Republicans Need to Dig Up Some Better 'Scandals'

Want a scandal? Here's a scandal:

Salon: Try, if you can, to ignore all the lurid coke-and-sex bombshells contained in the three Department of Interior Inspector General reports about the shenanigans at the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS). The program director who snorted speed off a subordinate’s toaster oven, and made her give him a blow job while driving around the neighborhood. The two “MMS Chicks” who were notorious for getting plastered at conventions and having one-night stands with oil industry employees.

Try — and yes, I know it’s hard — try even to ignore the allegation that one program director told a subordinate that if she could score him some coke during the MMS performance appraisal period, he would increase her performance award. What’s the big deal? Who wouldn’t be motivated by such an incentive? And what’s a little drunken sex and coke binging on government time among friends? It happens to the best of us.

The significance of the three reports delivered by the inspector general to Congress on Wednesday lies not in the prurience of some of the indiscretions, but in the symbolism. The Royalty-in-Kind Program of the U.S. Minerals Management Service is where offshore drilling meets the U.S. government. And gosh, is it ever one heck of a mess. You want a toxic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Just read the reports.

You'll happy to know that this isn't happening now, but in the misty, far-flung past of bustling 2008. This was the Bush administration's scandal and it was bad. The MMS was responsible for leasing federal land for oil and natural gas drilling. And it was corrupt nearly beyond belief. An Inspector General found not only ethical breaches, but criminal misconduct in an agency who's mission had changed under the Bush administration from serving the interests of the American people to making as much money as possible for the oil and gas industry. The agency was basically run by lobbyists, practically guaranteeing malfeasance. After the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the agency was finally eliminated under Interior Department restructuring.

I don't bring this up to try to distract from the current controversies plaguing the White House, but to make a simple point; as salacious and shocking as it was at the time, no one talks about the MMS scandal anymore. Of course, the Bush administration had four colossal scandals that leap immediately to mind: the failure to take terrorism seriously, resulting in 9/11; the lies and hype about WMD that led to the invasion of Iraq; the awful response to Hurricane Katrina; and the use of torture. There were also warrantless wiretaps, blowing the cover of Valerie Plame, Dick Cheney getting hammered and shooting some poor guy in the face, and some I'm either forgetting or skipping over for the sake of brevity. In the scandal-production department, the Bushies were overachievers.

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It's All Just a Game: How the Political Media Make Heroes Out of Jerks

Hey, want to see some journalistic malpractice? Then head over to Buzzfeed and take a look at Evan McMorris-Santoro's latest steaming pile of fly food.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell put on a clinic in crisis communications Tuesday, turning a potentially explosive secret recording of his campaign's strategy session into a political bludgeon to beat Democrats — and the campaign cash bushes.

"Last week they were attacking my wife's ethnicity and apparently also bugging my headquarters, much like Nixon and Watergate," McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill. "That's what the political left does these days."

If the press conference were an episode of the camp-era "Batman" that's where the "biff!" titlecard would show up. McConnell had gone from a man on his heels after a recording of an oppo research session on Ashley Judd was published by Mother Jones to the master politician driving the story to his own benefit.

It doesn't get any better. But you don't have to trust me on that, Buzzfeed left it right out there in the open, like they're not ashamed of it at all. Mitch McConnell was planning on attacking a woman for speaking openly about depression, thoughts of suicide, and her religious beliefs. But instead of manning up and taking responsibility for his actions when they were made public, McConnell released a blizzard of whining over likely-imaginary wiretaps. Suddenly, the villain is the victim and McMorris-Santoro responds with wild applause. "Masterful politics! Brilliant dishonesty! Behold the amazing shamelessness!"

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Registration Fraud May Give the GOP a Taste of Their Own Medicine

They say Karma is a bitch. After pushing voter ID to disenfranchise groups that tend to vote Democratic, the Republican Party is at the heart of a growing scandal over voter registration fraud. That would be the same crime the right -- falsely, it turned out -- accused ACORN of doing. It was a crime so heinous that ACORN had to be defunded, thereby killing off the organization. Logical consistency demands that the GOP must meet a similar fate.

But no one's seriously going to demand the organizational death penalty. Still, this may be in the neighborhood.

Los Angeles Times:

[A California voter registration fraud scandal] has also raised anew the question of whether the state should ban firms that pay workers for each voter they register or signature they secure on a petition rather than paying them an hourly rate. Workers have an incentive to cut corners under such arrangements, according to Assemblyman Richard Pan (D-Natomas), who has proposed barring the practice in a bill that is on the governor's desk.

Registration fraud's becoming a bit of a scandal for Republicans. The story broke big in Florida, followed by the California story this weekend.

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Megaleak

According to Wikipedia, Wikileaks was founded in 2006. That sounds about right to me. I remember reading about it at the time and thinking it was a good idea -- a sort of investigative journalism without the journalist middleman. I checked it from time to time, but soon found that -- ironically -- all that raw info was a little hard to make use of without someone taking the time to weed out all the trivia. In short, what I'd originally thought of as direct journalism required a journalist to make sense of it.

Still, in just four short years, Wikileaks has gone from a backwater site of interest to few to an international controversy. Founder Julian Assange has become an international fugitive on Interpol's Most Wanted list, for rape charges which may be trumped up. He's a frontrunner for Time's "Person of the Year" for 2010. He's hated by some and beloved by others. To lift a line from an ad campaign, he is "The Most Interesting Man in the World."

It's probably a mistake to think of Assange in journalistic terms. A former hacker, he's more of an information extremist. After releasing video of US soldiers mistakenly gunning down journalists in Iraq, Wikileaks had to move their site to the same host that filesharing site The Pirate Bay uses -- Pirate Bay founders are likewise free-information activists. It's a strange world these people operate in, where legal and illegal aren't as important as right and wrong and there's no need to obey unjust laws. The very existence of both Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay are acts of civil disobedience and protest. And, while they're making enemies around the world, they're gaining political support and power elsewhere, mostly as part of global anti-corporate and transparency movements.

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Debate in the Rightwing Blogosphere: Pro- or Anti-Head-Stomping?

What fun! Here's Wisconsin Republican senatorial candidate Ron Johnson receiving an award for his tireless work on behalf America's most downtrodden minority -- gazillionaires.

I'll admit to laughing when they finally realize they've been punked and drag the guy away. I don't like Ron Johnson -- at all -- but I'll give him and his staff credit for being good sports about the whole thing. They're all smiles as they realize they've been had.

This is more than can be said for Rand Paul supporters outside the Kentucky senatorial debate last night:

Those "don't tread on me" flags teabaggers are so fond of have just become ironic.

