Having trouble accessing the new site?
After much hard work we have finally isolated the problem causing numerous
readers to not be able to access the firedoglake.com site. If you try to go
there and receive CPanel page that says "there is no site configured for this
address", then you are one of these people.
The problem lies in the network of name servers around the world that changes
a domain like firedoglake.com into something that computers understand, in this
case an IP address. We are trying to get the situation resolved but this could
take a few days or even a week or so, depending on how long the new information
takes to work its way through the internet.
For people using Windows, I can offer the following solutions to you. First
thing you can attempt to do is flush your DNS. To do that go to start then run
and enter cmd in the box then press ok. This will bring up the command
prompt. From there enter ipconfig /flushdns then press enter. Once that
is complete you can close out the command window. After you are done with that
clear the cache for your browser then restart the browser.
If you are still having problems after that, then you can add a host file to
your system. You need to locate a file called host and open it up with a text
editor (like notepad). This file will be located in your
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc directory. You may have to substitute
windows for what ever directory windows is actually installed.
Once you open that file up, add the following to the end of the file.
38.98.18.100 firedoglake.com
Then save the file. Again clear your browser's cache and restart your
browser. This should take you to the new site.
I hope this helps out and if anyone has a similar work around for MAC then
please leave it in the comments.
A similar solution is available for MAC. Open the file /etc/hosts in a text
editor. Add the following lines at the end of the file
firedoglake.com A 38.98.18.100
Separate each part with a tab instead of spaces. Again clear your browser's
cache and try again. I can not guarantee this will work on MAC as I have never
tried but it does work on Linux so the chances are good it will.
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Please visit us at our new home,
firedoglake.com.
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Leading Democrat Russ Feingold on Charlie Rose:
I was pleased, Charlie, that Lincoln Chafee, Senator from Rhode Island, a Republican -- even though he didn't say he would vote for it he did not rule out the possibility that censure would be the right answer at some point in time. And that's the spirit in which I offered the resolution this week.
Yeah Republican
tower of conviction Lincoln Chafee
did say that, didn't he? I'm sure he believes it. Just like he believes in pro-choice -- and voted for cloture on Samuel Alito. Just like he claims to be a progressive from a blue state -- and supported John Bolton.
Chafee believed it okay, on March 15. But on March 16 he
released a statement entitled:
Chafee Reiterates His Opposition To Censure Resolution
How brave. How principled. Must've had his chain righteously yanked by BushCo post haste. They don't really care what kind of problems Chafee is going to have running in a progressive blue state, nobody is allowed that far off the reservation no matter how urgent their need to distance themselves from Fearless Leader.
Chafee's numbers are
shockingly bad. Yet the voters of Rhode Island get to see another portrait in GOP courage from Lincoln Chafee. And Russ Feingold's censure resolution has not only highlighted Chafee's horrible dilemma, Feingold himself then went on national television and pointed his finger at it.
Can we hear the one again about how Feingold is killing the Democrats' chance to take the Senate in 2006? 'Cos I need a good laugh.
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We're still having growing pains into our new site. Fortunately we have great people working on it and we hope to be back up soon.
In the mean time,
Digby catches DC Beltway denizen Cokie Roberts sticking her finger in the air and coming up -- bloggers:
Democrats are enjoying their miseries. Jack Reed of Rhode Island said to me this week-end "we have a strong wind at our back and all we have to do is get a sail up, any sail, some sail" but they haven't managed to do that yet.
They were interested to see how Senator Russ Feingold's call for censure worked with the blogosphere, mainly, and also in polls. Because Democrats backed away from his call just dramatically, even Democrats like Nancy Pelosi of California didn't want anything to do with it. But a Newsweek poll out today shows 42% of the people supporting censure including 20% of Republicans. So Democrats are feeling pretty good about where they are in all this.
They waited to see what
we were going to say? While there were a few in the blogosphere who decided to sit this one out, the people who took a stand to back Feingold came out looking pretty good. The opinion polls show that there is a lot of public support for censuring the President and it feels like there is a sea change taking place as Democrats (though not Evan Bayh) warm up to the idea of representing what a large part of the country already feels.
I guess we're not so fringe after all.
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When Nancy Pelosi recently stated that she thought things were "going well" for the Democrats she was no doubt referring to polls that show the Democrats have a
16-point lead in 2006 congressional election preferences.
But this confidence presumes that the Democrats will be able to mobilize the GOTV. The Republicans are very, very good at this and I hear a lot of defeatism amongst netroots Democrats that I am quite worried about. It only seems to grow worse as the Senate Democrats prove so deaf to the concerns of their base as evidenced in their petty, dismissive attitude toward Russ Feingold and his censure resolution.
People have come to believe in the past five years that Karl Rove is all-powerful (he's not), that Diebold can steal every election (they can't), that it is just not worth fighting because defeat is inevitable. That is a very dangerous mindset amongst people upon whom you are counting for those 16 points.
Digby:
If the Democrats lose in November, I'm sure [Eleanor Clift will] find plenty of reasons to blame Democrats, but it won't occur to her that the reason people didn't vote for the D's was because the party listened to people like her and campaigned like a herd of neutered animals instead of listening to their hearts, their minds, their constituents and their leaders who were prepared to take a stand for what we believe in. No, they'll blame the "extremists" who want a safety net and a sane terrorism policy --- and leaders who defend the constitution. It couldn't possibly be that their tired, stale reflexive passivity is to blame when half the base fails to turn out because they just. have. no. hope.
Aravosis:
I'll go beyond Digby. When half the country fails to vote because they realize they're not represented by an political party. Almost half the country supports censuring the president. That's not half the Democratic party, that's half the country.
