Note To Meghan McCain: Do Not Try Debating Paul Begala

Ms. McCain and Mr. Begala were two of Bill Maher's guests this past weekend. Needless to say, Paul has a lot more political experience than know how than the daughter of John McCain. So she should have known that when she tried criticizing the Obama Administration for something she knows nothing about.



Try not to feel bad for her, she did accept the opportunity to go on. It isn't as if anyone made her debate the big bad Begala.

Bush Authorized Torture

Hey Truth and Reconciliation Commission, get a load of this. It turns out that the once great and mighty leader, a.k.a. George W. Bush, had indeed approved of torture and knowingly broke the law. The information about this has been out there for quite some time, but leave it to the blogosphere to take notice of it and make it news.

From The Public Record:

A senior FBI agent stationed in Iraq in 2004 claimed in an e-mail that President George W. Bush signed an executive order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other harsh tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees.

The FBI e-mail -- dated May 22, 2004 -- followed disclosures about abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and sought guidance on whether FBI agents in Iraq were obligated to report the U.S. military’s harsh interrogation of inmates when that treatment violated FBI standards but fit within the guidelines of a presidential executive order.

According to the e-mail, Bush’s alleged executive order authorized interrogators to use military dogs, “stress positions,” sleep “management,” loud music and “sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc.” to extract information from detainees in Iraq, which is considered a violation of the Geneva Conventions ban against cruel and unusual punishments.

Well Senator Leahy, there you go. On the record proof that George Bush willingly broke the law. He thumbed his nose at the rule of law and the rest of the country so that he could be "tough" with Iraqi detainees. Now, we know there's damning proof to at the very least indict Bush for war crimes, but I'm not holding my breath on account of Leahy's ability to actually make ex-President Bush accountable for his crimes.

Ex-Sec. Rice Says President Is Above The Law

Although the ex-Secretary of State tried to word her statement carefully, she failed terribly in her answer to a student concerning torture and her involvement in it. Cenk Uyugr helps publicize the exchange where she pretty much has a Frost/Nixon moment declaring the President is above the law.

David Gregory Covers For Bush On Torture, Forgets The Facts In The Process

We know David Gregory hates bloggers. We know he likes to throw soft ball questions for guests that deserve to tell the American people the truth. So I'm still looking for qualities of a credible journalist within the man who's feet are far too small for Tim Russert's shoes. To add insult to injury, as yet another media hack, he is happy to provide a platform for right-wing liars to stand on when it comes to torture and ex-President Bush.

From RawStory:

In a puzzling remark that seems to demonstrate the extent to which the mainstream media tries to "balance" discussions of controversial issues, NBC's David Gregory suggested Thursday that the Bush Administration issued memorandums outlining the torture of detainees out of great respect for the law.

"...Did the Bush administration go out of its way to make sure they were adhering to the law and not crossing over that bridge when it came to getting into torture?" he asked rhetorically.

"At a time when the administration and the President will already be under scrutiny for being tough enough, is this a fight they really want to have?" he remarked earlier. "I would also point you to, if you haven't see this already, the Wall Street Journal editorial page today, which I think raises some really tough points about not only what signal you're sending to the rest of the world, but also to potential terrorists out there, about just what it is that U.S. interrogators would do and not do."

Why he reads the editorial pages of the Journal, I don't know. It would be like turning on Rush Limbaugh and Hannity simultaneously for unbiased news coverage. Gregory reads the wingnut talking points as if it were some sort of truth, when all Bush's people are trying to do is make excuses for breaking the law. Perhaps Gregory should start by reading the reports coming out of the Senate and the Red Cross if he wanted to learn how to expel truth instead of spin for the Republican party.

Bush Catches Rove Lying About "Benefits" Of Torture

It may not have been on purpose but even the ex-President can disprove the pathological liar that is Karl Rove.

From DailyKos:

Over the past couple of days, Karl Rove and Fox News have offered a new argument in defense of the Bush administration’s torture policies.

Now, they say, waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) yielded intelligence that led to the disruption of an al Qaeda plot to attack the tallest building in Los Angeles, the Library Tower (which both Bush and Rove called the Liberty Tower, for some reason). There’s just one problem with Rove’s new story: it couldn’t possibly be true.

