Monday, March 26, 2007

Fire Monica Goodling

Justice Department official Monica Goodling said through her attorney on Monday that she will invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid answering questions about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last December.

While Ms. Goodling unquestionably has a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, that is not the same as a right to work in the United States Department of Justice.

The people who work in the Justice Department control the powerful and potentially oppressive machinery of federal law enforcement. The standard for employment in that bureaucracy ought to be higher than "not found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."

If President Bush doesn't fire Monica Goodling, it will appear that he is endorsing a cover-up of illegal conduct by Justice Department officials. He can contend that the House and Senate hearings into the firing of U.S. attorneys are a partisan witchhunt, but that's for the voters to decide. No president has the right or the constitutional power to impede an investigation by the elected representatives of the people of the United States.

Any Justice Department official who refuses to testify before Congress should resign or be fired. Monica Goodling has to go.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "Fred Fielding's bad day."

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Tuesday, March 20, 2007

U-turn for the Straight Talk Express

Senator John McCain told the New York Times he is reconsidering his support for the immigration reform proposals he so proudly co-sponsored last year with Senator Ted Kennedy.

What caused the Straight Talk Express to hit the brakes? A visit to Iowa, where the senator was pounded by questions from frustrated and angry Iowa Republicans who demanded to know why current immigration law is going unenforced and what he intends to do about it.

“Immigration is probably a more powerful issue here than almost anyplace that I’ve been,” Senator McCain told the Times.

Where has he been?

"Comprehensive immigration reform" is so dead, the only question left is whether to bury it in Texas or the Bahamas.

Here's some free advice for candidates seeking the presidency: If you want a job taking care that the laws are faithfully executed, it's a good idea to come out in favor of law enforcement. Try sticking up for the Border Patrol agents who have been prosecuted and jailed by the Bush administration for aggressive acts against border-crossing drug-running criminals.

And here's a tip for voters who are fed up: Immigration policy in the United States can be changed by constitutional amendment, and the Constitution can be amended without the approval of the House, the Senate, the President, or the U.S. Supreme Court. Read more about it in "How to Get Congress to Foot the Bill for Illegal Immigration, and Fast" at www.SusanShelley.com.



Copyright 2007

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Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Al Gore's quality control

Former Vice President Al Gore was in London on Monday to promote his Current TV channel. It's designed "to democratize the medium of television and open it up to voices," he explained, "so people can join the global conversation."

Gore criticized what he called mainstream television as "a conversation that shuts out individuals."

With characteristic modesty, Gore compared Current TV to the invention of the printing press. He said it could help save democracy.

Current TV, which reaches forty million homes in the U.S. but isn't necessarily watched in any of them, is a compilation of three-to-eight minute "pods" on current events. Two-thirds of the content is produced by media professionals and includes such sure-fire ratings winners as a documentary about the slums of Nairobi.

I know what you're thinking, but no, neither Angelina Jolie nor Madonna are adopting any children there. The former vice president would just like you to see a documentary about the slums of Nairobi.

Look, do you want to save democracy or not?

Current TV's gimmick is that one-third of the programming is user-generated. But it's not wild and free like YouTube. It works like this: viewers send in their videos, professionals at Current TV throw most of them out, the survivors are edited and packaged, and the final product is broadcast on the channel.

The former vice president says Current TV's mission is to help to reclaim television from the hands of a few powerful media moguls, but it appears the real mission is to substitute his preferences for theirs. He doesn't seem very interested in open forums.

Gore describes Internet video sites like YouTube as "a million different videos, some of which are the family dog--and a family you don't even know, and the dog's not very interesting." He describes Current TV as "the highest quality, best produced, most fascinating, most compelling material that still reflects that raw creativity and fresh perspective of individuals."

Al Gore sounds a lot like one of those PBS pledge week hosts, pleading with viewers for donations to support the fine programs no one could sell to Arts & Entertainment or the Discovery Channel, pleading during a break in the salute to Broadway musicals scheduled by PBS in order to draw an audience for the sales pitch.

Maybe Tommy Tune and Angela Lansbury can save democracy. Current TV should call them.


Copyright 2007

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Make it payable to Barney Frank

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank let it be known on Wednesday that he is thinking about a bill to repeal last fall's ban on online gambling.

