Insisting that God “certainly needs to be involved” in the Supreme Court confirmation process, three Christian ministers today blessed the doors of the hearing room where Senate Judiciary Committee members will begin considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito on Monday.

Rev. Schenck said he and Rev. Mahoney had blessed the same room before hearings for Chief Justice John Roberts last year. That hearing “went very well,” Rev. Schenck said.

Wait. If they’re “not taking sides”, then how did the the confirmation of John Roberts go “very well”? Or did it “go very well” with no regard to the fact that he was confirmed, and what they liked it because the Lord loves Evasive manuevering as responses, (Try it when you’re at the Pearly Gates!) and indirect questions.

You know, I’m thinking that if Judge Sam Alito is not confirmed, (oh. Wait. God takes no sides. Strike that. IF Judge Sam Alito does not provide charming evasive manuevering, and the Senators do not provide weirdly indirect questions) these Holy Warriors can have voo-doo effigies of the “nay”-ing Senators with pins stuck in, and they can return to the Hearing Room and rub “Holy Feces” into the seats. Actually, I think they had better. Otherwise I have to wonder about their committment to the cause.

I remember at its inception, Air America was supposed to be infused heavily with a strong “comedy” component. It had various bits throughout some of the programs, such as a parody of VH1’s “I Love the 80s” that had comments about Iran-Contra after comments about Cabbage-patch kids. They hired some writers from The Daily Show. The skits tended to be a bit lame, and it’s probably for the best that they’ve been etched out of the fledgling little radio network.

But I bring my mind back to “Morning Sedition”, the cancelled program, and how it compares with its replacement … the “Mark Riley Show”, “The Rachel Maddow Show” combined to form “Air America Mornings.”

There’s an earnestness to it, and a dead seriousness to it, and a… boringness to it. I also note a depressing trend that is set through whom is being interviewed here. Morning Sedition had regular interviews with James Wolcott, some musical blasts from Mark Dougherty, and I once heard an interview with Chris Elliott. Who have I heard interviewed, taped I may add, on “Air America Mornings”? I hear the Democratic governor of Montana call Rachel Maddow a “cowgirl”. I hear an interview with Democratic representative Barbara Lee contemplating her “no” vote on the Afghanistan Resolution. I hear Democratic party politicos.

No fun, and bah to that. I guess it’s what the president of the company wants, and dove-tails to his over-all purpose (the comedy was a ruse?). Or something to that effect.

More later…

Pat Robertson once again offered up his spiritual take on current events, and at a certain point I jhave to wonder: why isn’t he consigned to the LaRoach bin in terms of relevance to American politics?

I note that the Trinity Broadcasting Network has recently cancelled Hal Lindsey, author of several extremely prophetic books such as “The 1980s: Countdown to Armegeddon” (why, he sure nailed that one, didn’t he?), because of simple capitalism. The network is trying to expand into the Muslim world, and for whatever reason Hal Lindsey’s furor over how the Muslims’ place in the destruction of humanity sits less well than Pat Robertson’s. Or maybe Hal Lindsey is too much of a nut for the Trinity Broadcasting Network, unlike — say — Bob Larson and his weekly exorcisms.

But here’s what Pat Robertson had to say. Sharon was personally a very likable person, and I am sad to see him in this condition, but I think we need to look at the Bible and the Book of Joel. The prophet Joel makes it very clear that God has enmity against those who ‘divide my land’. God considers this land to be His. You read the Bible and He says ‘this is my land’ and for any Prime Minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says ‘no, this is mine.’ I had a wonderful meeting with Yitzhak Rabin in 1974. He was tragically assassinated, it was a terrible thing that happened but nevertheless he was dead. And now Ariel Sharon who again was a very likeable person, a delightful person to be with, I prayed with him personally, but here he’s at the point of death. He was dividing God’s land and I would say woe unto any Prime Minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations, or the United States of America. God says ‘this land belongs to me. You’d better leave it alone.’

Okay. I now offer my rebuttal. Politics aside, and Ariel Sharon is a pretty complicated person in this regard where you can sway from madness to collegiality, you know who Ariel Sharon has always reminded me of?

I can’t quite put my finger on the reason why.

I heard a quote from a world leader to the effect that Ariel Sharon “casts a huge shadow over Israel.” It’s difficult to disagree with that sentiment.

As for the political situation in Israel: just pray that they don’t end up sending up Netan Yahoo. That would be a disaster.