Voter disenfranchisement isn't something you deal with in October, it's something you deal with
now. People need something to believe in, not politicians who shun their values and treat them like some sort of social disease as they dive for the cocktail weenies in the center.
To presume voters will show up for you just because they think they other guy is worse is suicidal.
(drawing by
Matt Elder)
Note: This should be our last post on this blog. Thanks to Blogger for giving us such a nice home for so long. We'll see you tomorrow on the other side.
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Reddhedd did a super job on Washington Journal this morning with Paul Mirengoff of Powerline. They had a good exchange over Scooter Libby and Redd, of course, was shining.
Crooks & Liars has the video.
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Although Nancy Pelosi is not a member of the Senate, she decided to
pipe up and discipline Russ Feingold for daring to challenge the hegemony of the GOP:
"I think that things are going well for the Democrats right now," Pelosi told reporters Thursday, alluding to recent data showing that a plurality of poll respondents would prefer a Democratic-controlled House.
So why, she implied, should Democrats risk spoiling the mood?
She rebuffed the call by Sen. Russ Feingold, D- Wisc., to censure Bush for ordering National Security Agency surveillance of al Qaida contacts with persons in the United States without seeking warrants from a court.
"I have no idea why anybody would censure someone before they have an investigation,"” she said.
This would be the same Nancy Pelosi who, as
Pach noted, sits in the same House of Representatives with some of the most corrupt Republicans who have ever climbed out of the primordial slime and attempted to walk erect, yet she actively discourages Democrats who want to file ethics complaints against them.
Ari Berman, writing in
the Nation:
Meanwhile, Democratic leaders cry out for investigations--but only in their public statements. "The House Ethics Committee must get to work immediately to investigate ethics and corruption cases in the House, including those involving members with ties to Jack Abramoff," House minority leader Nancy Pelosi declared recently, naming DeLay, Ney, John Doolittle and Richard Pombo as deserving of inquiry. Yet according to Bell, Sloan and lawmakers who asked not to be named, Pelosi has specifically told House members not to file complaints. Pelosi, who said through a spokesperson that she has never been a party to any ethics truce, spent six years on the Ethics Committee during the turbulent Gingrich era ("serving my time," she jokingly calls it). Bell suspects that she's worried about retaliatory complaints being filed against Democrats. "There are some members who want to act, and when they bring it up with the leadership they're told to wait a while," says Bell. Congress, he says, "is a self-preservation institution. Members realize that if they rock the boat they endanger their self-preservation. And you can't file an ethics complaint without rocking the boat."
Pombo and Doolittle are facing tough re-election campaigns this November, and the only reason not to do their jobs and wave big, fat red flags around their flagrant ethics violations is incumbency protection. You don't challenge us, we don't challenge you. Their responsibilty to the people who actually
elected them is considered not at all.
Pelosi claims there is no truce in place. Which means what, she doesn't know what Pombo and Dolittle have done? I guess
that's what she has claimed, though one has to wonder what exactly she hopes to achieve in acknowledging ignorance about something about which the rest of the country is only too well aware.
It's the same frigid recalcitrance that paralyzes the rest of the Democratic establishment -- Feingold's resolution rocks the boat. It makes them all uncomfortale.
Too bad. Pelosi should STFU about Russ Feingold and do her damn job.
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Ryan Lizza isn't a complete idiot, his piece on
Gold Bars Luskin is the best I've read and I thoroughly enjoyed his portrait of
McCain's unprincipled backdown from the steel-caged death match with Grover Norquist now that he's eyeing the white house. But since his
TNR piece on Feingold this week is emblematic of much conventional wisdom he is, for the moment, a useful idiot:
Feingold is thinking about 2008. Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, and other Democrats are thinking about 2006. Feingold cares about wooing the anti-Bush donor base on the web and putting some of his '08 rivals--Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Evan Bayh--in uncomfortable positions. Reid and Schumer care about winning the six seats it will take for Democrats to win control of the Senate. Feingold cares about making a political point with a measure that has no chance of succeeding and which, even if it did, would have no actual consequences.
(snip)
So the partisans on the left cheering Feingold appear to have both the policy and the politics wrong. Censure is meaningless. Changing the FISA law is the way to address Bush's overreach. And the only way for Democrats to change FISA is for them to take back the Senate. This week, Feingold's censure petition has made that goal just a little bit more difficult to achieve. What an ass.
Scott Lemieux dispatched the inherent absurdity of this Bayh-esque statement yesterday, to wit: How is changing the law going to deal with the problem of a President who doesn't think he has to obey the law? It doesn't even make sense on its own terms.
But I'd like to address the wholehearted swallowing by the Democratic establishment that this startling little bit of GOP group-think represents. As
Jamison Foser says today (via
Atrios):
Osama bin Laden may be dead? Good news for Republicans: They got bin Laden! New tapes prove bin Laden is still alive? Good news for Republicans: It reminds people of the threat of terrorism! Democrats don't criticize Bush? Good news for Republicans: Democrats are timid! Democrats do criticize Bush? Good news for Republicans: Democrats are shrill!
That's basic marketing 101, no matter what happens it's good for your team. It shouldn't be surprising to anyone that the media has internalized this so thoroughly they don't even know what they're doing; more puzzling is the fact that the Democrats now seem to be doing so as well.
If you're fighting a war you intend to win, you never. Ever. Say. That.