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Driving Elections While Hammered on Foreign Money

Imagine a world much like our own. In this world, drunk driving is just as illegal as it is here. Everyone agrees that intoxicated drivers are a menace and the world would be a much safer place without them. But, in this world, it's also illegal to pull a driver over and check to see if they're intoxicated. People who aren't crazy argue that this check would be essential to enforcement and we ought to start doing it, while people who are crazy argue that enforcement is unnecessary -- after all, drunk driving is illegal, so no one will do it, right? If someone's weaving all over the road, they probably have a good reason and pulling them over to see what that reason is would be an invasion of their privacy. Drunk driving has been eliminated by making it illegal and, if you need proof of that, then just look at the record -- no arrests ever. Success!

This alternate reality may strike you as a little on the stupid side, but welcome to the world of American politics post-Citizens United v. FEC. Foreign money in federal elections is still illegal, but there's no way to pull a candidate over to find out if they're soused on foreign money. Candidate X may be positively hammered on Bahraini dinars or Russian Rubles, but -- by the easiest money-laundering scheme in the world -- there's no way to prove it, because there's no way to check.

That's what we're beginning to see play out with the US Chamber of Commerce. The Chambers is running millions of dollars worth of attack ads across the nation and no one can find out for sure where the money comes from.

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For the Media, Not Being Conservative Enough is Roughly Equal to Being Racist

Imagine the soul-crushing horror. A foreign correspondent reacts to the news of a regional political leader's death with a message of respect on Twitter. Outrageous! Yet, that's exactly what CNN's senior editor of Mideast Affairs did earlier this week. For those with strong stomachs, I'll post the message. But sensitive readers are advised to avert their eyes.

Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.. One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot..

Gahhh!! She said something nice about a leader of Hezbollah on the occasion of his death! Gahhh!! Flee! Flee!

Well, that was too much for CNN and Olivia Nasr is no longer the senior editor of Mideast Affairs. Nasr later explained this crime against humanity on her CNN blog -- apparently as security was dragging her out:

I used the words "respect" and "sad" because to me, as a Middle Eastern woman, Fadlallah took a contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman's rights. He called for the abolition of the tribal system of "honor killing." He called the practice primitive and nonproductive. He warned Muslim men that abuse of women was against Islam.

So sure, he tried to drag Hezbollah kicking and screaming into the 21st century, but he was Hezbollah! EEEEE! She's lucky they didn't load her up in a catapult and fling her off to Gitmo.

"This was interesting background -- the kind of depth one might expect from a reporter with a few decades of experience in the region," wrote Peter Hart for Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting [FAIR]. "But CNN decided that this was not good enough. An internal memo explained that CNN thinks 'her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward.'"

Hart also makes a couple of interesting points: "Now it can't be that errant Twitter messages are the problem at CNN; they recently hired Erick Erickson as a commentator, even though he had called retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter a 'goat-fucking child molester.' And it can't be that CNN has a problem with opinionated journalists; after all, they spent several years defending Lou Dobbs' hateful, inaccurate anti-immigrant rants."

So if you want to accuse a Supreme Court Justice of having sex with farm animals, that's fine. If you want to tell viewers that illegal aliens are coming to spread leprosy and take over, that's fine. If you want to express sorrow over the loss of one of the few forward thinking people in Hezbollah, that is mostly definitely not fine. This is something of a trend with the media.

Glenn Greenwald, Salon:

First, consider which viewpoints cause someone to be fired from The Liberal Media.  Last month, Helen Thomas' 60-year career as a journalist ended when she expressed the exact view about Jews which numerous public figures have expressed (with no consequence or even controversy) about Palestinians.  Just weeks ago, The Washington Post accepted the "resignation" of Dave Weigel because of scorn he heaped on right-wing figures such as Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh.  CNN's Chief News Executive, Eason Jordan, was previously forced to resign after he provoked a right-wing fit of fury over comments he made about the numerous -- and obviously disturbing -- incidents where the U.S. military had injured or killed journalists in war zones.  NBC fired Peter Arnett for criticizing the U.S. war plan on Iraqi television, which prompted accusations of Treason from the Right.  MSNBC demoted and then fired its rising star Ashleigh Banfield after she criticized American media war coverage for adhering to the Fox model of glorifying U.S. wars; the same network fired its top-rated host, Phil Donahue, due to its fear of being perceived as anti-war; and its former reporter, Jessica Yellin, confessed that journalists were "under enormous pressure from corporate executives" to present the news in a pro-war and pro-Bush manner.

"What each of these firing offenses have in common is that they angered and offended the neocon Right," Greenwald writes. "Isn't that a strange dynamic for the supposedly Liberal Media: the only viewpoint-based firings of journalists are ones where the journalist breaches neoconservative orthodoxy?"

This isn't entirely true, but it's true enough. ESPN dropped Rush Limbaugh and MSNBC dropped Don Imus -- so put blatant racism alongside offenses against neocon heterodoxy on the list of unforgivable media sins. But how insane is it that these things are equally criminal on that list? Praising someone for being more progressive in the cause of women's rights is equal to calling Rutgers basketball players "nappy headed hos." Go ahead and soak in the irony of that one for a while.

And, if we take the right at their word and agree that racism isn't an element of modern conservatism, try to name the reporter or commentator who's been fired for being too rightwing. Take your time. Remember, blatant racism doesn't count, because Republicans aren't racist. Name someone fired because they were too anti-Palestinian maybe or too pro-war, too anti-gay or anti-science. Go ahead and think real hard.

Anyone else hearing crickets?


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BP and GOP Attempting History's Largest Cover-Up

The oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is bad. Really bad. Mile after mile after mile of bad. This bad:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Given the sheer size and scope of the disaster, it seems impossible that someone would even consider hiding it. Yet that seems to be what BP has in mind. Out of sight, out of mind. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that the company that caused the catastrophe by cutting corners in building Deepwater Horizon would also try to cut corners in cleaning it up. BP's attempts to keep the worst of the spill off the front page have been well-documented -- they turn reporters away, while sending their own "journalists" out to cover the story.

According to a whistleblower who spoke to CNN, BP is using dispersant not to mitigate the disaster, but to hide its magnitude.

Examiner:

In a shocking interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on June 29th, Allegiance Capitol Corporation V.P. Fred McCallister said that BP is deliberately sinking oil with the toxic chemical disbursant [sic] Corexit, to hide the size of the oil spill. By sinking the oil before it can be collected, BP won't have to pay fines on it.

McCallister said, "Everybody in Europe, where the standard practice is to raise the oil and collect it, is scratching their heads, and quite honestly laughing at what's happening in the Gulf." He added, "Everyone is looking at us and wondering why we're allowing this to happen."

