

Go.

Enjoy . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Bang, Bang . . .

Per Congressional Quarterly today:

House Panel Adopts Amendment Allowing Guns in Public Housing
By Karoun Demirjian, CQ Staff | July 9, 2009 – 11:40 a.m.


Gun rights advocates scored a victory Thursday as the House Financial Services Committee adopted an amendment to allow guns in public housing projects.

The amendment, offered by Tom Price , R-Ga., would bar any housing authority from restricting legal ownership of guns. It was adopted by 38-31, as the committee continued its markup of a housing bill (HR 3045) the panel is expected to approve next week.

While the Department of Housing and Urban Development does not have a specific policy concerning guns in public housing, several local agencies have banned them in an effort to reduce violent crime in housing projects. Major urban centers began to adopt gun bans in the 1990s, and advocates of such steps argued they have improved the safety of public housing.

“There was a time during the ’70s and ’80s when public housing developments were considered killing grounds,” said Emanuel Cleaver II , D-Mo., who grew up in public housing. “It is just foolhardy to place guns in developments of poor people, many of whom are unemployed, and place these guns around children. . . . Why would we try to put guns in the most densely populated areas in the urban core? It’s just unbelievable.”

Well, now that makes perfect sense, don't you think?

"Unbelievable" is right . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Letterman on Caribou Barbie . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

"Change is Good!" * . . . .

* To quote an old MickeyD's ad campaign.

That's why it's so exciting to see the "change" Mr. Obama has already instituted:

To play off of our friend Alison and Mike's blog posts, and per Glenn Greenwald in Salon today:

Can anyone deny what the NYT and Post are pointing out today? This is what happened this week alone in the realm of Obama's approach to "national security" and civil liberties:

Monday - Obama administration's letter to Britian threatening to cut off intelligence-sharing if British courts reveal the details of how we tortured British resident Binyam Mohamed;

Tuesday - Promoted to military commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChyrstal, who was deeply involved in some of the worst abuses of the Bush era;

Wednesday - Announced he was reversing himself and would try to conceal photographic evidence showing widespread detainee abuse -- despite the rulings from two separate courts (four federal judges unanimously) that the law compels their disclosure;

Friday - Unveiled his plan to preserve a modified system of military commissions for trying Guantanamo detainees, rather than using our extant-judicial processes for doing so.

It's not the fault of civil libertarians that Obama did all of those things, just in this week alone. These are the very policies -- along with things like the claimed power to abduct and imprison people indefinitely with no charges of any kind and the use of the "state secrets privilege" to deny torture and spying victims a day in court -- that caused such extreme anger and criticisms toward the Bush presidency.

Gee, isn't it great that we have this new President south of the 49th and everything is going to "change" for the better?

Sure it is . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Virginia Votes . . . .

This video is a clip from PBS' NOW with David Brancaccio this past Friday. Although it was produced in the "swing state" of Virginia, it very well could have been in most states south of the Mason Dixon Line. Hell, what am I saying?!? This same scenario is taking place in every state in the US of A.




Now you get a hint of why we left . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Don't cry for me Arizona

(in which I analyze, predict and offer sage advice on the U.S. political scene)

I don't want to jinx anything, but the Obama campaign seems to be an unstoppable juggernaut - anytime a Democratic presidential nominee can draw back-to-back crowds of 100,000 and 75,000 in Missouri, you have to figure the Republicans are going to get worried, especially when they are drawing far smaller, far crazier crowds.

Like I said, I don't want to jinx anything and I probably won't relax until about Obama's third State of the Union address, but the Republicans appear to be giving up on McCain -- pundit rats are leaving the sinking ship and the right wing nuts are about to go all Viet Cong on the rest of the country, skulking off into their spiderholes stocked with canned Cheetos and ammunition to write dogwhistle screeds for New Republic, the Washington Times and Regnery calling for decent, Jesus-loving, white Americans to rise up against their socialist oppressors before the black helicopters arrive with the UN occupation troops.