The Weekly Standars is the defacto official magazine of the true Neo-Con Movement, as exemplified in the goals of PNAC. One can accuse PNAC of having an imperial vision for America. I’m weary of cries of “imperialism” to describe even misgotten American foreign policy, but I mention it because what strikes me is that in their article defending Bush’s extra-constitutional malarky of wire-tapping without the FISA search warrent, Gary Schmitt sticks quotation marks around the word… as in:

Congress passed and President Carter signed the bill regulating electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence collection in the wake of an extended, post–Watergate debate about the so–called “imperial presidency.”

The phrase “so — called ‘imperial presidency'” gives Scmitt. Remember how the Nixon apologists came out of the woodwork when Mark Felt was revealed to be Deep Throat to attack Felt for his whistle-blowing? Pat Buchanan, Chuck Colson, Ben Stein. We never knew that such a thing as a Nixon-partisan still existed. But apparently they do.

I marvel at this paragraph:

One irony of today’s debate is that so many liberals are now defending FISA. Previously, a common complaint from the ACLU and others was that the secret federal court that issues warrants for foreign intelligence surveillance in this country had become a “rubber stamp” for the executive branch. Out of the thousands of applications put forward by the Department of Justice to the panel over the years, only a handful had ever been rejected. Instead of a check on executive authority, the court had become complicit in its activities-or so it was said.

A similar dilema confronts us all with respect to the CIA, a secretive government agency with a … spotty… record. And the Bush Administration misuses it, forcing… well… defenses of long-term public officials fighting the politicization of the CIA. With respect to FISA and the “rubber stamp” nature of the organization: that is sort of the point here. There’s a law set up that sets up a secret and very accomodating court to wink and nod toward the Fourth Amendment. Presumably it has a limitation… the line drawn somewhere aways from where it’d okay a president from breaking into the Watergate Hotel and bugging his political opponent — remember Nixon and his “Imperial Presidency” that kicked off the whole FISA court?

The Weekly Standard, William Kristol his own bad self, poo-poos the entire idea that the Bush Administration may be wire-tapping anyone other than a call coming in from “Al Qaeda” (“Hello, Dominoes. This is Al Qaeda. I’d like to order a medium pepperoni pizza, please.”) The Paranoid Style In American Liberalism, the title is a take-off of the classic Richard Hofstadter essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics. I myself once wrote a cutsey essay, found somewhere on this website but for some reason not popping up when I type the phrase into the search box, with the title that theorized that a new and powerful political coalition could be made of the tin-foil hat crew of the right and the tin-foil hat crew of the left that would save the nation from the mushy “see no evil, and everything is skin deep” center. Thus, when I saw the phrase typed in as a search to the website, I always laughed and wondered if a student required to read the Hofstrader piece would think that I was touching on Hofstrader’s thesis, and base a term paper around my concept.

It is funny how William Kristol stops at the PETA example of the round-up of groups who have been spied upon by the Pentagon. The Quakers make for a far more sympathetic group, at least theoretically. I don’t think the average neo-con readership of the Weekly Standard can stand the Quakers, to be honest. But when you purge Nixon from any wrong-doing, and you can rationalize spying on organizations a little out of the mainstream, you can shrug and say “Who cares?” at the fact that the Portland Police Department actually kept files and kept survelliance on red churches. (Time to repaint the churches green, parishioners!) Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they are not watching you.

Gary Schmitt jumps in further to defend the Imperial Presidencies of — well, in their case it would be Nixon, Reagan (I know they’d be defending Oliver North) and Bush, and a more robust American police state in general by poo-pooing the Justice Brandeis quotation “The doctrine of separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power” as at best a half truth. This paragraph sees the novel argument that By the time they convened in Philadelphia, the bias against the executive that arose from the fight with the British crown was pretty well gone. — at best a half-truth: cue the battle between the Federalist Party of John Adams (British crown lovers) and the Republican Party (French Revolutionary lovers). I see the use of the phrase “Unitary” to describe the ideal Executive. A unitary government? British Crown indeed!

Message Board musings:

An Elder of the “Greatest Generation”: I hate to bring up a thought like this at this Season of the year, and I do not like to keep referring to my Military Years, but I believe in this instance I MUST pass on an old, old, Military Maxim [saying?] that I cannot seem to shake off; there are people in this world who are too damn dumb to live. There, I’ve said it and I’m glad! And I do not care what the Dumbass’s reasons are for going to a war Zone, unarmed, unknown, untrained, and definitely unthinking.