Ever. So when token Democrats like Eleanor Clift step up and say Feingold's actions help the GOP, it can only be reflective of
what Digby articulates so well:
individuals (not the party) who have decided their lives will be made easier if they just stop resisting, lie back and learn to enjoy being throttled. Russ Feingold's fight --
our fight -- makes it uncomfortable for them to do that. Is there any other reason why they should be oh so much more exasperated with our exasperation than with, say, the President himself?
Even Bill Kristol today acknowledges the political efficacy of Feingold's move :
Kristol: I think Feingold has succeeded in casting a big cloud over the President's program.
Wallace: Do you think it's helping Democrats and hurting Republicans?
Kristol: Absolutely, as long as the charge is out there and not rebutted?
Hume: That is absurd. No politician among those who have been thoroughly briefed on this claims the briefings were insufficient and vagueÂ
Rockefeller does not claim that. Rockefeller has said many things about this program, but he has never said that he wasn't fully briefed that I know of.
Watch the tape at
Crooks and Liars. Brit Hume's head explodes. Tell me he is a Republican happy about these charges being made? His only answer is to cook up a lie about Rockefeller, who most certainly
has said
he doesn't have enough information about the program. Hume fumbled with nary a Democrat in sight.
The idea that somehow this will hurt the Democrats in the 2006 election is beyond witless. That Feingold is being selfish, only stoking his own 2008 chances, throwing 2006 to the dogs.
Please. Can someone explain to me how forcing the Republicans to rally around an unpopular President just as they're trying to distance themselves from him is going to hurt the Democrats? Lincoln Chafee knows it -- he's in the fight of his life for his Rhode Island Senate seat, and is notably the only Republican who said Feingold has raised good points and he
wouldn't rule out voting for the measure.
If someone had the guts to hammer that wedge they'd put Chafee in an awfully uncomfortable position vis-a-vis BushCo (who must've kicked the shit out of him over it, because he
backed down mighty quickly). Isn't that what Lizza says they're desperate to do? But they don't. They send Evan "Lemming" Bayh to trash Russ Feingold.
It was nice to see
Dick Durbin back Feingold up this morning, even if he didn't come out and say he'd vote for the resolution. In doing so he seems to be bucking the one thing the Senate Democrats have been quite good at holding party solidarity on -- something they couldn't muster to oppose putting a rabid, Dobson-loving fundamentalist on the Supreme Court.
Is Bill Kristol the
only one who's going to point out the obvious? Not only is Russ Feingold rallying a disspirited base frustrated with lack of leadership on the part of big Senate Democrats, this is a full-on
disaster for the GOP in November.
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Three Years Of Hell
Three years ago tomorrow night was when our news channels filled with images of bombs exploding in Baghdad. 9:34pm est. time will mark the anniversary of the actual start of the invasion.
So where have we gone since then? Well we did make it to Baghdad with little effort. We did find Saddam Hussein. That’s about it for the good points..
Now here we sit 3 years later and where are we. We have lost 2,318 soldiers, over 30,000 Iraqi citizens; spent over half a trillion dollars (increasing by $200 million a day) and we sit here, isolated from the rest of the world. What does our President have to say about the war now?
"More fighting and sacrifice will be required," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "For some, the temptation to retreat and abandon our commitments is strong. Yet there is no peace, there's no honor and there's no security in retreat. So America will not abandon Iraq to the terrorists who want to attack us again."
Basically the Bush plan for Iraq is the same it has been since the invasion. Think of it as football. We see upsets time and time again. A team takes to the field with an over optimistic attitude because their opponents rated a large underdog. Of course that over optimistic team comes home with their heads held down low because they were just upset. I am not saying our outcome in Iraq will be the same because we can change the rules. We can redefine what we call a win. True in war, the only winner is war.
In January of 2003, Saddam Huessein vowed to give the Americans “a war like no other they have fought before”. Many people laughed at that comment. Well there are 2, 318 families not laughing now. In fact Saddam has given us exactly what he vowed. The insurgency is that war which Saddam vowed.
Last fall Donald Rumsfeld took to the Sunday morning talk shows to try and build support for the war. One question he was asked on Meet the Press was about the insurgency. Rumsfeld said he does not believe a “robust” insurgency was something they planned for. Of course it wasn’t. What they planned for were people greeting their liberators and throwing flowers and candy at them. It is not a lack of planning, but rather a lack of perspective.
Prior to the invasion, our President did not even know the difference between Sunni, Shiite and Kurds. He thought Iraq was nothing more than “Iraqis”. It is that sort of monochrome view that has helped contribute to this disastrous nightmare.
One of the benefits I have on IntoxiNation, is having a great partner in blogging who shares my same views. The only difference we have is the fact that I am in the United States and he is in the United Kingdom.
In the U.K. public support for the war has always been very low. Tony Blair is now facing some big political challenges and one way he is trying to gain public support is by fixing Iraq. This week the U.K. announced that they were withdrawing 800 troops from Iraq. The next day the U.S. announces they are sending over 700 more troops. Kind of hard to say we are making progress when we have to offset our allies’ withdrawal like that.
This move by Blair was also done the same week a new Downing Street Memo was published in the Guardian.
Senior British diplomatic and military staff gave Tony Blair explicit warnings three years ago that the US was disastrously mishandling the occupation of Iraq, according to leaked memos.
John Sawers, Mr Blair's envoy in Baghdad in the aftermath of the invasion, sent a series of confidential memos to Downing Street in May and June 2003 cataloguing US failures. With unusual frankness, he described the US postwar administration, led by the retired general Jay Garner, as "an unbelievable mess" and said "Garner and his top team of 60-year-old retired generals" were "well-meaning but out of their depth".