Newt Gingrich is already setting the narrative for his attempt to renew his Contract on with America in 2012. The new Republican narrative is going to go like this: "Filthy liberal terrorist fellow traveller Barack Obama ( who is a black African "mask Muslim" negro) stole the 2008 election from (white) Maverick POW War Hero John McCain, an all-American (white) War Hero who was a Maverick hero military pilot and POW (and a WASPy white Christian) with the help of the terrorist-loving liberal Mainstream media, pointy-headed intellectuals who graduated from elitist secular liberal colleges, liberal secular elitist universities and public high schools, socialist James Bond villain gazillionaire George Soros and trashy, liberal, elitists coughJewscough in Sodom and Gomorrah Hollyweird. ACORN stole all the votes everywhere we lost. It was fixed. We was robbed. Obama isn't really the president, he's not even an American."

Assuming that some knuckledragging goniff doesn't lurch forward from among the great unwashed and murder the president on the orders of Jesus (and who wouldn't like to have the contract to supply the Secret Service with Depends now that every bald guy in a ski vest on the ropeline is going to look like a skinhead suicide bomber at first glance) Newt or Skeeter or Jeb or whoever will spend the next four year trying to convince Americans that the Democrats are responsible for losing Iraq ("If it hadn't been for those damned dirty hippies, John McCain would have won that war and gas would be 50 cents a gallon") raising taxes on hard-working American oil executives and corporate vice presidents ("He's redistributing wealth, that's class warfare - you know who else engaged in class warfare? Stalin!") and allowing swarthy foreigners to steal jobs.

The economy will just be emerging from the current disaster (which everyone knows was the Democrats fault) and because of the cost of the bailout and wars the Democrats won't be able to afford to do anything about education or health care -- they will be lucky to balance the budget by 2020 at this point, which of course will prove how financially irresponsible they are. ("They nationalized the banks! You know who else nationalized the banks? Mao!")

Now, none of this works if the McCain-Palin ticket gets elected and further screws things up. You thought Iraq was a gigantic clusterfuck? Wait until McCain invades Iran, Syria, Jordan and Spain. They will drop the country from the frying pan into the fire and throw gasoline on the fire and then nuke the fire from an orbital war satellite. You think I'm being pessimistic ? Wait until they start saying the pledge of allegiance at sporting events and requiring Muslims, gays and liberal arts degree holders to attend mandatory bible classes. Wait until they privatize the departments of the interior, education, health and human corporate services and put Rush Limbaugh in charge of the FCC.

But none of this is going to happen.

John McCain is not going to win.

He is a sacrificial jackass. The Republican pundits know it. The Republican money men know it. The RNC knows it. The Democrats are starting to figure it out, hell even John McCain is starting to figure it out. How else do you explain his appearance on Fox New Sunday this week? You can smell the fear just reading the transcript on the internet. He must have had a case of flop sweat that left salt stains under his arm pits. After yammering himself into an apoplectic froth for ten minutes about how he didn't care about William Ayers and Barack Obama possibly being gay lovers or cannibals or something, whatever, he doesn't care, he's not interested in slinging mud at that terrorist-loving secret muslim socialist, it's not an issue -- McCain had this to say about the possibility of not winning:

WALLACE: As we said at the beginning of this interview, you are behind in this race, but you are a fighter. You have been your whole life.
Have you considered — have you even dealt in your mind with the possibility that you could lose, and could you live with that?
MCCAIN: Oh, sure. I mean, I don't dwell on it. But look. I've had a wonderful life. I have to go back and live in Arizona, and be in the United States Senate representing them, and with a wonderful family, and daughters and sons that I'm so proud of, and a — and a life that's been blessed.
I'm the luckiest guy you have ever interviewed and will ever interview. I'm the most fortunate man on earth, and I thank God for it every single day.
WALLACE: So if the world turns an unfortunate way on November 4th, don't feel sorry for John McCain?
MCCAIN: Don't feel sorry for John McCain, and John McCain will be concentrating on not feeling sorry for himself.
WALLACE: And you might just be president.
MCCAIN: You never know.

It isn't quite a concession, because, hey, you never know, those Diebold machines might come through yet.

In order to beat the Republicans in 2012 and 2016 -- because it is going to take that long to fix the scorched, salted earth the Republican neo-cons are leaving behind --Obama is going to have to work very hard just to get the shit to shoe level. He doesn't just have eight years of Dubya to fix, he has 12 years of Reagan's dumbassery to repair as well. Expectations will be high and when he fails to fix everything overnight the knives will be out, even among his own party. 2010 is going to be a hard year for Democrats running in the midterm election. The wars will not be over yet, the economy will still be a smoking ruin and it is extremely unlikely that the health care or education or environmental issues will have been addressed to anyone's satisfaction. There will be a whole lot of "I told you so" and "Hilary would have done it better" going around.