The congressman's spokesman, Steven Adamske, said Rep. Frank is considering legislation, though he hasn't drafted a bill and he has no timetable for action. He's still thinking it over.

Apparently Chairman Frank has decided to furnish his office with bales of hundred-dollar bills.

The chairman could have made a principled statement that he opposes the federal government's intrusive meddling into the online recreational activities of U.S. citizens. But he didn't. Public office isn't about principle. It's about fund-raising.

How much money will Chairman Frank raise from the Internet gambling companies that saw their stock prices collapse when Republicans mistakenly thought the GOP base would be energized by a firm moral stand against online poker?

Will he enjoy cashing their checks as much as he'll enjoy cashing the checks from the anti-gambling moralists who also oppose gay rights?

Only he knows.

Will he take everybody's money and then turn the online gambling ban into a patchwork of regulations that can be endlessly amended and adjusted whenever Chairman Frank needs a cash infusion?

Bet on it.


Copyright 2007

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Pete Rose: Yes, I did

Pete Rose admitted on ESPN Radio's "Dan Patrick Show" Wednesday that he bet on baseball while he was managing the Cincinnati Reds.

"I bet on my team every night. I didn't bet on my team four nights a week," Rose said.

That's his defense to allegations that he tipped gamblers to the likely outcome of games by sometimes betting on the Reds to win and sometimes not betting at all. No one has alleged, or would be likely to believe, that Rose ever bet against his team and threw a game.

Now Major League Baseball will have to decide if Pete Rose, who might be the greatest player the game has ever seen, will continue to be banned from the profession for breaking the well-known and ironclad rule against gambling on baseball.

This is a problem.

Major League Baseball doesn't allow team employees to gamble on baseball games, because if fans see a manager pull a pitcher or walk a hitter, they should always believe that decision was made in an effort to win the game, not a bet.

It would devastate the game if fans started to think a player or manager was trying to win by no more than one run, or was trying to hold the score down to stay below an over/under number.

If insiders are going to gamble on baseball, it is absolutely imperative that fans never find out about it.

And now Pete Rose has admitted it openly.

This is where you have to take your hat off to NBA Commissioner David Stern, who may have handled a similar problem so quietly and smoothly that you need X-ray vision to see what happened.

Fortunately, Superman willed his X-ray vision to America Wants to Know.

When Michael Jordan announced his first retirement from basketball, on October 6, 1993, one of the reporters at the news conference asked him if he would ever consider coming back.

Jordan responded that he would have to see "if David Stern lets me back."

Nobody had been talking about the NBA commissioner. The subject of the day was Michael Jordan's decision to retire from basketball.

Why would Michael Jordan even be thinking about David Stern at a time like that?

Lo and behold, on March 18, 1995, Michael Jordan announced that he was coming back. By coincidence, or perhaps not by coincidence, the announcement was made nine days after the Wall Street Journal published an article suggesting that cocaine had played a role in the death of Celtics star Reggie Lewis two years earlier.

A cynic might deduce that David Stern gave Michael Jordan a secret suspension for gambling, then welcomed him back in a flood of good publicity as soon as he needed one.

No such luck for the officials of Major League Baseball, now reduced to debating whether cheating with steroids is worse than gambling on baseball. The fans found out, and now the question is before the country, the Congress, and the ghosts of baseball history:

Does the game have any integrity, or not?

Watch for Commissioner Bud Selig to blame everything on Michael Jordan's minor-league stint with the White Sox. Anyone in his right mind would want this to be David Stern's problem.


Copyright 2007

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Fred Fielding's bad day

White House counsel Fred Fielding was on Capitol Hill today meeting with House and Senate committee staff members. They discussed requests for testimony from White House adviser Karl Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers.

The topic of the day was the firing of U.S. attorneys and the extent to which White House political calculations may have influenced those dismissals. While there is no question that the president has the power to fire federal prosecutors with or without cause, it would be a high crime if the prosecutors were fired because they stood up to improper political pressure to prosecute Democrats and let Republicans off the hook.

We don't know if that's the case, by the way. In New Mexico, for instance, where U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was criticized for failing to bring charges against people who were allegedly engaging in vote fraud, there may actually have been vote fraud, and the pressure to bring charges over it might have been perfectly reasonable.