As Timothy Noah pointed out in Slate, the Los Angeles attack was foiled in February of 2002. KSM was not captured until March of 2003, however — more than a year later.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that timeline is impossible. Perhaps appropriately, then, here’s a video of George W. Bush — in his own words — proving that Karl Rove and Fox News are lying about torture:

I know, Karl Rove, blatant lying about the Bush White House, who da thunk?

When A Lie Is A Lie Is A Lie

Paul Begala and Ari Fleischer went on Anderson Cooper yesterday to talk about torture. Begala and Cooper were pretty much on the same page, saying that torture is bad, and that the evidence of what the Bush Administration approved of consists of torture. Therefore, we need to take action against the torturers in our midst. When asked about whether Bush was lying about us not torturing, Begala had the easy, truthful answer to give. Fleischer on the other hand, couldn't stop defending his old, indefensible boss.

A Dream Come True: The "Bush Six"

I always love hearing a good story about how seemingly crazy, wishful thinking slowly but surely becomes certifiable fact. Case in point is British lawyer Phillippe Sands who wrote a book claiming that several of the top men in the Bush Administration would be tried in court for their crimes against humanity. The subjects of the book responded harshly and most of the traditional media in the U.S. ignored it. Now however, Sands' prediction is starting to stand on more solid ground and the story caught the eye of the New Yorker this week:

Last week, Sands’s accusations suddenly did not seem so outlandish. A Spanish court took the first steps toward starting a criminal investigation of the same six former Bush Administration officials he had named, weighing charges that they had enabled and abetted torture by justifying the abuse of terrorism suspects. Among those whom the court singled out was Feith, the former Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, along with former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer; and David Addington, the chief of staff and the principal legal adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney.

In Washington the other night, over a cup of camomile tea, Sands described the behind-the-scenes role he played in spurring the Spanish court to action. He paced his hotel room, seeming by turns proud and stunned at what he had done. “This is the end of these people’s professional reputations!” he said. “This is no joke. We’re talking about the serious potential deprivation of liberty.”

A deprivation of liberty is exactly what those men need, and you can add Dick Cheney and George Bush to that list as well. Yet one has to wonder, how did this Brit get so involved in the illegalities of American politicos?

The current torture case began in the spring of 2004, when photographs of abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib surfaced. Sands said that he read the protestations of innocence from Bush Administration officials, who blamed a few “bad apples” for the incidents, with the eye of a barrister. He recalled, “I could spot right away that they were speaking as advocates of a cause. So I decided to find out what really happened.” While keeping up his busy law practice, he travelled to America to interview the key players in what he described as “a writing project I am engaged in on international law and the war on terror.” Many Bush officials, including Feith and William J. Haynes II, the former Pentagon general counsel, who was also named in the Spanish lawsuit, agreed to meet with Sands, perhaps expecting a friendly chat. “I spent two years trekking around the country, finding out that they were manifestly untruthful,” Sands said. “I’ve got a particular bugbear about lawyers,” he added. “If not for lawyers, none of these abuses would have ever occurred.”

Like Sands, I've got a serious bugbear with all of the White House goons that were involved with the condoning of torture. There were some serious crimes committed under Bush's watch and hardly anyone tried to stop the perpetrators. Without much scrutiny, the masterminds were able to blame the little people and expected to get away with their terrible deeds. Now that we have at least one court in trying them, hopefully justice will prevail as Sands predicts.

Center For Constitutional Rights Blasts Leahy's "Whitewash" Commission

Senator Patrick Leahy got a stinging rebuke from Michael Ratner at the Center for Constitutional Rights yesterday. Ratner's fear, which is shared by many, is that the Truth Commission that the Senator wants to go through is nothing a "whitewash" and will only provide an easy way for criminals within the Bush Administration, including Bush himself. Ratner is pissed and you know what, so am I.

From RawStory:

"We’re talking about a whitewash with Leahy. Are we some Latin American country where we don’t have a democracy robust enough to try people?" Ratner said. “[Leahy’s] essentially diffusing the issue so there’s not as much pressure on prosecution. It’s not really going to go far. [The commission is] going to divert us for a few years and we’re never going to see something come out of it.”