But there is a way to beat that. First, Obama has to win by a landslide and the Democrats need 60 or more seats in the Senate and a large majority in the house. They also need to win some state governments over as well so as to control the election referees the way the Republicans have so successfully for the last 20 years. Then Obama has to appoint a serious badass to run the Justice Department, someone like Patrick Fitzgerald, who will investigate the outright fuckery of the last eight years and put some of these people in jail. Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, Scooter Libby, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Monica Goodling -- all the political hatchet men and campaign ratfuckers, all the torturers and liars -- screw the pardons Bush is gonna write for all of them, subpeona these people and when, like Karl Rove has done this year, they refuse to appear, send the federal marshals to their country club to slap the cuffs on them right there on the 14th green and jail their sorry asses for contempt. Do the same with some of the Wall Street moneymen who got platinum parachutes while their companies burned down the whole neighborhood. Americans will forget they don't have jobs if they can watch these bastards being put in the dock and sent to Levenworth for a couple of years.

While the public is watching the bloodletting, use the time and the majority to get stuff done. Reregulate the financial industry. Pass your tax plan to give the middle class a break and make the rich pay their share. Pull 50,000 troops out of Iraq and send them to Afghanistan to find Bin Laden and then bring them the hell home and demobilize them. Cut the defense budget in half, the USA will still outspend the rest of the world. Bring back the fairness doctrine and give the FCC some teeth. Conservatives will scream. So what? Let them, they made the mess and they wanna cry while Obama cleans it up? It will be great campaign fodder for 2012.

The other positive working in the Democrats favour is time. The time it takes to clean up the mess is also time that will pass and put some past events in better perspective. Like the enormity of the mistake made in invading Iraq. Like the fact that the 9/11 attacks, while tragic, were not the apocalypse. The luster of Reagan will fade some more, and the stench of the corpse of conservatism will grow. The shadow will start to lift. Plus, within eight years a good quarter of the people who are voting for John McCain this year will be dead from old age, apoplexy, hunting accidents, carnival ride mishaps, cirrhosis and lead poisoning (all those years of eating paint chips will eventually catch up with the people who phone call-in talk radio shows).

My friends, that is change we can believe in.

It is what it is and what it is, is unqualified

I know, I know, I said we should stop talking about her, but the more I see of her, the more I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I'm delighted that the Republicans have picked such an obviously, comically unqualified candidate to shore up the glaring gaps in McCain's areas of expertise. On the other hand, I'm horrified that there is any chance at all that this woman could get anywhere near the Oval office.

Caribou Barbie, Sarah America, Bible Spice -- call her what you want, but by any name. Sarah Palin should not be allowed to work in the White House, not even as a tour guide.

The title of this post, at least the first part of it, is one of my father's favorite little verbal tics of late. I was warned that he has taken to watching FOX news -- this is a guy who has always been a centerist politically, more or less, but like many of us seems to have gotten more conservative as he's gotten older. He was Trudeau fan, but I suspect he voted for both Harris and Harper. We are both political junkies, but tend to treat it more as a spectator sport than something we would want to actually get our hands dirty with as candidates--It isn't that we don't care who wins, we do, its just that I suspect we'd both rather be handicappers or bookies than racehorses. I don't really want to drag him into this, but the fact that he didn't express outright support for either candidate had me wondering. He made some predictions, but he never really said which side he hoped would win and since he's the closest thing to a conservative I'm on face-to-face speaking terms with these days, I was curious to see his reactions to the presidential race.

Both the Democratic and Republican conventions were on while I was back in Canada. We watched Obama's speech together and he said he thought Obama would win, but that as usual his speech was short on specifics. I couldn't watch the Republican convention with him, mostly because I couldn't suppress my gag reflex long enough or keep from making snide comments whenever Mitt Romney or Rudy 9u11ani said something stupid, (ie: every time they opened their mouths).