After reading the Post I was completely at a loss to visualize what his thought processes??? must have been like to bring him to doing such a thing. Does he NOT ever watch the News, at least CNN? And the thing about going down to the Mosque is beyond thought and Stupidity… Sorry! There I go, getting emotional again…

On the good side of the boys life I can give his parents one bit of advice on the boy’s future education; Dentistry! that will keep him out of trouble and may just be the Career that can keep him alive for a few years more while doing good things for them and their “adopted” country.
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Moi: I don’t know quite why, but I find myself shrugging and saying “Good for him!”

Stupid? Sure. But at least he did something.
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“Zen” Libertarian-like guy: I’m afraid I must admit that I, as a young Zenman, did any number of really stupid, dangerous things. Things so ridiculously idiotic that I’ve rarely, over the years, divulged the details to any of them. Things so incredibly asinine that I, to this day, cringe when I think about them.

H’mon, you have a point, tho, lol. At least he wasn’t just sitting in his room playing Mario Brothers. For some reason I’m reminded of Lawn Chair Larry who, when they asked him why he tied 24 large helium balloons to a lawn chair and headed for the stratus sphere, said: “A man can’t just sit around.”
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Moi: Farris’s remarkable adventure came to a sudden end on Tuesday, when, apparently realising the danger he was in, he walked into the Baghdad bureau of the Associated Press news agency to ask for help. “I would have been less surprised if little green men had walked in,” said AP editor Patrick Quinn. He was collected by soldiers and delivered to officials at the US embassy, who had been looking for him, and arranged a flight home.

A military official said that Farris’s looks saved him from harm. His parents, who are divorced, were born in Iraq and moved to the US 35 years ago. AP reporter Jason Straziuso said Farris would have been in trouble as soon as he opened his mouth. “He hadn’t picked up any mannerisms or customs. Any close inspection was going to reveal that he was American,” he said.

Um. Am I too young to be allowed to say “Ah. The naivette of youth.”?

I just lost a fairly long and link intensive blog excerpt. And thus, after a small bit of cursing, I… repiece this together again. (Please note that in the famous poem, Humpty Dumpty was never identified as an egg.)

Senator Larry Craig of Idaho has taken my “What if it were Hillary” Challenge:

Republican Sen. Larry Craig is citing Hillary Clinton as the reason he opposes renewing the Patriot Act in its current form, saying Mrs. Clinton is likely to abuse the security measure if she becomes president – unless additional safeguards are built in.

The Idaho Republican told Limbaugh: “You know, I’ve been here a little while, and I remember Janet Reno, and I remember Waco and Ruby Ridge.”

And thus, Senator Larry Craig gets the “Decent Douche-bag of the Week” Award. I do wonder — Did Senator Feingold ask him the “Hillary Clinton” question, or did he come upon it on his own? I note that his premise is false. He is thinking in partisan terms of whose guy/gal gets to do the extra-constitutional malarking. And he seems to think Bush is better than Hillary in terms of how the extra-constitutional malarky is put to use. I guess he likes his Ruby Ridgers more than Vegan War Protesters (or Executive Branch whistle-blowers), to which I say: to each their own, and every politico has different sets of constituencies. We live in a two-party state, I suppose, and he is a politician that relies on the party-head for his continued powers, so he may or may not see the trap he has set for himself, and he may or may not cynically rationalizing his stand against the Patriot Act for the benefit of the partisan Limbaugh listeners. It is sometimes difficult to ascertain where politicos fade in and out with their stated principles.

In the meantime, our awaited Supreme Court nominee came out (big surprise) in favour of furthering the powers of the Executive Branch (though, to be honest, we have no record on whether this extends past Republican Administrations to the realm of Democratic Administrations.)

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration, like other White Houses before and after, chafed at the reality that Congress’s reach on the meaning of laws extends beyond the words of statutes passed on Capitol Hill. Judges may turn to the trail of statements lawmakers left behind in the Congressional Record when trying to glean the intent behind a law. The White House left no comparable record.

“Since the president’s approval is just as important as that of the House or Senate, it seems to follow that the president’s understanding of the bill should be just as important as that of Congress,” Alito wrote. He later added that “by forcing some rethinking by courts, scholars, and litigants, it may help to curb some of the prevalent abuses of legislative history.”

