DC mayor hires "non-black people"

A somewhat tortured article from the Washington Post about how the new mayor of DC, who is himself black, hired a lot of "non-black people" - the Post's words - for key government jobs. I don't know what bothers me more, the creation of this new term "non-black people," or the long-standing notion that if you don't hire all (or mostly) non-non-black people for key jobs in DC you're somehow selling out. I get that DC is 57% black, but does that mean that the mayor's senior staff has to be 57% black? If he goes over 57% does he have to fire some people to get racial quotas back in harmony? And in cities where blacks are only 5% or 10% of the population does that mean they're only permitted 5% or 10% of the really good jobs? Not to mention, should Burmese and Malians and Andorrans kiss their chances of ever getting a good city job goodbye, until they buck up their demographics?

Long-standing notions haven't solved this city's horrendous crime problem, poverty, and education woes. Perhaps our new mayor, and his crazy ideas about hiring competent people, can. Read More......

Olbermann on Bush pardoning Scooter Libby

Short and sweet, as only Olbermann could summarize the story.

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Hate crime victim commits suicide

What do the bigots at the Family Research Council have to say about this? I wonder if he read any of their lies and their hate before deciding to take his own life. Read More......

Hillary on Libby travesty

"Today's decision is yet another example that this Administration simply considers itself above the law. This case arose from the Administration's politicization of national security intelligence and its efforts to punish those who spoke out against its policies. Four years into the Iraq war, Americans are still living with the consequences of this White House's efforts to quell dissent. This commutation sends the clear signal that in this Administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice." Read More......

Reactions to Bush pardoning Scooter (let's face it, a pardon by another name...)

Harry Reid:

"The President's decision to commute Mr. Libby's sentence is disgraceful. Libby's conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq War. Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone. Judge Walton correctly determined that Libby deserved to be imprisoned for lying about a matter of national security. The Constitution gives President Bush the power to commute sentences, but history will judge him harshly for using that power to benefit his own Vice President's Chief of Staff who was convicted of such a serious violation of law."

Pelosi:

The President’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence does not serve justice, condones criminal conduct, and is a betrayal of trust of the American people. The President said he would hold accountable anyone involved in the Valerie Plame leak case. By his action today, the President shows his word is not to be believed. He has abandoned all sense of fairness when it comes to justice, he has failed to uphold the rule of law, and he has failed to hold his Administration accountable.

Amb. Joe Wilson (whose wife is the outed CIA agent):

"From my viewpoint, the president has stepped in to short circuit the rule of law and the system of justice in our country. In so doing, he has acknowledged Mr. Libby's guilt for, among other things, obstruction of justice, which by definition is covering up for somebody in a crime. By commuting his sentence, he has brought himself and his office into reasonable suspicion of participation in an obstruction of justice. The commutation of (Libby's) sentence in and of itself is participation in obstruction of justice."

Atrios:

President Bush engages in ongoing obstruction of justice by commuting Scooter Libby's sentence.

And all of the Wise Men of Washington cheered.

Politely tell the White House what you think about this.

....WH has closed the comment line. We can call tomorrow.

FDL:

Demonstrating his complete contempt for trial by jury, rule of law and his own Department of Justice appointees, George Bush thumbed his nose once again at the very concept of democracy and the Beltway Brahmins are cheering. The dirty unwashed masses who populate our juries are fit to judge each other, but evidently not the ruling class. David Broder can breathe a sigh of relief that People Like Him are safe from those overly zealous US Attorneys who might want to hold them accountable to the same absurd standards that the little people must live by.

How quaint.

Josh Marshall:

There is a conceivable argument --- a very poor one but a conceivable one --- for pardoning Scooter Libby, presumably on the argument that the entire prosecution was political and thus illegitimate. But what conceivable argument does the president have for micromanaging the sentence? To decide that the conviction is appropriate, that probation is appropriate, that a substantial fine is appropriate --- just no prison sentence.

This is being treated in the press as splitting the difference, an elegant compromise. But it is the least justifiable approach. The president has decided that the sentencing guidelines and the opinion of judge don't cut it.

The only basis for this decision is that Libby is the vice president's friend, the vice president rules the president and this was the minimum necessary to keep the man silent.

John Edwards:

"Only a president clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences could take the action he did today. President Bush has just sent exactly the wrong signal to the country and the world. In George Bush's America, it is apparently okay to misuse intelligence for political gain, mislead prosecutors and lie to the FBI. George Bush and his cronies think they are above the law and the rest of us live with the consequences. The cause of equal justice in America took a serious blow today."

Obama:

"This decision to commute the sentence of a man who compromised our national security cements the legacy of an Administration characterized by a politics of cynicism and division, one that has consistently placed itself and its ideology above the law. This is exactly the kind of politics we must change so we can begin restoring the American people’s faith in a government that puts the country’s progress ahead of the bitter partisanship of recent years."