"You have to listen to both sides" he'd keep telling me as he flipped from CNN to FOX and I started to sneer at Bill Kristol. Hey, I'm a journalist, I know all about listening to both sides, but if I'm doing a story on the Holocaust and one side is concentration camp survivors, soldiers who liberated camps and every serious historian on the planet and the other side is David Irving and a couple of knuckledraggers from the American Nazi Party, it isn't a "he said/she said/who knows what the truth is" kind of a situation and I can tell one side to shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of my office with a clean conscience. Eventually, I went and watched in another room.

When it came to Sarah Palin, I was suspicious from day one. I looked around for bio info on the internet when McCain first announced he had picked a running mate, realized she had zero policy experience, was a fundamentalist Christian, was a family values conservative, anti-choice, pro-war, pro-drilling here, there and everywhere, had ties to corrupt bum Sen. Ted Stevens and pretty much wrote her off as a losing prospect. I knew she'd never get the disappointed Hillary voters. When it came out that her teenage daughter was knocked up, I admit I cackled with schadenfreude, wondering how the hell McCain's people missed it and how they would try to spin it. I watched her speech and figured "okay, she can tell a really old joke and make mean misinformed cracks about he opponent. The republican base is gonna love her, but that's it. No problem."

But then the press loved her. And my dad seemed to think she was okay -- he seemed to like the pit bull gag--god knows he sat next to enough hockey moms during my and my brother's minor hockey days. He seemed to think she was as qualified as anyone for the job. "It is what it is" he said. This worried me. My dad is a pretty smart guy and he wasn't dismissing this travesty. Could the American people fall for this bullshit? God knows, they've fallen for some stupid shit before, but would they buy into the neocon Cinderella narrative about her being a tough and sassy hockey mom who could hunt moose in the morning and run the state in the afternoon? I hoped not, but they bought the absurd idea that John Kerry was a coward whose war record was a lie and George W. Bush was a fighter pilot/war leader, so anything was possible.

Then some cracks started showing. The GOP machine was keeping her away from the press and unfriendly crowds. Then they let her be interviewed.

"In what respect Charlie?"

"I'll try to find some and I'll bring'em to ya"

Watch CBS Videos Online

These all reminded me of something.

The best description comes from the comments at Balloon Juice:

"I'm still in shock over how terrible the Palin/Couric interview was. "Train wreck" is being charitable -- it was more like a train derailing on a bridge, tumbling a thousand feet into a canyon and landing on a pile of old dynamite and gas drums. And then a jumbo jet crashed into the flaming wreckage. Followed by an earthquake that caused the whole mess to slide off a cliff into the sea, where the few miraculous survivors were eaten by sharks."

In a way, I'm not worried anymore.

Sorry Dad, but this is a case where one side is grounded in reality and the other is not even sure where reality is anymore--in fact, I don't think they could find reality at this point with both hands and a search party if it was safety-pinned through both ass cheeks. Seriously, if you want to be vice president and you can't even manage to bullshit your way through an interview Katie Freaking Couric, how does she think she's going to do if she has to sit down across the table from Vladimir Putin or even Joe Biden?

I don't think anyone could watch these and get the idea that this person is well suited to be Vice President. I don't think most people watching these clips would even think she should be running the least populous, most remote state in the USA. I don't think anyone but a dyed-in-the-wool, born-again, Republican partisan would think she was even qualified to be the mayor of a town of 5,000. Frankly I'm amazed Wallisa doesn't have a monorail, but maybe that's more of a Shelbyville idea.

She can't seem to form and express a coherent opinion or even put together a full sentence.

That McCain picked her should disqualify him from ever holding public office again. This choice is not a demonstration of poor judgement, its is evidence that he has lost his freakin' mind.

crossposted from the Woodshed

The Honourable VP Hockey Mom -- I'm Gabberflasted, Are You Gabberflasted too?

Over on the Angry Bear blog, there's a thread discussing McCain's VP choice, Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

With an utter lack of shame, I have hoisted this from the comments. It is, of course, mine. --NM
=====================================

This choice, seen as a serious attempt to fill an important team position, is decidedly odd. Forget her gender -- there are mayors of medium sized towns who would be vastly better suited for the role, and more experienced, than Palin is. I'm thinking of our last Winnipeg mayor, who legitimately took his mayorhood to the level of statesmanship.