In a purely “original intent of the founding fathers strict constructionalist” manner, the line about “president’s approval is just as important as that of the House or Senate” is a false one. I also note that the powers of the Executive, which the danged Stubborn Legislation being the bone of contention here and the fact that they yield some powers in government, are such that the Executive controls the flow of Intelligence Information to the Legislation. (Yes, that is a slam against the line “They had the same information we did” — a statement that was absurd on the face of it.) I will also note that the whole “wire tapping of American citizens” (and circumventing FISA, a secret court which has from the Carter Administration to the Bush II administration been quite lenient in ruling in favour of the Executive Branch, which assures us that your next phone call from “al Qaeda” will be monitored, and the proliferation of rejected requests that has come under the Bush II administration — well, never mind, Bush has opted to ignore that through means of — wait for it –) Decision came from both his reading into the Authorization of Force into Afghanistan (I guess Barbar Lee’s lone “no” vote has been exonerated, after all) and — heh heh heh heh — an EXECUTIVE ORDER!!! And I ask the question that begins with “You know, back during the Clinton Administration Republicans were blasting Clinton for his liberal use of Executive Orders” (regularly used to save small parts of national forests, for example, from development), and finish the question in the same manner that Larry Craig finished his question of the Patriot Act.

So, a quick look on how Bush “interprets” the laws passed by the Legislative Branch and… it’s not particularly pretty.

The CATO Institute asks the question: “What’s the purpose of the Patriot Act” if, indeed, you can read into any separate bill what Bush has read into separate bills? It’s a good question, and one to ponder as the Imperial Presidency of George Bush continues.

One last note: Dear Russ Feingold, Now is a good time for your principles of civil libertarians to ascend past your principles of deference to the president’s choice of nominees, with respect to Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. Just a thought.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, is was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.

Ah, but if everybody started to write it, the genius Charles Dickens’ famous opening lines of Tales of Two Cities would look like “It was a dark and stormy night”, right?

I think in terems of “age of foolishness” and “age of wisdom” and a post about Science in Politics that I keep meaning to write, but can’t figure out a hook. Except to say:

“As this is written, American liberals have made scarcely a new proposal for reform in twenty years. It is not evident that they have any important new ideas. Reputations for liberalism or radicalism continue to depend almost exclusively on a desire to finish the unfinished social legislation of the New Deal.” — John Kenneth Galbrith, 1952

Which echoes a quote from a couple years ago about how the Democratic Party hasn’t had a single new idea since, say, the idea that we oughta land a man on the moon.

If he says so. Kind of. Sort of. It’s always been thus.

In the meantime, Onward and upward for Science and technology!

Stem cell research. EVOLUTION!!! alternative energy sources.

Terri Schiavo got nobody anywhere politically, did it?

I don’t know where I’m going here. The big Democratic victor of 2005, the new governor of Virginia, won by wrapping himself around Jesus. (Shrug). We march onward, though, in spite of ourselves.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating who disclosed a secret domestic eavesdropping operation approved by President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks, officials said on Friday.

“We are opening an investigation into the unauthorised disclosure of classified materials related to the NSA,” a Justice Department official said on condition of anonymity.

Why? To give the leaker a medal? To give him a parade? How are we going to honor him?

Earlier this month, Bush acknowledged the program and called its disclosure to The New York Times “a shameful act.” He said he presumed the Justice Department would investigate who leaked the National Security Agency eavesdropping operation to the newspaper.

A shameful act, eh?

“Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.”

Why did Bush say that back on April 20, 2004 — if not to alleviate Americans’ concerns that constitutional guarantees may not be in place and evesdropping on American citizens is bad (A tact which he’s dithered on to the position that it is good, and hey! Look! At that April 20th occasion, he stood before a wall of slogans saying “Protection. Prevention. Enforcement.” Actually, why did Bush say this at all? It doesn’t make sense to me to voluntarily lie like that. The time a politician would lie would be when confronted with a question that demands an immediate answer, or if the question is imminent and on everybody’s mind at the shindig — as with Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky”. Bush Administration itself has set up a few safeguards to stop a quote like that from: he makes few press conferences, speaks before safe crowds, Scott McClellan is out of the loop on all matters for his daily silly routine, and he has gay prostitutes in his pool of questioners.

I note that these two books are 50% off, and thus essentially non-sellers, after several months at Borders:

Dick Morris? The man who sometime during Bush’s Great Plunge of 2005 recommended in his column (I believe in the New York Post, though I could be mistaken) that Bush should become the “Environmental President”. (That would be nice, but while Nixon could go to China, he couldn’t spearhead “good government” reforms.) Susan Estrich? Didn’t she manage the Michael Dukakis campaign? Why are these two people given a prime space within our political spheroid? (The answer is in part that Fox News keeps them alive because it fits their political agenda.)