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"Scooter Libby is getting a very special brand of justice"

CNN's legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said that "This is a complete departure from the usual procedure. Scooter Libby is getting a very special brand of justice. He is getting enormous privileges that are not available to ordinary criminal convicts."

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BREAKING: Bush commutes Scooter Libby's prison sentence

CNN just reported -- via AP -- that Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence. Scooter won't go to jail. Apparently, the conviction, probation and fine still stand. So, basically, Bush just said that Libby is guilty but he doesn't have to pay the price because he's a friend of Cheney. Nice. Compare that to the Republicans impeaching Bill Clinton for committing the same crime, and Republicans have always said that Clinton got off easy. Well, Libby just got off easier.

The second thing that Bush just did, he showed that all this talk about letting justice run its course was all a crock. Bush had no intention of letting justice run its course - he was only going to let the courts make the decision IF the courts let Libby go. But once the courts found, unanimously, that this guy isn't just guilty as sin, but that he also doesn't deserve to be set free, Bush set him free anyway.

UPDATE: CNN's Ed Henry read a statement from Bush who thinks the 30-month prison sentence for Libby is "excessive." Really? Then what prison sentence does Bush think is appropriate for Libby? Probation isn't any punishment at all. And paying a fine, that's nice, except we all know that he's going to raise the money to pay the fine. So, what punishment is Libby facing for lying to a federal investigator trying to find out who leaked the identity of a CIA agent for political gain, endangering our national security?

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Oh the possibilities are endless

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Court won't delay Scooter Libby's prison sentence

Wow, it was unanimous.

The decision leaves Libby with few legal options, the most likely being an appeal to Chief Justice John Roberts. Barring an intervention there, it seems only Bush could spare Libby prison time.

Will George Bush pardon a convicted criminal and plummet his approval ratings to the teens? Stay tuned. Read More......

Guest post by Glenn Greenwald, about his new book "A Tragic Legacy"

NOTE FROM JOHN: I've asked Glenn Greenwald to join us and post a bit about his new book, "A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency." Without further ado, here's Glenn...

Events of the last several days highlight a central point of my new book, A Tragic Legacy, which John has generously invited me to highlight here on AMERICAblog.

As they always do, right-wing Bush followers immediately exploited the disrupted terrorist attacks in England and Scotland in order to "justify" the full range of Bush radicalism, from ever-increasing and illegal surveillance of Americans to endless Middle Eastern militarism.

Before any details were even known, Sean Hannity invited Rudy Giuliani onto Fox News to proclaim jointly (and excitedly) that these plots prove that the President was right to eavesdrop on Americans without the warrants required by law, and further, they show how we needs still greater surveillance. Joe Lieberman made the same claim on ABC: "I hope these terrorist attacks in London wake us up here in America to stop the petty partisan fighting going on about electronic surveillance."

But this exploitation of disrupted terrorist plots is both incoherent and deceitful. In every case, including this latest one, the terrorist plots are disrupted by legal means, by standard police work operating within the rule of law -- not by invasions, torture or lawbreaking.

Moreover, nobody disputes that there is such a thing as "the threat of terrorism." To the contrary, objections to Bush's policies do not depend upon some sort of belief that terrorism threats do not exist, but instead are grounded in the premise, one supported by Bush's own National Intelligence Estimate, that Bush's policies exacerbate that threat. As I argue in the following excerpt from Tragic Legacy -- based on a 2006 column by George Will in which Will admitted that John Kerry's "law enforcement" approach to terrorism turned out to be correct -- each newly revealed terrorist plot demonstrates how misguided and dangerous the Bush approach to terrorism has been:
__________________________________
From A Tragic Legacy:

In an extraordinary August, 2006 column, long-time conservative George Will wrote that the Bush administration had "denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point." In defending (two years after the fact) Kerry's arguments about terrorism Will specifically cited this:

In a candidates' debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

It is critical to note the circumstances in which Will argued that Kerry was right all along about terrorism. Two highly illustrative events were dominating the news that week -- the intense, brutal (and ultimately woefully unsuccessful) Israeli bombing campaign of Lebanon with the ostensible aim of eliminating the Hezbollah threat, and the announcement by the British government that it had disrupted a plot by Islamic extremists in England to blow up ten commercial jets over the Atlantic Ocean. Bush supporters were touting both events to underscore the necessity of waging war in the Middle East as a means for fighting terrorism, even though -- as Will noted -- they each proved exactly the opposite.

The President himself, as he always does whenever it comes to news of alleged terrorist plots, was excitedly hyping the dramatic "U.K. airline" plot to claim that it vindicated his approach to terrorism:

The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.