But under another lens, this choice is exactly to the pattern pursued over the past eight years by Rove, Cheney & Co -- a pattern of placing, or trying to place, manifestly unsuitable candidates in pivotal positions. FISA Brownie ring a bell? Alberto Gonzales, Monica Goodling, Dr. Susan Orr, William Wehrum, Hans von Spakovsky, John Bolton and don't forget Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank (that really worked out well).

And then there are the ones who aren't as familiar. How about George Deutsch, briefly a press officer at NASA. Deutsch, 24, had worked in the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign "War Room", and was appointed to the NASA position by Bush in 2005.

Like others we have heard of in Bush-influenced science/PR positions, he tried to blur the science and insert religion, as in an e-mail telling a NASA web designer to add the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang, saying the Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion... It is not NASA's place ... to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator..." He finally got the boot because his résumé falsely said he had a B.A. in journalism.

These questionable appointments started early. In March 2001, only 60 days into Bush's first term, they caught the attention of the Washington Post. They detailed Bush's appointment of Iran-Contra veterans to key posts -- naming Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte and Otto Reich. None of those guys is clueless, but they're none the better for that.

The pattern seems to be either clueless appointees or lawless ones. I would not be surprised if this VP was a one-two deal -- clueless Palin first as a placeholder, and then in October, after a *sob sob* family emergency, a Rovian or Cheynesque ringer lined up to step into Palin's place.

Friday Night Humour . . . .

Operation Enduring Pipeline

If asked, Canada would help the Afghan army defend a proposed $7.6-billion U.S.-backed natural gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan, to Pakistan and India.

We've heard about this pipeline before. U.S. Unocal and Bridas of Argentina were both bidding on it with the Taliban when the Taliban pulled out of the negotiations just one month before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. Afghan President Karzai, who either was or wasn't previously a Unocal employee, signed an agreement with the Turkman president this April to begin construction of the pipeline in 2010. Named TAPI after the four nations involved, it will run straight through Kandahar where Canadian troops are slated to stay till at least 2011.

Energy economist John Foster has written a report for the Canadian Council of Policy Alternatives, questioning the motives of the countries involved and outlining three reasons why the US wants it :
1) To limit Russia's influence in the region. Turkmanistan currently exports nearly all its gas to Russia.
2) To isolate Iran and their proposed rival pipeline which would run from Iran to India and Pakistan.
3) To forge links with India that would isolate India from China, who have already begun their gas pipeline from Turkmenistan east through Kazakhstan to China.

Is this why Canada is in Afghanistan?

From a Council of Foreign Relations panel discussion in 2007, journalist Steve LeVine :
"US policy is pipeline-driven within a strategy… to make this area a pro-western swath of territory between Russia and Iran, driven by the establishment of an independent economic channel. Everything else is really – I hate to call it window-dressing – but it’s secondary to that."

G&M : "Liberal Senator Colin Kenny - chairman of the Senate's national security and defence committee - said Canada has similar interests in the global energy market as the United States, and should not shy away from supporting U.S. geopolitical objectives. "I don't think we would be serving Canadian interests if we were ignoring American interests," he said."

What ever happened to little girls going to school, bringing democracy to Afghanistan, standing up for NATO ...

John Foster says he wrote his report to foster debate about pipeline politics in the absence of any official statement from the Canadian government or discussion in the national media :

A PIPELINE THROUGH A TROUBLED LAND: AFGHANISTAN, CANADA, AND THE NEW GREAT ENERGY GAME

A very interesting read.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Equality vs Convenience

Shorter John McCain: Justice and equality are important, but not if it means a bunch of lawsuits and stuff.

To the "sour grapes" crowd within the Hillary camp: Are you still sure you want to vote for McCain if your favorite doesn't get the nomination?

One wonders whether McCain would have voted against striking down the Jim Crow laws on the basis that getting rid of the laws that allowed segregation would have just lead to more lawsuits against bus companies and lunch counter owners.

(cross posted from the Woodshed)

Legal schmegal -- he's the deciderer

Being a bit behind in my podcast listening, I just heard about this story from last year on the March 28 episode of This American Life (episode 353), which dealt with the lawyerly style of the Bush administration - and when I say "lawyerly" I mean it in the sense of the Ambrose Bierce definition of a lawyer as "one skilled in circumventing the law."