This is one of my suspicions confirmed. Using dispersant never seemed to make sense to me. I could see using it near the well, where it would clear the water and improve visibility, but using it elsewhere just made no sense to me. It's not like dispersant makes the oil "go away."

And this isn't the only way BP is trying to cover up the damage and hide the oil. They seem to be trying (and thankfully, failing) to literally bury the story under tons of sand.

"BP is trucking in sand to cover up the oil," writes Shannyn Moore. "Let me repeat that -- instead of cleaning up the oil they are just bringing in sand from other beaches and covering it up. In the photos and the video you can see the layering of Grand Isle, LA sand, oil and then a sand of a different type. Photo-journalists have four independent confirmations by local Sheriff's in Grand Isle, Louisiana."

If BP needs help in covering all this up -- and it's clear they do, because it turns out the inept are unsurprisingly incompetent when it comes to hiding their ineptitude -- they don't have to look far. The Republican Party, eager to portray President Obama as an executive more bumbling than George W. Bush, is ready to pitch in on the effort. Want cover up everything? That's easy. Just say everything is Barack Obama's fault.

McClatchy Newspapers:

From former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to Arizona Sen. John McCain to junior members of the House of Representatives, conservative Republicans have accused President Barack Obama of failing to do all he can to help clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill because he hasn't waived a U.S. maritime law called the Jones Act.

That statute, established in 1920, requires that all goods transported between U.S. ports be carried on U.S.-flagged, U.S.-built and U.S.-owned ships crewed by U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Critics say that's needlessly excluded foreign-flagged vessels that could have helped.

"It's a little shocking to me that a president that has such a multinational orientation as this president didn't immediately see the benefits of waiving the Jones Act and allowing all of these resources to come in," former House Majority Leader Richard Armey, R-Texas, said in remarks to Newsmax.com, a conservative website.

"Totally not true," Mark Ruge, counsel to the Maritime Cabotage Task Force, a coalition of U.S. shipbuilders, operators and labor unions, told McClatchy. "It is simply an urban myth that the Jones Act is the problem." Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen says he's received no requests for Jones Act waivers -- because none are necessary in this case.

"If the vessels are operating outside state waters, which is three miles and beyond, they don't require a waiver," Allen says.

But the Jones Act lie as become the official stance of the Republican Party. In an act of political theater, the GOP will release a partisan "report," written by the unfortunate Rep. Darrell Issa, that claims, "According to local officials, the decision to not waive the Jones Act has impaired Gulf Coast clean-up efforts. The most likely application of a broad-based Jones Act waiver would be for the operation of boats equipped with skimmers, which is one of the most effective tools to clean up the oil. Rear Admiral Jim Watson conceded in a briefing to Chairman Towns and Ranking Member Issa that the Coast Guard does not currently have access to a sufficient numbers of skimmers."

Of course, these are Republicans we're talking about here. Lying is just part of the game for them. And Issa has a raging woody for impeaching Barack Obama -- again, lying is no impediment to this plan. In fact, it's necessary to it. Obama has broken no laws, so Issa has to make up crimes. He's been approaching the problem through a laughable attempt to trump up offering Joe Sestak an unpaid position into a crime, but that really doesn't seem to have any legs at all. If his big "Sestak affair" won't get the job done, maybe his "Jones Act affair" will. The point isn't to remove the president from office -- although I'm sure he wouldn't mind it -- the point is to tarnish Obama's boy scout image in time for the 2012 presidential elections. Speaking to Pennsylvania Republicans last month, Issa told them he'd use subpoena power to harass the White House and let corporations off the hook if Republicans gain control of the House in November.

"That will make all the difference in the world," he said. "I won't use it to have corporate America live in fear that we're going to subpoena everything. I will use it to get the very information that today the White House is either shredding or not producing."

And if inventing an Obama crime means helping BP cover up an actual crime, then cover-up it is. Because, let's face it, lying and protecting corporate interests are just what Republicans do.

-Wisco


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The Grand Oil Party

It's true that Republicans often say stupid and ridiculous things. In fact, in a world where Sarah Palin is a celebrity to the rightwing base, it's expected of them. It's part of their "oppose everything" strategy and it often paints them into a rhetorical corner; if you're going to fight even the most rational positions, you're often going to find yourself playing proponent to the irrational. So, since President Obama helped arrange a $20 billion escrow fund to make sure BP will cover the costs to people's lives, the default position is that this is a bad thing. Never mind that it's a necessary thing. Twenty-one years after the Exxon Valdez spill, ExxonMobil has only paid $500 million of an up to $7 billion bill. BP will not be able to weasel out of their obligations so easily.

But, as I said, opposing everything means opposing even the good ideas. And this forces Republicans to embrace bad ideas. Texas Rep. Joe Barton -- known in some circles as "Smokey Joe" for his undying support of the oil industry -- demonstrates what this looks like.

If you need a transcript of that, Talking Points Memo has it. The teabaggers love this because, let's face it, they aren't very smart. But no one else was much of a fan. With the White House getting tough with the oil giant, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" turned out to be a really stupid line of thought. Especially from someone who used to be an oil exec himself.





The White House was quick to capitalize on Barton's apology, sending out an email blast to supporters asking them to "Stand with us to show that the American people support holding BP accountable -- and we won't apologize for doing so."

The Republicans weren't quite so fleet of foot. It's easy to understand their surprise. After all, some Republican somewhere says something equally stupid every, single day. Joe Barton's apology wasn't anything unusual, but it was on CSPAN. And it was on at a time when a lot of people tuned in to watch BP CEO Tony Hayward -- easily the most hated man in America right now -- squirm. Watching Smokey Joe kiss his backside and beg forgiveness wasn't exactly what they were hoping for. By the end of the day, GOP leadership issued a statement of opposition to his apology (more on that in a bit) and Barton's position on the Energy and Commerce Committee is now "within a centimeter" of being pulled by the party. Barton's apology was also retracted.

But the GOP was caught completely flatfooted by the public reaction to Barton's obsequiousness. Sen. John Cornyn -- who joined in on the official statement denouncing Barton -- originally said he shared Smokey Joe's concerns over the escrow account. But then it turned out that this was the politically disadvantageous position, so he changed teams.

And Barton had reason to believe the party had his back on this -- mostly because they've been saying pretty much the same thing:

John Nichols, The Nation:

Barton's not an outlier. Other prominent Republicans are rallying to BP's defense. Minnesota Congressman Michele Bachmann counseled that: "[If] I was the head of BP, I would let the signal get out there—'We're not going to be chumps, and we're not going to be fleeced.' And they shouldn't be. They shouldn't have to be fleeced and make chumps to have to pay for perpetual unemployment and all the rest—they've got to be legitimate claims."