Of course we already knew this. There was a five year project headed up in the State Department, which started under Clinton, whose mission was to deal with a strategy when it comes to dealing with a post war Iraq. This project employed some of the brightest minds in our nation when it comes to Iraq and cost the taxpayers’ millions. What did George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld do with this plan? They threw it out. Instead they went into Iraq with no plan because they were that over optimistic team I talked about earlier. In war the greatest enemy is optimism.
In the past three years we have created a breeding ground for terrorists. We have also destabilized the most dangerous region in the world. We ignored the offers of help last year from other Middle Eastern countries and now Iraq is on the verge of civil war – a war which will most likely span across its borders and further destabilize the region as a whole.
Three years later and we got the President out giving his same talking points. The year may be different but the rhetoric is the same. Today you can turn on the television and see General Casey talk about the war. He is scheduled on three Sunday Morning talk shows while Dick Cheney is slotted on Face the Nation. While the citizens of this country mourn what we have lost, we got the cheerleaders out trying to muster support for a highly unpopular war. If they want to gain support then they should be locked in a room in Washington trying to figure out a plan to get us out of this nightmare.
Cross posted at IntoxiNation
(On another note: Great job Reddhedd on Washington Journal this morning)
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Remember, tomorrow all the cool kids will be watching:
07:45 AM EST
LIVE
Call-In
News Review
C-SPAN, Washington Journal
Christy Hardin Smith, Firedoglake.com
Paul Mirengoff, Powerlineblog.com
Go Redd. We'll be cheering you on.
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FDL Late Nite: The Silent Majority
"A rooster crows only when it sees the light. Put him in the dark and he'll never crow. I have seen the light and I'm crowing." -- Muhammad Ali
According to the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, George W. Bush's overall approval rating stands now at 33%. That's 9% among democrats, 26% among independents and 73% among Republicans. The poll further points out that, since the beginning of his second term, Bush has lost sizable chunks of Republican support. That 73% is down from a 89% in January, 2005. This is the same poll that tells us the most popular, single descriptive word for Bush is incompetent. Oops.
How about Iraq? After all, national security is the republican's signature issue, right? Eh, not so much. According to NBC News/Wall Street Journal's most recent poll, 35% of the public approves Bush's handling of the war while 61% disapprove. And get this: only 4% are undecided, presumably because they have too much to handle walking and chewing gum simultaneously. Oops again.
But aside from Iraq, Republicans still enjoy a national security advantage, right? Look away, Unka Karl (the horror!). NPR released a poll yesterday that includes the following absolutely devastating conclusions in its executive summary:
Democrats win every security debate in this poll and when voters are asked who they trust more on issues including the Iraq war, foreign ownership of US ports, and homeland security issues, Democrats come out on top. The only exception is the nuclear threat in Iran, where Republicans have a narrow 5 point advantage.
[snip. . .]
Democrats have an historic 15 point advantage (52 to 37 percent) in the generic congressional vote, the result of an emerging trend over the last 7 months and serious conclusions drawn about President Bush, the war in Iraq, and the economy.
These results are brought about by independents including mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Baby-Boom college voters moving away from the Republicans and by a crash in key parts of the Republican base. The parties are now running even in the white rural counties and in the counties carried by Bush in 2004. Older blue collar voters - most impacted by the changing economy, and least interested in foreign spending and foreign ownership of American ports - have pulled away from the Republicans.
On November 3, 1969, the spiritual father of today's Republican Party, Richard M. Nixon ("When the president does it, that means it's not illegal."), delivered a speech containing the following famous phrase regarding another failed, idiotic war:
"So tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support. I pledged in my campaign for the Presidency to end the war in a way that we could win the peace."
That was then; this is now. Today, March 18, 2006, we clearly have a new Silent Majority. It is not heard through the establishment media, though it shows up in the polls. And guess what: that majority includes the coveted likely voters. How do you think they feel about the president asserting the right to sniff panties in your home without a warrant?
I think Harry Reid is catching on. Otherwise, he would not have said of George Bush yesterday, "I really do believe this man will go down as the worst president this country has ever had." Representative Jane Harman got a lesson from the Silent Majority yesterday, too, when she got an earful over at kos (as Jane pointed out last night) over chalenging the president on warrentless wiretapping.
Nope. No more silence from the Silent Majority. And while the netroots/grassroots makes noise on the Internet and on the phone lines into the Capitol, the mass of voters will be heard in November. How will Tweety survive?
Take another look at that man in the picture above. In his day, establishment elites like Tweety wanted him to shut his damn mouth. They wanted him to accept his birth name when he chose another. They wanted him to fight a war he knew was bullshit. He refused. To their unending exasperation, he would not be silent. He's the model for today's Silent Majority. Let's get LOUD!
Today's Silent Majority wants to see action from leaders in Washington, not just timid posturing. In that vein, I have some advice for Harry Reid (Minority Leader) and Chuck Schumer (head of the DSCC) in the Senate: take a look at those polls again. It's time to play some offense. Get in front of the parade by getting behind Feingold's censure motion.
If you do, I'll bet many of the remaining 26% of democrats who currently oppose censure will flip to support it, moving overall population support for censure from 48% to well over 50% (hat tip to eRiposte). Some independents will follow along, too, if you stand together and make your case to a public starving for alternative leadership. (Note: censure polling varies by the wording of the question.) That will boost democratic turnout for the midterms, and also happens to be a political stance for the right fucking principle: the president does not get to break or ignore the law at his whim.
Nancy Pelosi (Minority Leader) and Rahm Emanuel (head of the DCCC) in the House, you have homework, too. Play some damn offense. End the off-the-record ethics truce in the House, and start filing charges. CREW has a fine list you and your senate colleagues have been ignoring for some time. Every indication is this year will hold a nationalized midterm election. Let your people run on accountability and ethics in Washington and ride the wave to glory. This is no time for rope-a-dope.