Manichean war cries of this type are, as one would expect, politically effective. Glorious crusades to crush Evil with violence will always be more intuitively exciting and emotionally satisfying than less flamboyant means for defeating it. But in the case of terrorism, this mindset is incoherent, dangerous, and -- worst of all -- entirely counter-productive, because nothing fuels the anti-America resentment at the heart of terrorism more than invasions and bombing campaigns in Muslim countries.

For that reason, such rhetoric ought to -- as Will put it -- "repel all but the delusional." After all, as Will noted in his column, the U.K. terrorist plot was disrupted not by invading other countries or dropping bombs on Middle Eastern neighborhoods, but through diligent and patient law enforcement efforts, i.e., the measures advocated by Kerry which prompted such mockery in the press:

The London plot against civil aviation confirmed a theme of an illuminating new book, Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." The theme is that better law enforcement, which probably could have prevented Sept. 11, is central to combating terrorism. F-16s are not useful tools against terrorism that issues from places such as Hamburg (where Mohamed Atta lived before dying in the North Tower of the World Trade Center) and High Wycombe, England.

Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry's belief (as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that "many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror."

The Bush administration and/or its supporters unabashedly exploit terrorist threats for political gain every time a new plot is revealed -- no matter how serious or frivolous, how advanced or preliminary, a particular plot might be. Bush followers squeeze such events for every last drop of political gain they can. As the President stated when the U.K. plot was revealed, this was "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom." Put another way, the President's use of terrorist plots such as this one is designed to convey this message: those who oppose my policies forget that there are Evil people in the world. Terrorist plots thus prove that there is Evil and that the President is right.

But that argument is as incoherent as it is manipulative. Nobody doubts that there are Muslim extremists who would like to commit acts of violence against the U.S. and the West. No political disputes are premised, nor have they ever been premised, on a conflict over whether terrorism exists or whether it ought to be taken seriously. Nor does anyone of consequence doubt that terrorists are malicious and dangerous. Thus, events such as the U.K. plot reveal what everyone already knows, and do nothing to inform or resolve political debates over the Bush administration's militaristic foreign policy or its radical lawlessness at home.

Above all, the existence of Evil Terrorists and the fact that some are plotting to attack the U.S. certainly does nothing to vindicate the President's invasion of Iraq. Opposition to the war in Iraq is not and never was based upon the premise that no terrorist threat exists. It is based on the premise that that invasion of Iraq undermines, rather than strengthens, the American campaign to fight terrorism. What has been, and still is, in dispute is the highly manipulative claim that invading Iraq would somehow reduce anti-American terrorism.

Though the President attempted to exploit the U.K. plot to ratchet up the fear of Evil terrorists and thereby bolster support for the war in Iraq, that plot actually captures the core deceit and incoherence at the heart of the President's Manichean militarism. Most of the participants in that conspiracy were British citizens, born in England. They had nothing to do with Iraq or Saddam Hussein or Iranian mullahs or the ruling Assad family in Syria. They were motivated by hatred for the United States, hatred which could not possibly be anything other than inflamed, and certainly not diffused, as a result of watching the U.S. attack a sovereign oil-rich country filled with Muslim holy sites. The ongoing occupation of Iraq spawned daily video of corpses of Muslim children, pictures of bombed marketplaces and tales of American abuses against Muslims inside torture prisons formerly used by Saddam Hussein. That such conduct by the U.S. would heighten the risk of terrorism and spread Islamic radicalism is self-evident.

The President and his supporters love to speak of Osama bin Laden and his Terrorist allies as hiding in fear of the President's militarism -- or even hoping that Democrats win elections because Terrorists so dislike George Bush's war-making. Yet the exact opposite is true. Nothing has aided the cause of Islamic terrorism more than George Bush's brutal and endless acts of aggression in the Middle East, as nothing has increased the fuel of terrorism -- anti-American anger -- more than that.

And it is hard to imagine a more ardent fan of the President's embrace of a Manichean worldview than Osama bin Laden, who shares that Manichean mentality and expressly sought, with the 9/11 attacks, to provoke exactly the split between the U.S. and the Muslim world which the Bush policies have wrought. As James Fallows reported in a 2006 article in The Atlantic Monthly:

Documents captured after 9/11 showed that bin Laden hoped to provoke the United States into an invasion and occupation that would entail all the complications that have arisen in Iraq. His only error was to think that the place where Americans would get stuck would be Afghanistan.

Bin Laden also hoped that such an entrapment would drain the United States financially. Many al-Qaeda documents refer to the importance of sapping American economic strength as a step toward reducing America's ability to throw its weight around in the Middle East.

Invading and bombing Muslim countries does not diminish the threat of terrorism. Quite the contrary, warmongering in the Middle East exacerbates terrorist threats by radicalizing more Muslims and increasing anti-U.S. resentment. That is self-evident at this point.
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Reprinted with permission of Crown Publishing. All rights reserved. Read More......