But that's another subject.

The more interesting question is whether the White House will try to claim executive privilege to prevent Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and others from testifying under oath on Capitol Hill.

It's more a political question than a legal one. In fact, executive privilege is fiction. There is no presidential privilege against a subpoena from the U.S. Congress, which is explicitly empowered by the U.S. Constitution to impeach the president, the vice president, and all civil officers of the United States. The power to impeach necessarily includes the power to investigate. It is fantasy to believe that the targets of a potential impeachment have some unwritten constitutional authority to impede a congressional investigation by refusing to testify or turn over documents.

President Bush has demonstrated in the past that he understands this perfectly well (See "Senate Republicans fire the big gun.") In any negotiation with Congress over documents and sworn testimony, his only leverage is his ability to convince the House and Senate committee chairmen to back down. When the Republicans held the majorities, he could argue that opening this or that can of worms was bad for the country or would reveal secrets that would help the enemy. He could argue, though not publicly, that certain campaign fund-raising trips might be scheduled for GOP lawmakers who saw the wisdom of his argument, or canceled for those who didn't.

But now that Democrats hold the majorities and the subpoena power, the argument has to made differently. Now the president has to rely on the threat that he will demonize the investigators as vengeful political hacks who are spending their time hounding him when they should be working on... well, you know, you've heard this before.

And if the Democrats start issuing subpoenas, you're going to hear it again.

The truth is, there is nothing the president can do to stop the Democrats from grilling his top aides under oath. If the committee chairmen make any concessions to Fred Fielding and agree to limit their subpoenas, it will be because they have judged that it is not in their interest to impeach the president. Investigations, once opened, can be very difficult to close.


Copyright 2007

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Saturday, March 10, 2007

Dim Dems diss dum-dum

Nevada Democratic Party Chairman Tom Collins and Nevada Senator Harry Reid sent a letter Friday to Fox News Channel informing the network that they are canceling a planned presidential debate which Fox News was co-sponsoring.

Why? Because in a speech Thursday night which was televised on C-SPAN, Fox News President Roger Ailes made this joke: "And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don't know if it's true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, 'Why can't we catch this guy?'"

For those of you who may be comedy-challenged, America Wants to Know will now explain that joke.

The premise of the joke is that President Bush is too stupid to know the difference between Obama and Osama. The picture you should have in your head when you hear that punch line is one of President Bush, clueless and confused, getting the leader of Pakistan on the phone to find out why a terrorist on the move has not been caught.

The joke has nothing to do with race, nothing to do with Democrats, nothing to do with Senator Barack Obama.

It's a dum-dum joke on the president.

But the fine folks at the Nevada Democratic Party are so viscerally hostile to Fox News Channel that they flipped out at the mention of Senator Obama's name and instantly assumed he had been insulted.

"Comments made last night by Fox News President Roger Ailes in reference to one of our presidential candidates went too far. We cannot, as good Democrats, put our party in a position to defend such comments," the Democrats wrote.

So blinding is their rage at Fox News that they couldn't see, even the next day, that the president of Fox News joked that the president of the United States is a moron.

Of course, Ailes did phrase it gently, saying "I don't know if it's true."

Still.

It's a dum-dum joke on the president, from the head of the Fox News Channel.

And the Democrats, who should have enjoyed it immensely, missed it completely.

And they carp about intelligence failures.


Copyright 2007

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Friday, March 09, 2007

Affairs of State update

"Are we in love or just friends?"



It's been a while since a camera caught Laura looking at him like that.

For those of you who haven't been to the grocery store lately, here's your tabloid update:

The Globe's latest front-page story on the Bush marital troubles says lawyers for the couple are putting the finishing touches on a $10-million divorce settlement. It reportedly (if that's not too strong a word) calls for Mrs. Bush to stick by her husband's side until six months after he leaves office, at which time she will get a divorce, a five-bedroom house along with a paid staff to run it, and a lot of cash.

Then, if fairy tales do come true, the Secretary of State will become NFL Commissioner, the president will become Baseball Commissioner, the first lady will run for the U.S. Senate, and they'll all live happily ever after.

Until one of them writes a book.