Hillary Clinton has popped up a bit within the chattering classes, as we run into the 2008 election. Thus we get:

“She has the left in her back pocket,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac institute. “She doesn’t have to worry about catering to them. She has to worry about attracting centrist Democrats, the mainstream of the party.”

I’m a bit bemused. Yes? No? I don’t know. This looks to me like a statement made to set in stone. Or by saying it, you make it so (or make the perception be), because that suits the way the powers that be want it to… be.

Meanwhile, I and many bloggers bigger than I (and smaller than I, for that matter) will continue to rave against Hillary Clinton. I personally will not acknowledge her primary challenge — it smacks of a dead end —

I found The Nation’s glowering cover article on Hillary Clinton annoying. It came a couple months before their big “Line in the Sand — we will not support candidates who do not come out strongly against the war” cover. Good thing they got the Hillary Clinton article in before that issue — otherwise they would’ve looked pretty stupid, right? I guess Hillary Clinton is grandfathered in against that rule.

Sigh.

FROST: So what in a sense, you’re saying is that there are certain situations, and the Huston Plan or that part of it was one of them, where the president can decide that it’s in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.

NIXON: Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.

FROST: By definition.

NIXON: Exactly. Exactly. If the president, for example, approves something because of the national security, or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude, then the president’s decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise they’re in an impossible position.

FROST: So, that in other words, really you were saying in that answer, really, between the burglary and murder, again, there’s no subtle way to say that there was murder of a dissenter in this country because I don’t know any evidence to that effect at all. But, the point is: just the dividing line, is that in fact, the dividing line is the president’s judgment?

NIXON: Yes, and the dividing line and, just so that one does not get the impression, that a president can run amok in this country and get away with it, we have to have in mind that a president has to come up before the electorate. We also have to have in mind, that a president has to get appropriations from the Congress. We have to have in mind, for example, that as far as the CIA’s covert operations are concerned, as far as the FBI’s covert operations are concerned, through the years, they have been disclosed on a very, very limited basis to trusted members of Congress. I don’t know whether it can be done today or not.

FROST: Pulling some of our discussions together, as it were; speaking of the Presidency and in an interrogatory filed with the Church Committee, you stated, quote, “It’s quite obvious that there are certain inherently government activities, which, if undertaken by the sovereign in protection of the interests of the nation’s security are lawful, but which if undertaken by private persons, are not.” What, at root, did you have in mind there?

NIXON: Well, what I, at root I had in mind I think was perhaps much better stated by Lincoln during the War between the States. Lincoln said, and I think I can remember the quote almost exactly, he said, “Actions which otherwise would be unconstitutional, could become lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the Constitution and the Nation.”

Now that’s the kind of action I’m referring to. Of course in Lincoln’s case it was the survival of the Union in wartime, it’s the defense of the nation and, who knows, perhaps the survival of the nation.
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Adolf Hitler spent years evading taxes and owed German authorities 405,000 Reichsmarks — equivalent to $8 million today — by the time his tax debts were forgiven soon after he took power, a researcher says.

[…]

Hitler’s troubles with the Munich tax office suddenly vanished shortly after he took power in 1933.

The infamous 1933 Enabling Act gave Hitler dictatorial powers but also helped him win his battles with the Munich tax office for good. The office first declared Hitler liberated from income tax in 1934 and in 1935 absolved him of his past tax debt of 405,494 Reichsmarks.

“That was the end of his tax problems,” Dubon said. “It was all legalized, more or less.”

Dubon said the head of the Munich tax office, Ludwig Mirre, excused Hitler from paying tax only after first formally writing to him to ask permission. An assistant to Hitler wrote back to Mirre: “Herr Hitler accepts your proposal.”

Mirre was promoted a month later to head of the German tax office and given a 41 percent pay rise.

“It’s all so ridiculous,” said Dubon. “But in a dictatorship everything the dictator does is correct.”
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U.S. President George Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for international wiretaps because the court was challenging him at an unprecedented rate.

A review of Justice Department reports to Congress by Hearst newspapers shows the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined.

The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications approved over the first 22 years of the court’s operation.

But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for surveillance by the Bush administration, the report said. A total of 173 of those court-ordered “substantive modifications” took place in 2003 and 2004. And, the judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years — the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court’s history.
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Well, someone has to stop the “Semi-Communistic ideology” of the Catholic Workers League. Right? (Nay. There are “suspicious radiation levels outside more than 100 predominantly Muslim-related sites in the greater Washington, D.C., area, as well as various sites in other cities.”