Bring it on, four years later

Four years ago today, President Bush invited Iraqi insurgents to attack U.S. forces. He said, recklessly,

There are some who feel like -- that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring’em on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.

It's bad enough that he callously dismissed the results of these attacks, but perhaps even worse is how wrong he was in the assertion that "we've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." In the annals of being grotesquely mistaken, that statement is up near the top.

The National Security Network reports,

It has been four years since the President declared "bring’em on" in response to the budding insurgency in Iraq. Since that statement, more than 3,300 American troops have been killed and 25,000 have been wounded. Iraqi civilians have suffered tremendously, with four million fleeing their homes and an estimated 35,000 killed. The security situation has only deteriorated further, with the initial insurgency morphing into multiple civil wars and sectarian violence. Incredibly, there are more American troops in Iraq today than were there four years ago when the President made his reckless declaration.

You know what we need to bring on? November 2008. Read More......

ABC: Intel says "spectacular" Al Qaeda attack planned this summer

I assume that means we can plan on Bush taking a vacation some time soon. (Note that the ABC story doesn't make clear if the "spectacular" attack is targeted at the US or where, though it implies that the US is the target.) Also, it's interesting that there was also intelligence suggesting an attack against an airport in Glasgow, yet the Scottish authorities never received the intel. Did we give it to them?

From ABC:

A secret U.S. law enforcement report, prepared for the Department of Homeland Security, warns that al Qaeda is planning a terror "spectacular" this summer, according to a senior official with access to the document.

"This is reminiscent of the warnings and intelligence we were getting in the summer of 2001," the official told ABCNews.com....

As ABCNews.com reported, U.S. law enforcement officials received intelligence reports two weeks ago warning of terror attacks in Glasgow and Prague, the Czech Republic, against "airport infrastructure and aircraft."

The warnings apparently never reached officials in Scotland, who said this weekend they had received "no advance intelligence" that Glasgow might be a target.

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Bush "still acts as if he were master of the universe"

Just read what is supposed to be Peter Baker's introspective look at Bush in today's Washington Post. Apparently, there is some depth to the President, we're supposed to believe. He's doing a lot of thinking with really smart people -- or thinkin' Bush would say. Unfortunately, he can't think about the problems at hand like Iraq. Bush comes across as detached and a bit delusional (and you can't help but wonder if he's on some kind of prescription). The whole article is best summed up in this one paragraph:

And yet Bush does not come across like a man lamenting his plight. In public and in private, according to intimates, he exhibits an inexorable upbeat energy that defies the political storms. Even when he convenes philosophical discussions with scholars, he avoids second-guessing his actions. He still acts as if he were master of the universe, even if the rest of Washington no longer sees him that way.

It's not just the rest of Washington that no longer sees him that way. It's the rest of the United States. It's the rest of the world.

Bush has undermined this country. He's weakened us. He got us into an intractable war with no plan to get us out. He's emboldened our enemies. That should weigh heavy on him -- but apparently, it doesn't. He's the master of his universe. Read More......

Monday Morning Open Thread

What was it that Senator Dick Lugar, the pillar of Republicanism from Indiana, said yesterday on "Face the Nation"? Oh, yeah, he said he wants, "withdrawal of the majority of American troops in a calm, orderly way over the next few months."

What was it George Bush, the worst President ever, said four years ago today? Oh yeah, he said, "There are some who feel like -- that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on." Actually, I think he said, "Bring 'em on." They sure took him up on that challenge.

Okay, get it started. Read More......

Bush applauds UK "strong response" to terrorist attacks

Now what "strong response" would that be? The attacks failed because they were organized by incompetent terrorists who failed on their own, not because the UK government did anything in particular to stop or prevent the attacks despite the deep erosion of civil liberties during the Blair years.

Update: Police had left a calling card with a property rental manager to call police. Still not entirely convincing of a "strong response" but at least not completely out of the loop either. Read More......

Portugal to invote Mugabe for summit boondoggle

A few years ago it was Chirac and France who complained that the summit was critical and including Mugabe, the man who has led Zimbabwe from the breadbasket of Africa to a starving nation. As someone who has much less faith in grand summits and the dubious results, I'm offended at the decision to again cast aside the law and allow an exception, but unfortunately some EU powers are obsessed with being locked out of the next financial boom in Africa that will profit a few dozen locals, perhaps, and enrich some global corporate power.

Whether Ghana or the African Union or anyone else publicly demands Mugabe is allowed to participate, that is their problem and not the EU's problem. Why bother to even have a travel ban for the likes of Mugabe if it's going to be pushed aside every time a summit is announced? Creating an exception for a man who has turned the state against his own people with brutal and sometimes deadly results will only reward this kind of behavior. Read More......

Open thread

Off to bed Read More......