The Raven' s Blog, Web Log of Eric Ferguson: First Half of January 2006 Archive

January 13
I received an email that is interesting in light of the Abramoff scandal and the sudden Republican scramble to hide from it. Lisa, who asked that her e-mail be withheld and I've taken the precaution of withholding her last name too, said:

"What I DO know is that it's worthwhile to pester your Republican Congressmen. Mine is the Speaker of the House and I'm on his case every few months. I expect nothing out of it, but I do it anyway. Just this week I felt it worthwhile to congratulate him for giving Abramoff's money to charity (a sentence I threw in to hopefully 'red flag' that e-mail and have his people advance it upwards)--and on the same e-mail I wrote about another issue entirely that I really wanted him to read. Anyway, I like my first impression here and wanted to encourage you, too, to become an irritant to your Republican representatives, if you are not already. I'm afraid most Americans GIVE UP with their Congressmen and don't even communicate with them."

All politicians have some sort of survival instincts, and I predicted that the Republicans' instincts would kick in when their leader was in enough trouble, although the leader I had in mind was the acting president. Can you give yourself a back-handed pat on the back? Anyway, like Lisa, I don't hold back from contacting my elected officials regardless of party because they do respond when the public appears to be strongly one way or the other. You want the politicians you agree with to think they can safely stay on the side of the angels, and the other politicians to at least figure they're bucking popular opinion, which they don't like doing. As evidence, I offer the sudden discovery by House Republicans of the virtue of reform. If they really believed in it, they could have reformed any time before this, but instead they put Tom DeLay in power. Therefore, we may thank their survival instincts for the change of heart, and thank letter writers like Lisa for their instincts kicking in.

What sudden movement to reform? For example, Gil Gutknecht has called for new leadership elections, which might have been nice when DeLay twisted arms to pass that prescription drug bill with the fake cost, or when he got spanked by the ethics committee, or blocked the bills to stop abusive employers in Saipan, or...well, you get the point. I wish Gutknecht had gotten it earlier. Likewise with Mark Kennedy, who proposed former congressmen be forever banned from lobbying. Sounds nice, except Abramoff was never a congressman so that law wouldn't have stopped him. While driving home this evening and listening to some right wing radio, the host announced David Dreier was going to be on later to talk about reform. I missed the interview, but I am glad that at least it's finally on the agenda. They've finally stopped pretending all is well.

So in keeping with Lisa's suggestion, those who made noise made a difference, and we can keep making a difference. Now we have to beat back this spin that both parties are equally at fault, the corruption issue's equivalent of blaming war opponents for the war going poorly. I suppose a 90%-10% split on corruption is both sides, but you'd think Abramoff's status as a Bush Pioneer (he raised at least $100,000 for the Bush campaign) would be a dead giveaway. Apparently, only true if we keep pointing it out.

January 8
Today is the anniversary of The Battle of New Orleans in 1815. The battlefield, which is in Chalmette, was flooded like the rest of the New Orleans metro area. It's restoration shouldn't come before housing of course, but as a War of 1812 reenactor, I hope to one day participate in the reenactment of that battle again. I was there once, in 1988, and had ideas of going this year. I just hope land developers don't try to grab the land to build on.

Some good news and something to remember:

The good news is three of Minnesota's Republican representatives had joined the call to elect a new majority leader. Better late than never, but something I ask all readers to bear in mind is that these guys are the ones who put DeLay in power in the first place. He built a political machine around making Washington lobbyists part of the Republican establishment, and if they didn't like it they were out of business. Instead he turned them in to a cash machine for the party, on top of the the other stuff he pulled like the gerrymandering of Texas. House Republicans were happy to support him or too intimidated to stop him before Abramoff's guilty plea made it look like DeLay is heading to jail. So when they try to distance themselves from him, recall how they put him in power in the first place. If you happen to get to ask a question of a GOP Representative, especially if he's just gone on about how he values ethics or thinks it's time for a change, ask why he backed DeLay in the first place, or why people who put DeLay in power should be trusted to change things.

Last April I had a "blogversation" with a conservative blogger, Dread Pundit Bluto, about Aljazeera. Bluto mentioned Mounzer Sleiman, who appears on Aljazeera, and whom Bluto denounced as a propagandist, as well as making unfavorable remarks about Rushmore University, where Sleiman got his doctorate. Sleiman recently saw the blogversation and wrote a response defending himself and Rushmore. It's too lengthy for a daily post, so I've added it to the blogversation. Click here to go directly to his response.

January 7
This is the fourth amendment to the US Constitution:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

So you see the part where the president, even a legitimate president and not an acting president like what we have now, can suspend thta right during emergencies, wars, or any other circumstances? You don't? That's because it isn't there. Where phrases like "at the pleasure of the president" might be familiar from Indian treaties, they're not found in the Constitution. Even if Congress has passed laws allowing the president to ignore the foutth amendment or anything else in the Constitution, his spying on Americans is illegal. Congress is bound by the Constitution too and can't authorize violations of it.

That simple point makes the arguments that Congress allowed Bush to do what he wants moot, but if they matter to you, you might want to know that the Congressional Research Service issued a report saying Bush's arguments are bollux. Rather than authorizing his activities, Congress intended specifically to stop a president doing what he did. So Bush isn't even finding a loophole, but blatantly breaking the law. Oh, you think it's a one time event? He just did it again. When he signed the new ban on torture, he also issued a signing statement saying he has the right to suspend the ban when he deems necessary for national security. Signing statements are the president's explanation of his understanding of a law when he signs it. In this case, he says the law grants him authority when the whole point of the law was to establish he has no such authority. Make no mistake that torture was already illegal, and this new ban really just reiterates that it's illegal and there no exceptions. None. Yet there goes he-who-should-be-impeached saying the law means what ever he feels like. Bush's whim has become law.