All this friendly advice comes with a warning: the Silent Majority will not be denied. The tectonic plates of American politics are fundamentally shifting. To those who would get in the way of the new majority politics, consider: like that guy in the picture, we in the Silent Majority know how to handle those who stand in our way.
PS - Don't forget to set your TiVo to record Christy (ReddHedd) on C-Span tomorrow morning at 7:45. We love ya, Redd!
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Feingold and the Censure Resolution: 2006 and 2008
Hi, it's Scott back from
Lawyers, Guns and Money for a cameo appearance.
As a follow up to ReddHedd's
post below, yesterday
I wrote a post about Ryan Lizza's baffling
claim, in response to Russ Feingold's proposed censure of the President, that "[c]hanging the FISA law is the way to address Bush's overreach." Ann Althouse
objects, arguing that I am not "the best person to be deciding who's 'vacuous.'" The merits of the ad hominem I will leave to the reader, but I think that Althouse is missing the fundamental point here, and I don't think that what's at stake can be emphasized often enough. There are two issues here: the politics, and the merits. The former issue I see little point in discussing, because whether it's a net positive or negative the political impact of a censure resolution on mid-term elections in November will be negligible in any case. I will only point out another contradiction in Lizza's argument. His argument that the resolution will be politically damaging rests on his assertion that "providing a check on Bush and the Republican dominance of Washington is a key Democratic talking point, but it's being advanced subtly by candidates who still often must distance themselves from national Democrats." But, if a Democratic victory rests on red-state Democrats being able to distance themselves from the Senate leadership--a plausible enough claim--then how can the fact that Feingold's resolution has not produced a unified Democratic caucus be damaging? Lizza's argument gets more puzzling the more you think about it.
But the more important point, which I think Althouse also misses, is that Lizza's claim that supporters of the resolution have the policy wrong is just a transparent non-sequitur. Changing the FISA law is hardly an adequate response to presidential overreaching, given that the administration
has asserted the authority to ignore any statutory restrictions placed on its authority to conduct domestic searches. The value of Feingold's resolution is that it draws attention to the point that pundits like Lizza seem unable to grasp: this dispute is not only about the best policy to gather information about terrorists, but is about central questions of the President's constitutional powers and the rule of law. The key issue here is that the President acted--and continues to act years after 9/11, and therefore with plenty of time to request changes in the statute if it was inadequate--against a law passed by Congress. And, as ReddHedd says, claims that FISA is unconstitutional because the President has unconstrained authority over foreign policy are
exceptionally weak. It's worth repeating my quote from
Cass Sunstein about how contrary to our Constitutional framework such claims of plenary presidential power are:
Yoo emphasizes Blackstone and British practice, arguing that the United States closely followed the British model, in which the executive--the king!--was able to make war on his own. But not so fast. There is specific evidence that the British model was rejected. Just three years after ratification Wilson wrote, with unambiguous disapproval, that "in England, the king has the sole prerogative of making war." Wilson contrasted the United States, where the power "of making war and peace" is in the legislature. Early presidents spoke in similar terms. Facing attacks from Indian tribes along the western frontier, George Washington, whose views on presidential power over war deserve special respect, observed: "The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they have deliberated on the subject, and authorized such a measure." As president, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams expressed similar views. In his influential Commentaries, written in 1826, James Kent wrote that "war cannot lawfully be commenced on the part of the United States, without an act of Congress."
That's the issue. The administration is claiming powers to act unilaterally with respect to a conflict with no logical end, powers far beyond what Lincoln claimed at the height of the Civil War. Changing the FISA statute not only doesn't address this crucial issue--which the censure resolution, at least, foregrounds--it compounds it by
legitimating the President's lawbreaking and contempt for constitutional restraints retroactively. Feingold, unlike Lizza, actually understands the crucial issue at stake. As long as Congressional Republicans refuse to assert congressional prerogatives there's nothing Democrats can do policy-wise, but at least they should be making this point as often as possible.
One area where I agree with Lizza, however, is that this is more about 2008 than 2006, and that's where I'll throw open to the discussion to FDL readers. This probably won't make me a very popular in these parts, but as much as I admire Feingold I think that, ideally,
the Democrats would be better served by running a red-state governor than a blue-state Senator. On the other hand, if
Matt is right that this strengthens Feingold's odds against Clinton, that can only be good news. If it comes down to Clinton/Feingold, then I think there shouldn't be any contest: Clinton--who ran well behind Gore in New Work, while Feingold ran well ahead of Kerry in Wisconsin--has electability issues that are just as or more serious, and Feingold is much better on the merits. To the extent that it weakens Clinton by highlighting her unswerving commitment to a disastrous and increasingly unpopular war, this is a good thing for the Dems in '08.
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Libby's Defense Could Be Our Answer
The trial of Scooter Libby is still 10 months away but already we are learning that his defense could expose serious problems within the White House, in particular, their claims for the war in Iraq.
Lawyers for Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide are suggesting they may delve deeply at his criminal trial into infighting among the White House, the CIA and the State Department over pre-Iraq war intelligence failures.
New legal documents raise the potential that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's trial could turn into a political embarrassment for the Bush administration by focusing on whether the White House manipulated intelligence to justify the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
In a court filing late Friday night, Libby's legal team said that in June and July 2003, the status of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame was at most a peripheral issue to "the finger-pointing that went on within the executive branch about who was to blame" for the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.