The problem, explained Bachmann is not BP but Obama. "The other thing we have to remember is that Obama loves to make evil whatever company it is that he wants to get more power from," griped the conservative Congresswoman.

Just the day before, the Republican Study Committee issued an official statement saying almost exactly what Barton did, sans the apology. "BP's reported willingness to go along with the White House’s new fund suggests that the Obama Administration is hard at work exerting its brand of Chicago-style shakedown politics," said chairman Tom Price in the statement. "These actions are emblematic of a politicization of our economy that has been borne out of this Administration's drive for greater power and control. It is the same mentality that believes an economic crisis or an environmental disaster is the best opportunity to pursue a failed liberal agenda. The American people know much better."

And that leadership statement denouncing Barton? Yeah, I haven't forgotten about that. Even while trying to position themselves as really, really mad at BP and Smokey Joe, they make sure to give the oil company some wiggle room.

The oil spill in the Gulf is this nation's largest natural disaster and stopping the leak and cleaning up the region is our top priority. Congressman Barton's statements this morning were wrong. BP itself has acknowledged that responsibility for the economic damages lies with them and has offered an initial pledge of $20 billion dollars for that purpose.

The families and businesspeople in the Gulf region want leadership, accountability and action from BP and the Administration. It is unacceptable that, 59 days after this crisis began, no solution is forthcoming. Simply put, the American people want all of our resources, time and focus to be directed toward stopping the spill and cleaning up the mess.

Yeah, this is terrible and Joe Barton's a moron, but this whole oil gusher thing really is just a "natural disaster." This echos the statements of people like Alaska Rep. Don Young, who argue that this sort of thing is a "natural phenomenon."

"Oil has seeped into this ocean for centuries, will continue to do it," Young said earlier this month. "During World War II there was over 10 million barrels of oil spilt from ships, and no natural catastrophe... We will lose some birds, we will lose some fixed sealife, but overall it will recover."

Republicans are now pretending outrage at Smokey Joe, but in truth they're in complete agreement. It doesn't require mindreading on my part to come to this conclusion, I just need to read what they've said.

-Wisco


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BP, Fried Brains, and the Three Little Pigs

We've got half a dam out there in the Gulf of Mexico right now. And, as anyone with any familiarity with logic will be able to tell you, a half a dam is not actually a dam. While BP's "top kill" effort is showing some signs of success, it's way too soon to break out the champagne.

Associated Press:

The Coast Guard says BP is having some success slowing the Gulf of Mexico oil leak by injecting mud but the fix isn't done yet.

Coast Guard Lt. Commander Tony Russell said reports today that Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the operation, had called the procedure a success were incorrect. He said Allen said that the flow of mud was stopping some of the oil and gas but had a ways to go before it proved successful.

BP spokesman Tom Mueller said the effort that started Wednesday to plug the blown-out with mud, called a top kill, was continuing.

Overlooked by most of the media is an internal BP memo comparing workers to the three little pigs and setting the value of their lives at $1,000. In determining the cost/benefit of protecting workers from explosions, BP decided that blast-resistant housing was way too expensive to protect piggies who were only worth a grand a pop. So they went with regular old trailers. Sure, it's evil. But golly, it's cute.


Click for fullsized image

Blast-resistant housing is just ten bucks per worker over the cost-to-benefit equation. Sorry piggies. For their part, the oil behemoth says they've "fundamentally changed the culture of BP" since the last disaster they've been involved with -- a Texas oil refinery explosion five years ago. Apparently, not enough to save 11 workers on Deepwater Horizon.

And not enough to have avoided this:

Get what that marine toxicologist said? The chemical dispersants literally fry the brain. And BP's hiring people they've put out of work, people who feel they have no choice, to go out -- without protection -- and work with these chemicals. Makes you wonder what those piggies are worth to BP. Less than the cost of a respirator, maybe. The Coast Guard finally had to step in and make BP stop sending these people out.

The next time some grinning idiot tells you that corporations are your friends, remember all this. Among international corporations -- and even most large nationals -- BP is not an exception. What's happening here amounts to a random corporation getting the sort of scrutiny they should've gotten all along and that scrutiny is telling us who they really are. Let me emphasize the word "random" there -- nearly any corporation, exposed to this level of attention, would fare as badly. BP's just in the spotlight right now.

And allow me to repeat what I think is very good advice in dealing with regulatory oversight and big corporations; assume they're trying to get away with something, because they are. Always. You may believe that they're a necessary evil, but don't ever forget that they're an evil. We should trust BP, Transocean, Halliburton, or Consolidated Weiner-on-a-Stick no more than they can absolutely prove they can be trusted.

To do anything else is to enter into a one-sided suicide pact, where you agree to take the bullet and the corporations agree to sell it to you.

-Wisco


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Will Republicans Self-Destruct Over Wall Street Reform?

The ad pretty much writes itself. It opens with news headlines, while bass and cellos saw a low, dark note; "U.S. charges Goldman with subprime fraud," "Goldman Sachs fraud case stunning in its indictment of Wall Street culture," "Goldman Cited 'Serious' Profit on Mortgages," and the kicker; "Goldman Sachs Bonuses: Bank Paying Staff Over $5 Billion For Just Three Months Work."

"We could've reformed Wall Street," that voice-over guy who does all the political ads says. "We could've reined in corruption. We could've ended huge bailouts and said, 'Too big to fail is too big to exist.' We could've regulated or outlawed risky and exotic investments schemes that have turned our economy into a failing casino. We wanted to do it. You wanted to do it. We could've done it. But Republicans wouldn't even allow the debate.

"All we needed was one vote."

At this point, you show a black and white image of the Republican incumbent. "One vote," the narrator continues. "One independent-minded Republican. One Senator willing to put the good of the nation above petty partisan politics. One politician who knows that fighting Wall Street corruption is more important than their party. Just one Republican with courage.

"One vote... We didn't get it." Flash the opponent's name and McCain/Feingold disclaimer; "I'm _____ and I so approve this message."





This ad has a chance of playing in states across the country, as Democrats bring Wall Street reform to a vote today. As of this moment, Republicans are standing together, threatening to filibuster the bill. While it's hard to believe that Democrats aren't willing to give up something to get this through, the signals they're sending are that they're not willing to give up much. The New York Times reported yesterday that Democrats "had bridged internal party differences and coalesced around a plan to tighten regulation of derivatives" and had "raised the pressure on Senate Republicans" to drop the filibuster threat.

Writing for the Huffington Post, Robert Kuttner reports that the White House has rejected the idea of a bipartisan compromise.

Although Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd and his sometime Republican ally Richard Shelby continued to make noises on the Sunday talk shows about a possible bipartisan deal, both President Obama and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank have personally urged Dodd not to cut a deal with Republicans. I asked Frank point blank why Dodd would want such a deal, and he said--on the record--"I have no idea, but both President Obama and I have urged him not to."