Ratner said he and the Center for Constitutional Rights want to see criminal prosecutions of officials at the highest level of the Bush administration, the so-called “principals” who were the architects of controversial polices and signed off on them.

“Cheney has openly said that he approved the water boarding memo and that he would do it again,” Ratner said, adding, “My view is you absolutely have to have prosecutions to have deterrents [for future executive power abuses].”

Ratner is right. Our democratic (notice the small d) soundness is at stake here and Leahy is about to show that we don't have much of those principles behind what we claim to be. Now Leahy has been talking tough and that "nothing should be swept under the rug" but this Commission is exactly what that will do. If we want to get to the bottom of what happened, then what we need is a Judge and Jury.

Under George Bush, Freedom Of Speech And The Press Were The First To Go

We pride ourselves as a nation of being a beacon of freedom, land of liberty, shelter for the oppressed masses....or at least we used to before George Bush became President. As bad as we saw it get under our last President, it was much, much worse. It was obvious President Bush didn't have much respect for the laws, but not to the degree that Attorney General Eric Holder has uncovered.

From ThinkProgress:

Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder released several Bush administration Office of Legal Counsel memos, which show the astonishing extent to which the administration expanded its wartime powers. An October 2001 memo from John Yoo, for example, states that the “Fourth Amendment would not apply” for domestic military operations. The memo also restricted basic First Amendment rights:

In perhaps the most surprising assertion, the Oct. 23, 2001, memo suggested the president could even suspend press freedoms if he concluded it was necessary to wage the war on terror. “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully,” Yoo wrote in the memo entitled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activity Within the United States.”

Thank goodness we have a competent and truthful Attorney General now that is willing to uncover and expose the abuses from the previous Administration. The more I hear from Holder, the more I like him. Of course, I could like a horde of rats in a dark subway tunnel more than John Yoo and the Attorney Generals that he worked for from 2001 to this past January. Hopefully these small nuggets of truthful morsels will keep coming out and ideally, that we prosecute each and every Bush Administration official that willingly broke the laws of our country that are supposed to keep us as free a nation as possible.

Rove Believes Bush Did Enough For Hurricane Katrina Victims

If there was any defining event in Bush's eight years that showcased his utter failure as President, it was the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The nation and the world watched as a city drowned, losing nearly two thousand residents due to ineffective levees, not the actual hurricane. The government response was a disaster. When seen through the ideological lens of movement conservatives (who wish for less government by starving it of resources) the response was a huge success. While that sounds awful, Karl Rove affirmed that callous opinion yesterday on live television.

From RawStory:

Don't be surprised if this causes you to spill your coffee. When pundits began to critique the recent speech of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal in an ABC News green room on Sunday, former Bush adviser Karl Rove declared that the federal government met its responsibilities with regard to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

The following exchange appears on the video below at 2:11.

"With all due respect, the government official who was responsible for managing Katrina under the Stafford Act was the governor of Louisiana and she lost office in large measure due to the poor quality of her performance," Rove quipped.

To Rove, this was about politics, pure and simple. He doesn't mention how FEMA didn't have the funds or manpower to take care of thousands upon thousands of refugees. How the director of FEMA had no training in disaster management does not figure into the political calculus that Rove considers. Though if he really wants to talk about politics, can he tell us which party went on to lose resoundingly at the polls this past November and the midterm elections in 2006? Louisiana was sick of all their political leaders (save for Ray Nagin who talked a lot of serious shit) but the country was collectively disgusted with Bush and the neo-con ideology for which he...and McCain are associated with.

Gates: Obama Thinks More Than Bush

David Gregory had Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Meet the Press this morning. One question he had to ask, as his interviewee has now worked for Presidents #43 and #44, is what differences there are between the two men. So how do you say one is more intelligent and thoughtful than the other in the nicest way possible?



That's how.

Obama Reverses Bush Rule That Allowed Doctors To Violate Hippocratic Oath

Back in the waning days of the Bush Administration, #43 was busy doing all that he could to make our country as regressive as possible before Obama took over. One of those maneuvers was to make the anti-choice religious zealots happy by allowing doctors and nurses to refuse certain medical treatments to patients if they felt some sort of moral conflict. The rule was vague, but gave broad authority to health care professionals to put people's lives (both mortally and not) at stake, such as not giving rape kits to victims because they didn't want to terminate a fertilized egg that a victim had insider her. As of today though, violating their hippocratic oaths is no longer acceptable.