Apparently, the libertarian bible-college law school dimwits in the Justice Department have decided that a century of precedents and the actual language of the Constitution and an international treaty aren't going to stop them from doing whatever they want, especially when it comes to anyone trying to challenge the will of the White House. More on case here.

The short version of events is as follows:

The International Boundary Commission was established nearly 100 years ago by a treaty between Canada and the United States as an international independent body to resolve border disputes between the two countries and to establish exactly where the border is. The U.S. Constitution says that treaties ratified by the Senate are the supreme law of the land. The IBC notified a couple in Washington State that the concrete wall they put up along the back of their yard encroached on the ten-foot border buffer where no construction is allowed and that the IBC could tear down the wall and send them the bill if they didn't remove it forthwith. The couple sued the IBC which, not having much of a budget, approached the U.S. Justice Department for advice. Justice told them they could not help them as they were an international body, not part of the U.S. government.


Then things get interesting. The Pacific Legal Foundation takes up the couple's case and suddenly the Justice Department is all over it. They insist that the IBC hand the whole thing over to them, that the IBC is not an independent international body, but an arm of the U.S. government. When the U.S. commissioner refuses to play ball, he is fired, despite the fact that International Treaty Commissioners like Supreme Court Justices, International Trade Commissioners or the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, can be appointed by the President to fill vacancies, but cannot be fired. The idea is to take politics out of the position to the extent possible. By putting such appointees beyond the reach of those that appointed them, they are thought to be immune to political pressure and further patronage and therefore able to act with greater impartiality to do the job they were appointed to do.

How did it work out? Well apparently some judges also think the president can do whatever he wants (see also this story). Canada has said nothing about the dispute, at least nothing public.


"So what?" you ask. "What's the big deal?"


Well, the big deal is that this is a classic example of the White House's power grab. In the past, it has taken the form of things like signing statements, unilateral reinterpretation of treaties (like the quaint Geneva Conventions) and withdrawal from treaties (like the ABM treaty) by presidential whim.


Remember when and where Dick Cheney comes from. He still doesn't think Nixon did anything wrong and was just sandbagged by a couple of smart-ass liberal journalists. He is all about centralizing power in the executive branch. And once that power becomes centralized, it isn't going to be decentralized anytime soon. Conservatives and Republicans and assorted Bush fans may think this is a wonderful thing that their president can do whatever he wants, but how would the same people feel about President Hilary Clinton or President Ted Kennedy or President Chelsea Clinton have the sort of monarchical powers that Dubya is claiming. What if President Obama suddenly declares by executive prerogative that he is replacing the members of the electoral commission or by his order black helicopters full of UN troops will be landing across the country to confiscate all privately owned handguns -- how do you like the doctrine of Unitary Executive now?

cross posted from the Woodshed

This just in: Republicans are cheating bastards

I know you'll be shocked, as I was, to learn that Republicans like to cheat in elections.

16,000 Republicans in Cuyahoga crossed over and voted Democratic in primary
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Amanda Garrett
Cleveland Plain Dealer Reporter
A staggering 16,000-plus Republicans in Cuyahoga County switched parties when they voted in last week's primary. That includes 931 in Rocky River, 1,027 in Westlake and 1,142 in Strongsville. More than a third of the Republicans in Solon and Bay Village switched. Pepper Pike had the most dramatic change: just under half its Republicans became Democrats. And some of those who changed - it's difficult to say how many - could be in trouble with the law.
At least one member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections wants to investigate some Republicans who may have crossed party lines only to influence which Democrat would face presumed Republican nominee John McCain in November.

All may be fair in love and war, but all is not legal in politics.

Lying on the pledge is a felony, punishable by six to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.
Election watchers said they don't know any cases that have been prosecuted in Ohio. And it's unlikely the Republican crossovers influenced the outcome since Clinton handily defeated Barack Obama, said Edward Foley, an election-law professor at Ohio State University.

The result isn't always what matters when a crime is committed - attempted robbery and attempted murder are still crimes, as is conspiracy to commit a felony in some cases.

It started a few weeks ago when conservative radio powerhouse Rush Limbaugh suggested that his Republican following cross over during the primary to vote for Clinton. Clinton, Limbaugh argued, would be easier for McCain to beat in November than Obama.
Soon, local morning radio show host Bob Frantz echoed Limbaugh on WTAM AM/1100, and the buzz began to grow.