Copyright 2007

Source note: The photograph, by Jim Young for Reuters, was captioned "U.S. President George W. Bush (R) looks at Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the State Department in Washington February 27, 2007." It can be found at this link:
http://news.yahoo.
com/photo/070227/ids_photos_ts/r3658300785.jpg


Editor's note: You might be interested to read the earlier posts, "Laura Bush's cover story" and "All right, let's dish."

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A little privacy, please?

As predicted almost everywhere, the FBI abused the authority Congress gave it under the Patriot Act to issue "national security letters" and secretly compel banks, phone companies and Internet service providers to give your private records to the federal government.

Here's a link to the report of the Justice Department's inspector general, here's a link to the Washington Post story, and here's a link to the Farmer's Almanac page predicting that the sun will rise in the east.

FBI Director Robert Mueller, looking edgy and uncomfortable, told reporters Friday that even though it's all his fault and he takes full responsibility, he will not resign.

Here's a link to the Farmer's Almanac predicting that the sun will set in the west.

It's long past time for the people of the United States to get serious about privacy rights and amend the Constitution to guarantee them.

Did you think the Constitution already protects the right to privacy?

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you really should read "Why There is No Constitutional Right to Privacy, And How to Get One" at www.SusanShelley.com.

Copyright 2007

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Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Patrick Fitzgerald does his job

Columnist Robert Novak was on Fox News Channel, an hour after a Washington D.C. jury found Scooter Libby guilty on four of five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, criticizing the idea of independent prosecutors.

Independent prosecutors have no supervision, Novak said, and they run wild. No law was broken when CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson's identity was leaked to the press, and the investigation should have ended there, instead of proceeding for years and eventually catching vice presidential aide Scooter Libby in a lie, for which he was prosecuted.

Novak said this is the kind of thing that led Congress to abolish the Independent Counsel act.

There's just one thing wrong with his analysis.

Patrick Fitzgerald wasn't appointed by the Justice Department to find out if a law had been broken. He was appointed so the Bush administration, the Congress, and the Senate could all refuse to talk about or investigate the possible mischaracterization of pre-war intelligence by saying, "I'm sorry, but there's an ongoing criminal investigation and I simply can't comment."

Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed to push the issue past the 2004 election.

Which he did.

Nice job.

Too bad about Scooter. Nice guy.

Today White House spokeswoman Dana Perino had trouble keeping a straight face as she told the press that the administration still will not comment on any aspect of the case because it is still an ongoing criminal matter. She cited the intention of Libby's lawyers to ask for a new trial and file an appeal.

If the Republicans still ran the House and Senate, they'd probably echo that.

We'll see if the Democrats do. It's not an easy call, because if they begin to investigate the use of pre-war intelligence, they may find evidence that the vice president, and perhaps the president, deliberately misled the U.S. Congress in order to obtain an authorization for an invasion of Iraq.

And if that happens, they will have to start impeachment proceedings.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier post, "The secret of the energy task force records."


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Sunday, March 04, 2007

Singing along in Selma

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were in Selma, Alabama, today to speak at black churches. The occasion was the forty-second anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the day hundreds of civil rights protesters were attacked by police with bullwhips and billy clubs as they attempted to march in defiance of Alabama Governor George Wallace's ban on protest marches.

Both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama sounded a little awkward as they forced the cadences of the pulpit into their speech patterns. Senator Obama was better at it. Senator Clinton looked heavily coached, like a drama student struggling to please a director who has finally given up and just shown her how to do it.

She's from Park Ridge. She can't say things like "a body does get tired." It makes her sound like an understudy in Maine Township East High School's production of "Show Boat."

Senator Obama told a long and convoluted story about his background to prove that he wouldn't have been born if not for the marchers in Selma, and the crowd appeared to eat it up.

The most surprising thing in the speeches was the huge ovation Senator Obama received when he took a page from Bill Cosby's act and called on African-American parents to teach their kids different values. He called on parents to "turn off the television set and put away the Game Boy and make sure that you're talking to your teacher and that we get over the anti-intellectualism that exists in some of our communities where if you conjugate your verbs and if you read a book that somehow means you are acting white."

The congregation roared with approval. They applauded. They cheered.

Bill Cosby didn't get that reception.