From The Chicago Tribune:

WASHINGTON — Taking another step into the abortion debate, the Obama administration Friday will move to rescind a controversial rule that allows health-care workers to deny abortion counseling or other family-planning services if doing so would violate their moral beliefs, according to administration officials. The rollback of the "conscience rule" comes just two months after the Bush administration announced it last year in one of its final policy initiatives. The new administration's action seems certain to stoke ideological battles between supporters and opponents of abortion rights over the responsibilities of doctors, nurses and other medical workers to their patients. Seven states, including California, Illinois and Connecticut, as well as two family planning groups, have filed suits challenging the Bush rule, arguing it sacrifices the health of patients to religious beliefs of medical providers.

It is so nice to have a President that doesn't kow tow to the religious beliefs of a few that violate the liberties of so many others. Evangelicals will probably be up in arms over the matter, but most rationally-thinking Americans are extremely grateful for restoring the rights of patients as soon as Obama makes the rule officially rescinded.

Differences Between Bush And Obama Seen On The Streets Of Ottawa

One could write a novel's worth of differences between our new President and the previous Executive. No matter the topic, you are bound to find a split in opinion between the two. That also goes for how the world sees the two men. While we as "free" Americans were allowed to protest Dubya in specially designated First Amendment zones, countries around the world would meet President Bush with a flood of protesters holding all sorts of anti-Bush signs and the passion to back it up.

Now that Barack Obama is traveling to his first foreign country (directly north of us), the atmosphere has decidedly changed:

Already, there’s been a noticeable difference in the way the Canadian public has received the two presidents. Bush was wildly unpopular in Canada. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who supported the Iraq war (and later admitted it was a mistake), was lambasted by Canadians as supporting “Harper-Bush” policies. Not surprisingly, Bush’s visits to Canada spurred massive protests:

– “Thousands of protesters marched on Parliament Tuesday, rallying against President Bush’s visit and the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Twelve people were arrested after scuffling with police on the fringes of the peaceful demonstration.”[...]

“Early Crowds Await Obama,” the Toronto Star reads today. “American flags are being hung up around Ottawa in preparation” for Obama’s visit, reports the Ottawa Citizen. Some of the stories today:

– “Small groups of people gathered in the pre-dawn gloom on Parliament Hill in hopes of catching a glimpse of [Obama]. Not even a snowfall could deter diehard fans of the popular U.S. leader.”

– “With stars and stripes flapping in the wind, enamoured Canadians will line the streets of the capital today trying to catch a fleeting glimpse of U.S. President Barack Obama.”

Everyone had a hunch that Obama would be treated better around the world than Bush was, and now we have our first clear indication of that. Of course, it isn't some unexplained phenomenon. Barack Obama actually cares what the world thinks of us and is committed to being a nation among nations, unlike the Deciderer that came before him. "Change" wasn't just some empty rhetorical device that Republicans claim it was (since that is what they rely on to snatch up voters every two years). With an active citizenry pushing Congress and the President (that Obama encourages), we will see that change come to fruition in the next four to eight years, both here at home and abroad.

A Shoe Statue Iraqis Can Be Proud Of

Remember when the Iraqi people U.S. military tore down the giant statue of Saddam Hussein and the giant crowd watched and the lapdog media snapped pictures to show how great things were? George Bush was so proud of himself, he probably thought one day soon that the Iraqis would name streets and boulevards for occupying liberating them. Well that hasn't happened yet, but an artist in Tikrit commemorated him in a bronze statue this month though not as he might have liked or imagined.

From The NY Daily News:

A sofa-sized statue of the shoe was unveiled Thursday in Tikrit, the hometown of the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Baghdad-based artist Laith al-Amari described the fiberglass-and-copper work as a tribute to the pride of the Iraqi people.

The statue is inscribed with a poem honoring Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who stunned the world when he whipped off his loafers and hurled them at Bush during a press conference on Dec. 14.

The ex-President (ah, so good to add that "ex" part) successfully ducked both shoes, but Iraqis and billions of people around the world aren't forgetting al-Zeidi's throw any time soon. Especially now in Tikrit, they can walk by al-Amari's statue and remember it every single day.