For those of us who remember the healthcare non-debate, this can't be taken as anything other than good news. Republicans have murdered bipartisanship as a public lynch mob. Even those Republicans who'd engaged in negotiations used it as a delaying tactic, with no intention of ever voting for any bill. After months of bipartisan negotiations, the bill passed the Senate without a single GOP vote. The moral of this story: negotiating with Republicans is a waste of time -- by GOP design.

What we have now is a stand-off. And it's one that Republicans can't possibly win -- not in a political sense, anyway. That's not to say that we won't get some sort of deal after the initial procedural vote fails. But Democrats should go ahead and cut that ad now, then email it to incumbent Republicans running for reelection. You want to run on how much you hate healthcare reform? Knock yourself out -- we're going to run on this.

Someone's going to blink here and, unless they're bent on self-destruction, Republicans will blink first.

-Wisco


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RNC's Steele Dragging the Party Down

There is no doubting the fact that Democrats are in a bad place right now. Polls show that, unless things change, Republicans stand to gain some real ground in Congress this fall. Of course, anything can happen between now and then but, for the time being, things look pretty bleak for dems. In my opinion, this has more to do with the inability of Senate Democrats to get their act together and behave like a party than anything -- although, there's some blame to be cast in the house as well. Bart Stupak and his crowd also decided that the best thing to do in an election year was to drive a wedge into their own party. The entire intra-party healthcare debate reminds me of the sheriff in Blazing Saddles holding a gun to his own head. Only, in this case, holdout Democrats carried out the sheriff's threat.

Party discipline? What's that?

If they want some good news, Democrats aren't going to be able to look in their own backyards -- that place is a wreck. They're going to have to look to the mess in the neighbor's yard. Luckily, that place is a wreck as well and sitting atop the rubble is Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele.





Things are so bad over at the RNC that they've begun slaughtering scapegoats. Politico reports that RNC Chief of Staff Ken McKay has resigned, "becoming the highest-ranking official to depart the committee" after the big lesbian/bondage-themed striporama scandal. But as soon as Steele tries to put one flap behind him, he jumps head first into another.

Politics Daily:

Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele -- who really can't afford another 'holy ----" story after a GOP staffer dropped $1,900 at a lesbian-bondage themed Hollywood club and a top conservative called for an RNC donor boycott -- has hired a new "special assistant for finance."

Although described by many as a smart, gifted and glib fundraiser, Neil S. Alpert, 31, who began work on March 29, probably won't do much to burnish Steele's image as a money manager.

This is the same Neil S. Alpert who in July 2007 was ordered by the District of Columbia government to repay nearly $70,000 in unauthorized expenses and unaccounted money from a pair of local baseball groups he had chaired. He was also fined $4,000.

"Several [D.C. Baseball] PAC and association board members and advisers told me they wanted the matter referred to the U.S. Attorney's Office for prosecution," writes PD's Annie Groer, "but that they understood $70,000 was 'too small' an amount for law enforcement to pursue. They also concluded that filing a civil suit would be too costly for the loosely organized, all-volunteer boards."

So Steele fires one guy over an expenses scandal and hires someone who's basically an embezzler. Needless to say, that probably wasn't the wisest way to go. Republican donors could be excused for feeling less than reassured by the moves.

But that's just Michael Steele. Apparently, there's something seriously wrong with the man. Poor impulse control, maybe. He's almost Bushian is the way he just barrels ahead with whatever strikes him at the moment, without any regard for -- or even awareness of -- the consequences. This is the same guy who sent out a fundraising pack with the number of a phone sex line on it, spent thousands of dollars on private jets, swanky hotel rooms, and limousines, promised a "hip-hop makeover" to lure young people and blacks to the GOP (a makeover that resulted in a seriously awful website -- and pretty much nothing else), and then accused the critics of all these foul-ups, bad ideas, and mismanagement of racism.

"Most people are reevaluating whether there’s a way that the chairman can be sidelined so we can get through this without hurting our electoral chances," a "longtime ally of Michael Steele" told Greg Sargent. "If it was as simple as firing the CEO than that would happen."

But getting rid of Steele is unlikely. Two-thirds of the party's 168 committee members would have to vote to remove him and apparently the votes aren't there. Maybe Republican holdouts are worried about how it would look in an election year; it'd just highlight the fact that the committee is in chaos. Instead, they're working on marginalizing Steele, by attempting a private fundraising campaign.

And, even at what would seem to be the bottom, Steele has managed to make things worse. His racism comment isn't going to fly well with a base already tired of accusations of bigotry from the left. He's already insulted small donors once, now here he is doing it again. "It's the worst thing he has done," Sargent's contact told him. "This kind of thing drives small donors crazy. People will grin and bear [Steele] as much as they can -- until the fundraising dries up." I remind you, this person is described as a "longtime ally of Michael Steele." Imagine what his actual enemies are saying.

So if Democrats are heading for a crash in November, they may have RNC chairman Michael Steele as an airbag. The GOP's fundraising has always been party-centric; switching that to a private campaign in an election year will be a real problem for them. Democrats have a good extra-party funding apparatus through unions and groups like MoveOn.org and the GOP may find that difficult, if not impossible, to match. And, despite the fact that Democrats are down in the polls, they're still doing better on the fundraising front than Republicans.

When the smoke clears on election day, Democrats may very well find themselves battered and bruised. But, thanks in part to Michael Steele, they'll probably be able to say one thing about it honestly.

"It could've been worse."

-Wisco


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A Conservative Fundraising Plan I Can Get Behind

Guess what? The Republican National Committee's recent bondage-themed strip club scandal has the religious right up in arms. Who would've guessed? For the bluenoses, it seems the whole thing is a double-whammy; you've got an expenditure that borders on embezzlement and you've got boobs, lesbianism, whips, and chains.

Yeah, I guess it's not so surprising after all.

For their part, the party's fighting back. Unfortunately, they're doing it poorly. Andy Barr reports on an email that the RNC sent to Politico (and, you've got to assume, other news organizations) that points the finger at Democrats.

In hopes of redirecting incoming fire about its spending habits, the Republican National Committee on Wednesday tried to turn scrutiny to the spending habits of the Democratic National Committee but came up with nothing nearly as risque as almost $2,000 in expenses for a night out at a bondage club and on private planes.

It tallied up, instead, two years worth of catering, luxury hotels and limousine bills.

[...]

"The DNC spent at least $2,204,000 for luxury hotels and caterers," [RNC Communications Director Doug] Heye writes at the top of the e-mail.