The Republicans managed to steal Ohio in the last presidential election (see Greg Palast's Armed Madhouse or his explanation here of how votes don't always get counted. As Stalin said "its not the people who vote that counts, its the people who count the votes") The Democrats should be screaming about this and demanding that people be prosecuted for breaking election laws. The lengths to which these scofflaws will go to cling to power really knows no bounds.

Crossposted from the Woodshed

Swiftboating Obama

And so, predictably, it begins. Oddly enough, in a British newspaper, but this is the template you're going to see the election run on as the Republicans try to cling to the levers of power.

"Grover Norquist, an influential conservative tax reform lobbyist, said: “Barack Obama has been able to create his own image and introduce himself to voters, but the swing voters in a general election are not paying attention yet. He is open to being defined as a leftwing, corrupt Chicago politician.” "

It is interesting to see the Times describe Norquist as a "conservative tax reform lobbyist" when in reality he is a quasi-libertarian anti-government activist, character assassin and neo-con operative who once claimed he'd like to see government become "small enough to drown in a bathtub." Norquist is part of the movement in conservative/libertarian circles that champion supply-side "trickle down" economics, elimination of minimum wage laws, elimination of workplace and product safety laws, a so-called flat tax or elimination of income tax in favor of consumption tax and the elimination of capital-gains and inheritance taxes. Such people will claim that such measures are all about fairness or "freeing business from bureaucratic red tape" or "stimulating the economy" but what they are really all about is making sure the rich get richer and the poor stay poor and scared of getting poorer. Of course, anyone in politics or the media who points this out is immediately accused of waging "class warfare" in a nation which delusionally claims not to have a class system. To people like Norquist anyone to the left of the Rockerfellers, Morgans, Mellons and the rest of the original robber baron-class is a socialist.
Norquist and his masters believe that government is simply an often unavoidable impediment to them making money. To be asked to hand over a portion of their money to help other people smacks of communism to them.

As Bill Maher likes to say: Conservatives like to claim that government doesn't work, that it can't help people, that it can't solve the country's problems. Then they get elected and prove it. The more I read and research and examine the events of the last seven years, the more I have moved from thinking the neo-cons are stupid and inept, to believing they are both evil and very crafty. They have appointed incompetents to vital positions to ensure that the government departments involved fail when called upon ("Heckuva job Brownie"). This helps undermine people's faith in government and provides ammunition to show that the work of government should be privatized. Think about the arguments for school vouchers, or look at the "shock doctrine" privatization of things like water systems, power grids and transportation systems around the world, and it becomes clear the motives are to make a profit for corporations and their wealthy shareholders and to ensure that none of the that profit is ever handed back to help those who are not wealthy.

The sad thing is that Norquist is probably correct when he says that a well-funded 527 group attack on Obama could work. There will be a chain of deniablity between the Republican Party and this year's model of "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" but the money will still flow in from the usual sources and we will see Antoin Rezko, a dodgy property developer, inflated into a criminal mastermind on par with Al Capone and be told that because he gave Obama a sweetheart deal on some property, the senator is his amoral meat puppet. We will hear endlessly all about how William Ayers, a domestic terrorist and member of the sinister hippy-communist-veteran hating Weather Underground -- the largest domestic terrorist group EVER ! They bombed the Pentagon before Al-Quaida!-- who has become a sissified America-hating academic "intellectual" (just like Ward Churchill) is practically Obama's foster father. And we will heard how Obama didn't grow up in America and is probably a secret muslim, has fangs, a third eye, eats babies and HAS THE SAME NAMES AS AMERICA'S ENEMIES!!!!

We will hear all that crap and more from the right wing noise machine for the next ten months. No one will believe it, but after ten months of it being repeated again and again and again on CNN and FOX and MSNBC it will enter the collective consciousness. And even if Obama wins anyways, the first time he tries to reach across the aisle to get something done, the Republicans will gnaw his hand off and in the finest tradition of Newt Gingrich, do everything they can to make sure the government's business screeches to halt so that when the midterms come around they can claim that the Democrats can't get anything done.

Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose, or as the Talking Heads put it "Same as it ever was"

crossposted from the Woodshed