U.N. Investigator: We Must Prosecute Bush And Cheney

Just adding a little more pressure so that ex-President Bush and ex-V.P. Cheney be brought to justice for their (alleged) war crimes:

GOP Still Hearts George Bush

As long as the GOP keeps talking about #43 in such a gushing manner and believe in what he believed (unitary executive, destroying the Bill of Rights, etc), then they'll keep losing elections. More of the old fearmongering rhetoric will only get them one thing, more humiliating election cycles like 06' and 08'.

And Now The Work Begins

Yesterday was a lot of fun, even if I did get the stomach flu sometime in the afternoon. The crowd in D.C. was incredible, the speeches and songs were inspiring (save for parts of Warren's invocation) and the day was filled with joy. From the time Obama went to have coffee with Bush to the last inaugural ball, it was truly a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation. Now that the parties are over, it is time to get to work. Thankfully, President Obama already knows that and is doing a fair amount already.

So far:

He's halted the trials at Guantanamo Bay as to review the entire process and get ready to change it.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has put a halt to all of George Bush's last minute regulation changes.

The United States now helps other countries with birth control efforts again.

And it isn't even ten in the morning here on the East Coast. There is so much to be accomplished in the next four to eight years, but I am confident that we are well on our way to mending the damage done to our country by the Bush Presidency, and hopefully the Bush Sr. and Reagan Administrations as well. As long as we work alongside the President and push for a progressive mandate, the possibilities are endless.

Right Wing Lunacy Continues

While today marks the beginning of a new Presidency, nothing has changed in crazy winger land. When you have pundits such as Jonah Goldberg spouting garbage like this, you know that their mindless drivel will continue with Barack Obama in the White House.

What A Difference An Inauguration Makes

I hate to infuse negative feelings on this glorious day, but do you remember where you were eight years ago, when George Bush became our 43rd President? Crying in the fetal position, yelling obscenities at the television, locked in a dark room or maybe being as pro-active as you could and protesting Bush as he cowardly hid in his limo for the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue...all things that many Americans did to pass the time on January 21st, 2001.

It was a sad day for many, joyous for his supporters of course, but a tragic day for our democracy, regardless of party. Not even Republicans could imagine the damage he'd do...and now they get it, as Bush leaves with an approval rating in the low 20s, worse than any other President since public opinion polls were created. Even before the wars, the economic meltdown and evaporation of international goodwill, the nation was bitterly divided during the last inauguration.

From Democracy Now:

More and more, Independent Media Centers around the world are a component of progressive activism. A Washington, DC-based IMC is providing up-to-date information and live coverage of inaugural and counter-inaugural events.

On their home page, this morning they write: "The inauguration of George W. Bush comes during a resurgence ofpolitical activism in America and throughout the world and is bringing more and more groups together in the strugglefor democratic and progressive change. Bush’s rapid effort to assemble one of the most pro-corporate cabinets inhistory has led to increased opposition by labor and environmental groups, students and social justice organizations.

“Moreover, mounting evidence that the GOP stole the presidential election by denying African-Americans their right tovote has created public outrage and is leading to a grassroots revival of the civil rights movement. With the Jan. 20 inauguration only [hours] away, thousands of people are mobilizing to protest.”

It was the largest Presidential inauguration since Nixon's second coming. Activists on the left had some idea that bad things were on their way, but could not even fathom the amount of destruction Bush-conservatives would inflict on our country. The passion to fight him was there though, and it culminated in the overthrow of conservative government (to a large degree) throughout the country.

Now eight years later, minus one day, we have one of the greatest displays of hope and exuberance for the future of the nation. Two million or more are braving the cold and wintry D.C. weather, merely for a glimpse down the Mall to see Obama being sworn in. The parade will be a celebration for everyone there and not one that helps to divide us. Sure, there'll be detractors, that is what happens in any large country. Yet we have not been united to such a degree in a very long time. All you need to do is turn on the TV, the radio or the webcast to see it in the crowds down in our capitol.

President Obama, You Must Do This For The Sake Of Our Democracy

There are so many problems to deal with, solutions to find....but, we cannot just leave the past as it is. The torture condoned and promoted by the Bush Administration may not be allowed to just become a part of history, there must be consequences as well.