Barr then summarizes the expenses for the reader and concludes, "The expenses are not outside the norm for a party committee -- nor, for that matter, is the vast majority of what the RNC spends." Of course, it's not the majority of the spending that's the RNC's problem, it's the booze-fueled stripper hootenanny part. And all of the DNC's spending is pretty normal. The RNC shoots for a competing scandal -- and doesn't even come close to scoring. The moral of this story: saying, "Your fly is open" -- then throwing a sucker punch -- doesn't always work.

I brought up the religious right, so I guess I ought to get around to expanding on that.

CNN:

The head of an influential social conservative organization urged supporters Wednesday to stop donating to the Republican National Committee and instead contribute to its own coffers or to candidates with like-minded goals.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, made the plea in his "Washington Update" column posted on the organization's Web site following the revelation that the RNC paid for a night out at a risqué Hollywood nightclub.

"I've hinted at this before, but now I am saying it -- don't give money to the RNC," Perkins writes. "If you want to put money into the political process, and I encourage you to do so, give directly to candidates who you know reflect your values. Better yet, become a member of FRC Action and learn about the benefits it offers, including participating in the FRC Action PAC which can support candidates who will advance faith, family and freedom! To find out more about becoming a member of FRC Action click here."

OK, so it's a sort of self-serving argument, but there's a truism for political non-profits; if you're not asking for money, you don't have money. That's why nearly every communication you get from an organization includes some sort of pitch. As a former fundraiser, I understand this and I don't hold Tony's beg against him. Also, as a liberal who's a former fundraiser, I say that people should totally do what Perkins suggests -- mostly because it's an incredibly dumb strategy.

Political parties have campaign committees for a reason. They deal with insane amounts of money, sure, but it is a limited amount. You don't want to blow all your ammo on races that are sure losers and races you'll win in a walk, you want to take that money and put it were it's most likely to make a difference. To do this, you need a centrally coordinated campaign.

The biggest drawback to Perkins' idea is that the areas that'll give the most to their congress critter are the areas that are least likely to need the money. The districts and states with the most religious nut money are almost certainly red, red, red. And giving outside your district means you're most likely to give because of name recognition. This translates to already powerful incumbents or sure losers trying to unseat entrenched liberals that conservatives hate -- i.e., "Give now and help me unseat Nancy Pelosi!" I'm not saying that you shouldn't give to individual candidates, I'm just saying that if everyone does that and only that, it's a disaster. As I said, the parties put together campaign committees for a reason.

Of course, Perkins' FRC offers to supply that central coordination, but I guarantee those candidates would have to pass a purity test that even conservative stalwarts like Lindsey Graham would fail. He's not as interested in electing Republicans as he is in electing religious fundamentalists. A lot of that money will be wasted.

But never mind all that. To all you Republicans and conservatives out there considering bypassing the RNC, you should totally do that. Tony Perkins just had the best idea anyone ever had in the history of good ideas.

-Wisco


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Reid's Just an Idiot, Not a Racist

Tom Halperin's and John Heilemann's new book, Game Change, seems like a gossip book. Mostly because it is. The authors defend the book against that charge by saying it's all true, so it can't be gossip. But they're confusing gossip and rumor. If the woman down the street has an affair, it'll set off all the neighborhood gossips. It's a celebrity scandal book focused on the political set.

But we'll look less at the gossip aspect of the book and more on the truth aspect here. The big scandal to break out of this book is that Harry Reid defended Barack Obama's electoral chances with a clumsy, poorly-phrased, and not very smart statement about how not-black seeming the candidate was. Republicans are arguing that this is every bit as bad as a statement that got Trent Lott kicked out of his leadership position. Asked if Reid should resign, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele told FOX New Sunday, "I think he should, if the standard is the one set by [Trent Lott]."

Of course, Mike's got his own problems and has to welcome this distraction, but I haven't come across many dissenting opinions among Republicans, so we'll go with Steele's as representative.





It might pay to compare and unpack both Reid's and Lott's statements and see if they're the same thing. First off, Harry Reid, via Washington Post:

[Halperin and Heilemann] describe Reid assessing Obama's strengths as a candidate. Reid, they write, "believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,' as he said privately. Reid was convinced, in fact, that Obama's race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination."

Now Trent Lott:

I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.

So, to unpack Reid, he basically said Obama would win because, although a lot of voters are racist, Obama hides his racial handicap well. Not the best thing in the world to say, but there ya go.

Lott unpacks a lot differently. What he said was that he was proud of voting for a crazy old racist who ran on the issue of segregation, that everyone should've voted for a crazy old racist, and that it turned out said crazy old racist was right all along.

Clearly, there's a difference. These aren't the same statement at all. Where Reid's is supportive, but offensive, Lott's was segregationist and offensive. One of the great tragedies of American history is that segregationists like Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and Jerry Falwell didn't live to see Obama elected. Let's get the first female and the first gay president a lot faster this time, so we can see the antifeminists' and homophobes' apoplexy, OK? In fact, let's shoot for the first lesbian president and kill two bigoted birds with one stone. Bonus points if she's Mexican-American. There'd be a lot of drinking going on that first Wednesday of November.

If Reid's statement had more "I hope he loses" and less "I think he wins," we might be able to accuse him of harboring racist sentiments. I'm no fan of Harry Reid and I think his statement was stupid, but I don't think he's a bona fide racist. He's just not very smart -- an opinion I know will come as a shock to those who read this blog with any regularity.

So, should Harry Reid resign? Not over this. Does what he said equate with what Lott said? Not by a long shot.

-Wisco


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The Mad Neocon

If you ask Dick Cheney, changes in counter-terrorism tactics by the Obama administration mean we're all going to die in a big terrorist attack. And that's what CNN's John King did this weekend; ask Dick Cheney. As always, he was less than convincing. I don't think Dick's capable of excitement and this makes him a pretty bad liar -- his warning of the inevitable destruction of the world's first modern democracy was delivered in the same tone of voice he might use to talk about a flat tire. The destruction of America's unfortunate, of course, but that's just the way things are. No use getting all riled up about it.

Maybe Dick's like Cassandra, who was able to predict the future, but cursed in that no one would believe her. Why knock yourself out with histrionics if no one's going to buy it?

Another possibility is that Dick's not especially worked up over our oncoming doom because he knows it's a bunch of crap. That'd put him in the same boat as most of us, who also aren't extremely concerned about Cheney's doomsaying either. Other than the wingnut right who'll believe anything, we're all pretty sure that Dick's a BS dispenser and we don't lose a lot of sleep over his warnings.

There's a third possibility; that Dick believes what he says because he's a dangerous lunatic prone to paranoia. Cheney's not especially animated at the thought of another 9/11 because he's used to living in a world where disaster is always right around the corner. His lack of excitement doesn't indicate a lack of earnestness, it's just the consequence of living in constant fear.