Maybe the Obama campaign papered the house with supporters.

Both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama talked about the groundbreaking, ceiling-shattering nature of their presidential campaigns and gave credit to the civil rights pioneers who made them possible, which reminds me that this is a good time to remind you that the U.S. Constitution has never actually been amended to ban race and gender discrimination.

Civil rights laws in the United States are secured in the Constitution by a judicial interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that was pulled right out of the air and has no foundation in the actual history of the Fourteenth Amendment.

It's unfinished business that we really ought to attend to.

Until we amend the Constitution to ban race and gender discrimination, civil rights will continue to be at risk every time a Supreme Court justice retires. Rights that are interpreted into the Constitution can be interpreted out of the Constitution.

That's why Senator Ted Kennedy asked Chief Justice nominee John Roberts during his confirmation hearings if he accepts the constitutionality of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Nobody asked him if he thinks women have the right to vote or if he believes states have the right to permit slavery. Those things were settled with constitutional amendments, so it doesn't matter what he thinks, he can't do anything about it.

A constitutional amendment puts an issue beyond the reach of any court or Congress.

Read more about it in the appendix to The 37th Amendment, "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing," or read a much shorter version in this 2002 article, "A Retirement Plan for Sandra Day O'Connor."


Copyright 2007

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Saturday, March 03, 2007

Rudy Giuliani hits the right note

There's a scene in Gone With the Wind in which Rhett Butler, having spent months courting the good opinion of Atlanta's most respected dowagers so that his baby daughter will not grow up as a social outcast, finally wins them over.

"There must be a lot of good in a man who cares so much about a child," one of the stout pillars of society declares. And that ends the argument. If she says Rhett Butler is all right, Rhett Butler is all right.

Something similar happened at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington on Friday.

Conservative columnist George Will gave Rudy Giuliani an introduction so glowing that the former mayor's former wives must have been throwing things at the television set.

On taxes, on crime, on welfare, George Will celebrated Rudy Giuliani's record as mayor as the finest conservative governance the country has known since Calvin Coolidge.

You may not remember this, but the folks at CPAC do: Calvin Coolidge was Ronald Reagan's favorite president.

George Will told the audience that Rudy Giuliani is a Margaret Thatcher conservative.

That won Mr. Giuliani a tremendous ovation from the conservative crowd, and it may very well be that Mr. Will has just ended the argument.

The argument, if you don't follow these things closely, was that conservatives would never, never support Rudy Giuliani for president because he supports abortion rights and gay rights, because he's been divorced twice, and because he generally can't be counted on to promote the social agenda of religious conservatives.

But it appears there are at least three reasons that this is not the case.

First, as George Will explained at length, Rudy Giuliani is no liberal.

Second, conservatives who want to win know that Rudy Giuliani is more likely to capture swing voters than a fiercely anti-abortion candidate would be.

Third, and this might be wishful thinking, it may be that some voters who thought it would be good to have a religious conservative in the White House have discovered there is a downside to having a president who talks to Jesus when he should be listening to Colin Powell.

Rudy Giuliani has demonstrated an ability to hit just the right note when discussing the appropriate response to terrorist attacks. After September 11th, when a Saudi prince offered New York City a ten million dollar donation accompanied by a letter suggesting that the attacks were an understandable response to America's foreign policy, Giuliani rejected the gift without hesitation. He told the prince there could never be any justification for terrorism and that it was a repulsive gesture to donate to the victims while blaming them for the attack.

In his speech to CPAC, Giuliani once again hit the right note. Without criticizing the policy in Iraq, he let it be known that he might have done things differently. "Maybe we made a mistake in calling this the War on Terror," he said. "This is not our war on them. This is their war on us."

The former mayor talked about the failures of earlier attempts to treat terrorist attacks as criminal acts, yet he was careful to say that he didn't blame anyone for making those decisions. It was the right note again: no one can say today, with U.S. troops stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq, that the policy of treating terrorism as an act of war has been any more successful.

All in all, Rudy Giuliani seems to be a man with a firm grip on reality. Unless that costs him California, he could be the next president of the United States.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested to read "Why the Iraq policy isn't working" and "The Motive for War: How to end the violence in Iraq."

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