So does this mean one of the administration’s top allies in selling the war to the public could now become a greater asset to revealing the truth that lead is into this mess called Iraq? When it comes down to a threat of jail time that is exactly what could happen.
Since the invasion started three years ago there have been countless documents, reports and documentaries on the subject of “cooked intelligence”. One of the most damaging items has been reports from employees at Langley talking about the vice-President and his excessive “hands on” attitude when it came to the Iraq war. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern even brought this up during the Downing Street Memo hearings last summer. He spoke of times where Cheney would come in and want “briefings” from the analysts and Tenet would be there with him. This was a highly uncommon practice with previous administrations and in fact put extra pressure on the analysts to say what Cheney wanted to hear.
Now that Scooter Libby is getting ready to go to court, stories like this have a greater chance of gaining more attention. It not only helps build the defense of him being under enormous pressure and the pressure building inside the beltway, but also the lengths this administration was going to in order to protect their lie.
Something else that will help back Scooter's defense is a July 30, 2003 Rose Garden press conference. This was the day President Bush accepted responsibility for the flawed intelligence of the Niger claim. This will help show that those times were in fact tense. At the same time it will be a damaging blow to the White House. Just a few weeks prior to that, the administration was in a full blown “attack Joe (Wilson)” campaign and one of those attacks was outing his wife which lead to all of this.
Perhaps Scooter will be able to convince a jury that he did “forget” about disclosing Plame’s identity. It is a long shot but even if he does, it will expose more truths about what was happening in Washington and to what lengths this administration would go to defend their illegal war. The only hurdle left for our side is hoping that this information is not kept from the public because it is classified. Even if it is we still have the ears of Patrick Fitzgerald listening in and he might just be willing to pursue other angles of this case.
Cross posted at IntoxiNation.
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Anybody see
this over at
Josh Marshall's?
I just love that the guy Bush hired to spy on
terrorists us (and provide "intelligence services" to the White House they don't want to talk about) is looking at 20 years for bribing Duke Cunningham.
Maybe Evan Bayh can change the law and have him back in the Quaker panty sniffing business in time for the War on Christmas. I'd hate to see O'Reilly have to face that alone.
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This is rich. From a
Boston Globe article on how the big Democrats are all courting the netroots for their 2008 bids:
The next round of prospective Democratic presidential candidates, even those with centrist credentials, is actively courting the Democratic Party's left wing -- which speaks loudly through its blogs, enjoys rising fund-raising clout built on Howard Dean's 2004 campaign, and is imbued with a confidence that it can build on Republican disarray.
(snip)
The 2008 prospects appear especially eager to stay in the good graces of bloggers, who enjoy growing influence though only a small percentage of voters read or write them. Even a solid centrist like Bayh felt compelled to take his message for a "tough and smart" foreign policy to the liberal Huffington Post, founded by commentator Arianna Huffington.
Jane Harmon
posted a diary over at Kos recently asking people to email George Bush and tell him they didn't want permanent bases in Iraq. She was shocked when knowledgeable, articulate people showed up and told her in no uncertain terms that her Bayh-esque plans to change the law and make George Bush's illegal NSA wiretap activity legal were utterly ridiculous. To her credit she stayed around and addressed people's concerns but it certainly wasn't the response she anticipated.
On the heels of his backstabbing of Russ Feingold, can I for one say how much I'm looking forward to Evan "lemming" Bayh's next "tough and smart" diary on the Huffington Post?
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Glenn Greenwald:
The Feingold Censure Resolution is unmasking the hideous underbelly of almost every Washington institution as vividly as anything that can be recalled. Each of the rotted Beltway branches is playing so true to form that the distinct forms of corruption and dishonesty which characterize each of them are standing nakedly revealed. As ugly of a sight as it is, it is highly instructive to watch it all unfold.
Digby:
Feingold stepped up and spoke for millions of Americans who see this administration's abuse of power as a very serious matter for which this president should be held to account. We are desperate for such leadership and we care nothing about the lack of political politesse with which it was raised. The president and his party are held in very low esteem by two thirds of the country. If not now, when?
Puppethead (from the
comments):
The thing that pisses me off is how the Democrats are treating this as a political calculation. I want them to uphold our nation's Constitution and the rule of law. I don't care how many senate seats are lost over this, or whether or not anyone's re-election bid is jeopardized. I want accountability in my government.
I'll repeat -- Feingold's
popularity among Democrats has soared from 22% before he introduced the resolution to 52% after the resolution. The nerve he tapped is way beyond political squabbling. This should not be some big mystery.
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It's no surprise that Joe Lieberman is afraid of Ned Lamont. Ned's a handsome guy, a self-made man with superb business acumen, a great sense of humor and the willingness to speak out and oppose this disastrous war. Lieberman is a squirrelly little opportunist who backstabs his own party while his election coffers grow fat from the contributions of war profiteers his petty bellicosity has done so much to enrich.
Most Connecticut residents oppose the war according to the
Stamford Advocate in an editorial which appeared yesterday welcoming Lamont into the race. They hope that it spurs a serious local discussion about Holy Joe's warmongering which appears to have nothing to do with actually representing the views of his constituents.
So I guess it's no surprise that Lieberman feels he's got to distort his record to boost his credibility with his constituents. I noticed this in the National Journal today (subscription):
For his part, Lieberman is taking his first-ever primary challenge seriously. His campaign Web site prominently features his lifetime voting records from such left-leaning groups as the AFL-CIO (82 percent), NARAL (95 percent), the Human Rights Campaign (90 percent) and the League of Conservation Voters (88 percent), which has already endorsed him.