After all, this is the man who wouldn't let Google Earth display his residence. If you're a paranoiac, the knowledge that satellites really are looking down and watching you must be unbearable. His obsession with secrecy was taken to absurd lengths, when he argued that the Office of the Vice President was actually a fourth branch of government.

Dick Cheney may have said and done crazy things as VP because Dick Cheney's crazy. Take his Vice Presidential Hit Squad. The White House had an "executive assassination ring" that answered to Cheney's office. "Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving," says investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. "That’s been going on, in the name of all of us." It's this sort of that Cheney argues is the only thing standing between us and destruction. He must believe it -- otherwise, why would this hit squad have existed?

"When you go back to the law enforcement mode, which I sense is what they're doing, closing Guantanamo and so forth ... they are very much giving up that center of attention and focus that's required, that concept of military threat that is essential if you're going to successfully defend the nation against further attacks," Cheney told King in the interview.

It's an unfortunate coincidence for Dick that the things he thought had to be done to keep us all safe were revealed that same weekend. In an op-ed for the New York Times, journalist Mark Danner revealed details of a 2006 Red Cross investigation of US treatment of detainees. Not surprisingly, the methods used by US personnel indicate a desperation born of paranoia. These are the sorts of things you'd do if you really did believe the world was going to end tomorrow.

A few accounts from the detainees themselves tell us all we need to know:

– “I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck; they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room.”

– “Both my feet became very swollen after one month of almost continual standing.”

– “A thick flexible plastic collar would also be placed around my neck so that it could then be held at the two ends by a guard who would use it to slam me repeatedly against the wall..."

Unfortunately for the mental health of the nation, there's no shortage of cowardly "patriots" who are willing to argue that waterboarding isn't torture. Let's see them defend these practices; in what lunatic world is physical beating not torture?

"What we can say with certainty, in the wake of the Red Cross report, is that the United States tortured prisoners and that the Bush administration, including the president himself, explicitly and aggressively denied that fact," writes Danner. "We can also say that the decision to torture, in a political war with militant Islam, harmed American interests by destroying the democratic and Constitutional reputation of the United States, undermining its liberal sympathizers in the Muslim world and helping materially in the recruitment of young Muslims to the extremist cause. By deciding to torture, we freely chose to embrace the caricature they had made of us. The consequences of this choice, legal, political and moral, now confront us. Time and elections are not enough to make them go away."

Torture didn't make us safer, it just proved the terrorist propaganda right. We were evil and unjust.

And how does this keep you safe? I'd point out that all of these people were suspects. None of them had been convicted of a crime. If the US government can grab you off the street, stick you in prison, and torture you without having to prove you did anything at all, how safe are you from the government? 3,000 people out of a population of some 300,000,000 died on 9/11 -- that's one in every 100,000 people. One million are on the terrorist watch list -- that's one in every 300 people. Which set of odds do you like better?

Maybe the time has come to admit the truth; there's a good chance that Dick Cheney -- who many believe was the real power in the Bush White House -- is pretty much completely insane. Keep that in mind the next time some media type seeks out his opinion.

-Wisco


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Planet America

Things are looking good for former Bush administration officials. You wouldn't think this would be the case, looking at some of the news stories that have come out after they'd packed up their stuff and left the White House. But that'd be because you think rationally; that doesn't fly in DC anymore. Post-Bush, the nation's capital is still dominated by denial.

Sure, Bush was an abuser of the law and -- under the paranoiac Dick Cheney's guidance -- played a little fast and loose with legalities. But that doesn't mean he actually broke the law and, since we don't know for sure, we should probably forget the whole thing. When it comes to anti-Constitutional behavior, human rights abuses, and war crimes, it's probably best to ignore things -- no one wants to open up that whole can of worms. We used to say that no one was above the law, now we worry that upholding the law might be inconvenient or embarrassing. As it is now, some people are above the law -- but only if those people are members of the Bush administration.

Outside the US, people don't get this. They insist on bringing this stuff up over and over. Out in the big, wide world, they just don't get that the Bush administration gets a pass for anything and everything, because to do otherwise would be bad politics. Forgive and forget. Look forward, not backward. Let's move on. Some people don't get the simplicity of solving a problem by pretending it never happened.

Take David Crane, an international law professor at Syracuse University. As a former UN prosecutor, Crane is a citizen of that big, wide world and doesn't see things through the lens of political expediency and an insular American media. For Crane, the United States is not a separate planet in its own orbit and things that happen in one nation inform and set precedent for things that could -- and sometimes should -- happen in other nations.

In Crane's world -- which, admittedly, is that part of the world that isn't the US -- a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir means that other leaders could be held accountable for their crimes.

Crane says that the Bashir warrant "may even be extended to the former president George W. Bush, on the grounds that some officials in terms of his administration engaged in harsh interrogation techniques on terror suspects which mostly amounted to torture." Turns out that when something's a war crime for one leader, it's a war crime for all leaders.

Crazy, huh?





But has the US actually tortured? We've called what we did "enhanced interrogation techniques." So it can't be torture, because we didn't call it that. Of course, the fact that we've "enhanced interrogation techniqued" people to death kind of puts a ding in that argument.

Griper News:

"[Prisoners] were handcuffed to fixed objects above their heads in order to keep them awake," reads the [Church report]. "Additionally, interrogations in both incidents involved the use of physical violence, including kicking, beating, and the use of 'compliance blows' which involved striking the [prisoners] legs with the [interrogators] knees. In both cases, blunt force trauma to the legs was implicated in the deaths. In one case, a pulmonary embolism developed as a consequence of the blunt force trauma, and in the other case pre-existing coronary artery disease was complicated by the blunt force trauma."

When you've got people dying because of your interrogation techniques, "enhanced" is an understatement. I'd also point out that interrogations are approached from a position of ignorance -- there are things you want to know, which is the entire purpose of the interrogation, and this means there are things you don't know. Among those things, you might reasonably include whether or not the subject knows anything more than you do and whether or not they're actually a terrorist. While many would argue that a terrorist deserves anything they get, not many would argue that we should punish a crime with torture or that we should punish a prisoner for a crime we don't know they committed. The assumption of guilt isn't justice.

But that's all logic and logic is a tool of that big, wide world. It's been banished from the separate planet that is the United States. Our government can do anything to anyone, because that's how they've kept us safe. Logic would dictate that if your government can do anything to anyone, then it can do anything to you, and this doesn't exactly make you safe from your government. Luckily for Bush and Cheney, logic doesn't fly here.

If it did, they might worry about a report on a UN probe of "secret" CIA prisons. I put "secret" in quotes because they're the worst-kept secret the US has -- everyone knows about them.