January 3
As much as 11 years in prison, and that's what Abramoff gets after cooperating with prosecutors. That's the best indication of just what they have on him. He's ready to admit giving loads of goodies to big shot Republicans "in exchange for a series of official acts." As someone who has watched in frustration as these corrupt Republicans seem to get away with everything, being detected but until recently avoiding investigation, I can only say yee-hah.

Actually I can say more than that. This shows the importance of getting investigations when corruption is suspected. Getting Abramoff investigated required senators willing to buck their party by investigating their most powerful lobbyist, and be under no illusion that Abramoff isn't merely a way to get to the higher-ups, but he's a big one himself. Unfortunately that's an exception. DeLay was investigated by the county attorney with jurisdiction over the state capital in Austin, TX, and he's limited to violations of Texas law. The investigation of the revelations of Valerie (Plame) Wilson's identity didn't start until several months after the dirty deed, and then only when the CIA demanded it. The House ethics committee still doesn't function, the Senate Intelligence Committee still hasn't investigated how the administration used intelligence, it took a year to get a 911 commission, there has been no investigation by anyone with subpoena power of election fraud that may have kept the acting president in power, nor of the Downing Street memos or 9-21-01 PDB. The investigation of the use of torture seems to have ended with establishing that something happened at Abu Ghraib and looking at pictures not shown to the public, and that's it. Oh yes, not to forget the latest, spying on Americans without warrant or probable cause is a blatant, dare we say impeachable, violation of the 4th amendment. And please note that not only is there not an exception for wartime, but it was written in response to events during wartime, so not only is war not an exception, but is in fact when it was thought likely to be needed.

So that's why Abramoff's guilty plea is heartening. It's a conviction, not an indictment like Tom DeLay, Scooter Libby and David Safavian, and much better than a possible indictment like Karl Rove. This is a conviction of a Bush pioneer who earned the nickname "uberlobbyist" which leads to the heart of the corruption, not an isolated fraud like Duke Cunningham. This guy is connected to DeLay, Ney, and Bush himself. This could be fun.

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who successfully prosecuted Nazis at Nuremberg for the crime of aggressive war, thereby establishing the precedent that starting a war is, in and of itself, a war crime.

"A refusal to look back inevitably means moving forward in blindness."
Philip Alston, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, on the resistance of the Obama administration to investigating human rights abuses by the Bush administration.

"Why is it that strong women are so often called bullies and ballbreakers, while strong, opinionated men are often called, simply, Justice Scalia."
Salon editor Joan Walsh, on the bigoted attacks on Sonia Sotomayor already on the day of her announcement.

"In Minnesota, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has made military ballot protection a key priority of his Department. The result is that twice as many military ballots are actually cast, and half as many are rejected, as the national average in 2006."
The National Defense Committee, in an article on their web site praising Minnesota's efforts to encourage absentee voting by military personnel stationed overseas.

"We're seeing massive resistance to the cramdown proposal. That's a proposal to allow bankruptcy judges to reschedule a mortgage on a primary residence. They're fighting this thing tooth and nail. Now the fact is, the people fighting it are the last people who should get the ear of anyone. And it goes to show me they haven't really learned any lessons. A lot of these folks--large banks, Wall Street firms--they have the attitude that "Heads I win, tails you lose." No matter what happens, we always get ours."
Rep. Keith Ellison, on how the bailed out banks are fighting against bankruptcy reform.

''Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,. Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''
The late --- and correct --- Paul Wellstone, expressing opposition to repealing the law that prevented financial corporations from entering other types of financial business, like preventing commercial banks from becoming investment banks. This repeal was a large part of making the (collapsing) conglomerates possible.

"The facts revealed reflect the way the U.S. government has consistently tried to cover up the truth of Binyam Mohamed's torture. He was being told he would never leave Guant�namo Bay unless he promised never to discuss his torture, and never sue either the Americans or the British to force disclosure of his mistreatment."
Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith, speaking about a British court's ruling that the Bush administration tried to get Mohamed to plead guilty to something, anything, and keep quiet about his treatment as a condition of release.

"We spend hours and hours and hours arguing over $10 million amendments on the floor of the Senate, but there has been no discussion about who has been receiving this $3 trillion."
Sen. Bernie Sanders. I-VT, on the mostly unreported spending by the Federal Reserve to prop up the big financial corporations.

"The AIG scandal is significant and has resonated so powerfully because it is a microscope that enables the public to see what and who has wreaked the destruction that threatens their security and future and, most important of all, to realize that these practices haven't ended and the perpetrators haven't been punished. The opposite is true: those who caused the crisis continue to exert control over what happens and continue to have huge amounts of public money transferred in order to enrich them."
Glenn Greenwald, explaining why the AIG bonus scandal is both symbolic and important.

"Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."
Attorney General John Ashcroft, during a principals meeting about torture methods.

"There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales." Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center, who surveyed scientific research from 1965-1979 and showed that contrary to what climate change deniers keep asserting, there was no consensus on global cooling. That means the point that climate scientists must be wrong now because they were wrong then is itself based on a false assumption.

"We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.

It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts."
statement on the web site of University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, responding to an assertion by global warming denier George Will that they said sea ice area is the same as 1979.

"It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known. But ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
Charles Darwin, whose 200th birthday is coming up on February 12.

"The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events. That's just what creationists say can't happen."
evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, commenting on an experiment that was able to observe a mutation that changed one species into another.

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