Yeah and if you go back to 1977 Joe never voted to authorize the war in Iraq, either. The fact is that Joe's 2005
NARAL voting record is 75%, and that doesn't even include his cloture votes on judges that put both both Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Court. Nor does it take into account his recent comments telling rape victims to get up off the gurney and leave Catholic hospitals in order to get emergency contraception (which the hospitals will not even tell them they need). NARAL may not be willing to speak out against Holy Joe but to imply that they are 95% happy with his record is 100% bullshit.
If you're from Connecticut you might want to drop an LTE to the local papers and let them know that Joe needs to stop sliding around on statistics and old news, and that he needs to be held accountable for what he does
now:
Hartford Courant LTE Webform
Connecticut Post LTE email
New Haven Register LTE email
Stamford Advocate LTE email
While you're at it let them know that you're interested in hearing more about Ned Lamont, who actually cares about representing the views of Connecticut voters.
And on this Sunday, the third anniversary of the horrendous war Joe Lieberman got us into, there will be a demonstration outside of Lieberman's office.
Crooks & Liars has the details.
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I just don't understand this. Every time any Democrat opens their mouth they talk about how the netroots community is more an more influential every day on the course of party politics, and they are most certainly looking to turn us into a virtual ATM for the next election cycle.
Yet they are so disconnected from the palpable rage of the base -- and yes, we are the base, the people who show up every day, who write about this stuff, send letters, make phone calls, give money, give a shit -- that they have no concept of stepping into a leadership position on matters of great concern like the illegal NSA wiretaps and channeling that emotion into positive action.
They are then often startled to find that frustration turning back on them. Is it really such a mystery?
EJ Dionne understands:
Consider the disparity between the response to Feingold's initiative among Democratic senators and the reaction among Democratic activists.
Senators mostly scampered away from the cameras earlier this week, because they didn't want to say publicly what many of them said privately. Most were livid that Feingold sprang his censure idea on a Sunday talk show without giving them any notice. Many see Feingold as more concerned with rallying support from the Democratic base for his 2008 presidential candidacy than with helping his party regain control of Congress this fall.
Some Democrats want the party to forget the issue of warrantless wiretapping, because engaging it would let Bush claim that he's tougher on terrorists than his partisan enemies. Others share Feingold's frustration with the administration's stonewalling on the program, but they think they need to know more before they can effectively challenge Bush on the issue. Both groups were furious that Feingold grabbed headlines away from those delicious stories about Republican divisions and defections.
But at the grass roots and Web roots, Feingold has become a hero -- again. They already loved him for his courage in opposing the USA Patriot Act and his call for a timetable for troop withdrawals from Iraq. Feingold's latest move only reinforced his image of being "a Dem with a spine," as the left-liberal Web site BuzzFlash.com put it in a comment representative of the acclaim he won across the activist blogs.
In an interview, Feingold was unrepentant, arguing that before he made his proposal, "the whole issue of the president violating the laws of this country was being swept under the rug."
"We were going to sit back as Democrats and say, 'This is too hot to handle' -- well that's outrageous." He warned that "the mistakes of 2002 are being repeated," meaning, he said, that Democrats should never again "cower" before Bush on security issues, as so many at the grass roots saw them doing before the 2002 elections.
And it's a sign of Feingold's view of some of his Democratic colleagues that he defended his decision not to let them in on his plan. Had they known what he was up to, he said, "they would have planned a strategy to blunt this."
Here's the problem: Feingold and the activists are right that Democrats can't just take a pass on the wiretapping issue, because Bush's legal claims are so suspect -- even to many in his own party. The opposition's job is to raise alarms over potential abuses of presidential power.
But Democrats, unlike Republicans, have yet to develop a healthy relationship between activists willing to test and expand the conventional limits on political debate and the politicians who have to calculate what works in creating an electoral majority.
For two decades, Republicans have used their idealists, their ideologues and their loudmouths to push the boundaries of discussion to the right. In the best of all worlds, Feingold's strong stand would redefine what's "moderate" and make clear that those challenging the legality of the wiretapping are neither extreme nor soft on terrorism.
That would demand coordination, trust and, yes, calculation involving both the vote-counting politicians and the guardians of principle among the activists. Republicans have mastered this art. Democrats haven't.
Turning a minority into a majority requires both passion and discipline. Bringing the two together requires effective leadership. Does anybody out there know how to play this game?
I don't know how to make it any clearer. You can't
tell people what to care about. They can continue to harp on the Dubai Ports mess all they want, but that moment has passed. It will make a fine talking point but the white-hot emotion fueling the discussion is gone. Russ Feingold saw where the conversation was going and he stepped in to provide leadership in a timely manner, not six weeks from now when they'd caucused the fucker to death and the world had moved on.
So let me speak in a language that even the dullest, the most remedial, most thick-witted Democratic consultant can understand.
According to a new
Rassmussen poll:
"Initially, 22% of Democrats had a favorable opinion of him while 16% had an unfavorable opinion. However, knowing he advocates censure, Feingold's numbers within his own party jumped to 52% favorable and 14% unfavorable."
Every day that goes by and the party leaders do nothing but carp about an investigation that will never happen they are single-handedly delivering the loyalty, dollars and activism of the base over to Russ Feingold.
Are we communicating now?
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A surprisingly large number of Senate Democrats seem to be completely out of touch with the anger and frustration felt by people in America over their failure to hold the President accountable for his illegal NSA wiretap activities. While Feingold, Boxer and Harkin have shown tremendous bravery and leadership in co-sponsoring the censure bill, many others seem reluctant to commit themselves and hope for some sort of investigation that will give them political cover.