Of the prisons, Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, said, "We call on all governments to cooperate, not just in clarifying the facts, but in ensuring that such secret detention centres will no longer be used in the future." His colleague Martin Scheinin, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism, went further, calling them "one of the most horrendous practices" that the Bush administration instituted after 9/11.

I'm guessing that Scheinin didn't know about this:

Raw Story:

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell on Tuesday when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that the military was running an "executive assassination ring" throughout the Bush years which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The remark came out seemingly inadvertently when Hersh was asked by the moderator of a public discussion of "America's Constitutional Crisis" whether abuses of executive power, like those which occurred under Richard Nixon, continue to this day.

"It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently," Hersh said. "They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. ... Congress has no oversight of it."

"It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on," he continued. "Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us."

I think the word you're looking for is "murder." When we weren't enhanced interrogating people to death, we were doing it the easy way -- with an assassin's bullet in their head. Hersh says he's collecting enough evidence to convince "even the most skeptical."

But, as I said, we don't live in the big, wide world where any of this is a problem. We live on Planet America, where the severity of a crime depends on the political convenience of that crime's prosecution. And prosecuting Bush, Cheney, and other former White House officials would be extremely inconvenient -- especially for a Democratic congress that refused to lift a finger while all of this was going on. There were no investigations into these international crimes and talk of impeachment was positively taboo. As a result, many of the Democratic congressional leadership are complicit. They may not have liked this stuff, but they allowed it and blocked every attempt to stop it.

And that's why we aren't going to see Bush or Cheney tried. Guilty of war crimes, guilty of murder, they'll make bundles of money speaking to right wing audiences about just how freakin' great they were. There's a truth commission building, but to be absolutely honest, that won't do a damned thing to keep a future group of White House lunatics and paranoiacs from doing exactly the same thing. Nothing short of arrest and trial would do that.

But that's not going to happen here on Planet America, because we want to pretend that the neocons acted alone. A complicit congress of enablers can't be shown for what they were.

-Wisco


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What if Bush was the Peanut Guy?

The Peanut Corporation of America is responsible for hundreds of cases of salmonella in the United States. Investigators found "dead rodents, rodent excrement and bird feathers" in its Plainview, Texas processing plant, prompting the Texas Department of State Health Services to recall every product ever made from peanuts shipped from the facility. In Blakely, Georgia, the story is the same -- Peanut Corporation of America ran an astonishingly unclean operation. All told, 600 people have suffered food poisoning. Nine have died. Calls to the company's telephone number "elicited a recording that said it was no longer in service." For all intents and purposes, Peanut Corporation of America no longer exists.

But the man ultimately responsible for his company's operations still exists. PCA owner Stewart Parnell was subpoenaed to testify to congress. He pleaded the fifth and refused to testify.

Clearly, congress has hit a dead end. Parnell can't possibly be prosecuted, his company is in no danger of ever returning to poison people, and it's time to let bygones be bygones. What we need to do is find out what happened, so we can avoid it ever happening again. And the best way to do that is to put together a blue ribbon panel and hold a third world style truth and reconciliation commission. No one will be charged, no one will go to jail, no one will pay any price, Parnell can get on with his life and we can get on with ours. But we'll get the truth and that's what really counts.

You might've noticed that my little synopsis veered off into crazy town around the third paragraph. Of course Stewart Parnell should be prosecuted -- along with those managers and executives who helped him sell garbage to unsuspecting families. So what if his company is shut down and will never sell poison again? So what if he won't testify? So what if all this has happened in the past?

Parnell lacks one quality that would apparently put him above or beyond the law -- he's not a former President of the United States. Stewart Parnell is just a former Poison Peanut King. When anyone else has committed a crime, they have to face the legal system. When a former President has committed a crime, we have to have a truth commission -- without prosecutions -- to get to the bottom of the crime and let the criminals walk away. There will be no jail time, there would only be embarrassment for the accused -- that is, if he weren't shameless. But the accused is shameless, so there wouldn't even be that. He would face the wagging finger of justice and retire to Dallas a rich, rich man. Maybe hire a ghost-writer and put out a memoir. And his example would do absolutely nothing to prevent future executives from committing similar crimes. After all, the crime without any real consequence might as well be legal -- without punishment, there is no crime.





But this is Sen. Patrick Leahy's solution -- not to the garbage vendor's crimes, of course, just to Bush's. What we need is a truth and reconciliation commission that, in any practical sense, would be a panel put together to write history. They'd have subpoena power and the ability to prosecute perjury, but no power to prosecute the underlying crimes. We'd get the truth, while criminals in the Bush administration get off scott free.

"People would be invited to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments, but to assemble the facts," Leahy said. "If needed, such a process could involve subpoena powers, and even the authority to obtain immunity from prosecutions in order to get to the whole truth."

Some find Leahy's suggestion a frustratingly wrongheaded. "There's no question that torture occurred here," constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann tuesday. "There's no question that it was a war crime. And so the only reason to have a commission of this kind is to avoid doing what we're obligated to do under a treaty."

"It is shameful that we would be calling for this type of commission..." Turley continued. "We're obligated to investigate. This whole discussion in front of the whole world is basically saying that we are not going to comply with the promise we made, not to ourselves, but to the world." Not surprisingly, law professor Turley is absolutely correct about our obligations under international law. Prosecuting torture is not optional. In other words, Leahy's solution is most likely illegal.

"At the end of the day, no one believes that people will be prosecuted for a known war crime -- and when we do that then we will become accessories," Turley said. "Those crimes of President Bush will become our crimes. His shame will become our collective shame."

Even worries that prosecutions would be politically unfeasible are misplaced. A USA Today/Gallup poll finds that about two thirds support investigations and, of those who want probes into Bush crimes, about 61% want to see prosecutions. In fact, more people (34%) would rather do nothing than those who'd like to see Leahy's proposal (24%). And it's hard to imagine that many who preferred Leahy's idea would be heartbroken if there were prosecutions. I think if you polled people and asked them which solutions they opposed most, you'd probably wind up with very different numbers.

If Leahy's truth and reconciliation commission is the best we get, I'll take it. But it's not the best we can do. We can hold criminals accountable for their crimes, no matter who they are or what position they used to hold. It doesn't matter if they were the president of a peanut company or President of the United States, the law is for everyone and applies to everyone. We shouldn't let crimes go unpunished unless we've got a damned good reason to do so.

In the case of George W. Bush and his administration, that "damned good reason" just isn't there. As I said, if you don't punish a crime, then it might as well be legal. With Leahy's proposal, some future president considering crime could look back in history and say, "Let's go ahead and do it, the worst that could happen is that we wind up like Bush."

No one fears the wagging finger of justice.

-Wisco