There is not going to be an investigation, we know it, they know it and George Bush knows it. The Senate Intelligence Committee voted on
March 7 not to investigate. Do they somehow think Arlen Specter is suddenly going to change his stripes? The censure resolution has been referred to the Judiciary Committee, which if the GOP holds true to form will probably mean they'll wind up investigating Feingold for treason.
In the mean time we're supposed to
trust the Bush Administration that all of this warrentless spying is being handled judiciously and in the interest of fighting the war on terror.
Right. Because they handle everything else so very competently, we are to simply trust that everyone involved in developing and implementing government surveillance technology will do so with Solomonic wisdom.
What kind of people are being hired to work on this shit? From the
TPM Muckraker, via Josh Marshall:
Here's an interesting -- but overlooked -- detail of the Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) saga: one of the crooked contractors who bribed the Duke Stir was apparently involved in a Total Information Awareness-like data-mining operation that looked at U.S. citizens' data.
Mitchell Wade, former CEO of MZM Inc., pleaded guilty to several conspiracy and bribery charges a few weeks ago in connection with the Cunningham scandal. But a little-noticed piece of his history goes into one of the most sensitive domestic spying operations we have heard of to date: the Pentagon's Virginia-based Counterintelligence Field Activity office (CIFA).
Wade got over $16 million in contracts with CIFA by bribing Duke Cunningham, who forced earmarks in to Defense appropriations bills on his behalf. Furthermore, Wade's second-in-command was a consultant to the Pentagon on standing up the operation.
In its brief life -- it was created in 2002 -- CIFA has had trouble keeping its nose clean. Despite the ink that's been spilled on the center, little is actually known about what it does, and how MZM serviced it.
Feeling better yet? I know I am.
The area that's gotten [CIFA] into hot water recently is TALON, a system of receiving "threat reports" from around the country and storing them in a database, known as Cornerstone. Last December, NBC news got their hands on a printout of a portion of the database which revealed they were keeping tabs on nonviolent protesters, mostly anti-war, around the United States.
(snip)
Where does Wade and MZM come in? We're learning more every day, but here's what we know now: CIFA culls "commercial data," including financial records, criminal records, credit histories and more. MZM won a contract -- through Cunningham -- to provide a data storage system to CIFA, presumably to hold a lot of that information. Unfortunately it was a piece of crap, and was never installed.
In addition, the Washington Post has reported MZM assisted CIFA in "exploiting" the data -- presumably by searching it, organizing it, and looking for patterns.
Keeping databases on citizens engaging in protected political activities? Datamining credit histories looking for terrorists? It looks like the place bad ideas go to stay alive, behind the curtain of secrecy. As Wade has proven, you can get away with a lot behind that curtain (for a while, anyway). I wonder what more is back there we haven't heard about.
So, in summation: the DOD hired a crook who ripped off the government to pick through the underwear drawers of Quakers. To look through your credit history, your financial records, and no doubt a whole lot else. And we are supposed to trust that
this guy with all this extremely private information about our personal lives will keep it confidential and not exploit it because -- well, because the Bushies say so, I guess.
It is an enormous mistake for
anyone to stick their finger in the wind right now to see which way it's blowing before committing themselves on this issue. This is not partisan politics. This is not political chess. These are our core beliefs as Americans, our rights as citizens that are being fucked with here, auctioned off to the crook with the fattest wallet -- just like the ports.
Do the wavering Democrats understand this? I do not believe that they do.
Russ Feingold looks pretty damn good for having been the only one to vote against the Patriot Act, and a year hence he'll look even better for having stepped out in the forefront of this because the corruption and mismanagement are only going to become more painfully obvious as the details are unearthed over time.
The question is -- who's going to look good for having stood with him?
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Meet our newest Lemming. BushCo. is on the ropes, but
Evan Bayh offers them a helping hand:
But the first thing Democrats need to do, Bayh said, is take Republicans on in an area they've dominated: national security.
"It's a threshold issue for us, and it's a threshold issue for America," Bayh said. "People aren't going to trust us with anything else if we first can't convince them to trust us with their lives."
Before he spoke, Bayh told reporters that he does not support efforts by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., another potential 2008 presidential candidate, to censure Bush for authorizing domestic eavesdropping. Bayh said it's not clear whether the law requiring court approval before surveillance was broken, and he instead favors revisiting and possibly updating the law.
How exaclty does Bayh plan to be the big national security badass? By changing the law so that the President's illegal actions are made legal? Wow you are one tough hombre, Evan.
I wouldn't trust you to guard my potted fern.
Evan Bayh
463 Russell Building
Washington, DC 20510
Washington, DC (202) 224-5623
Indianapolis (317) 554-0750
Evansville (812) 465-6500
Fort Wayne (260) 426-3151
Hammond (219) 852-2763
Jeffersonville (812) 218-2317
South Bend (574) 236-8302
I never want to hear "Evan Bayh" for anything, ever again. Not President, not Vice President, not dog catcher. Ever.
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I'm going to give you a marketing tip, Joe. Take it for what it's worth.
If your polling indicates that your opponent only has 7% name recognizability factor among Democrats in your state, you do not mention his name. Ever. You don't do his work for him. You certainly do not go
running to the Associated Press three days after he announces his campaign and accuse him of "angry name calling" because he calls you "Bush's favorite Democrat." Sort of boxes you in, see, because while many Republicans are trying to distance themselves from George Bush that option really isn't open to you -- you hitched your wagon to his war and you can't back away from it now.
They must have some truly awful internal polling that tells Camp Lieberman the more people know about Lamont the more they like him, and some really first-rate consultants are no doubt telling Holy Joe to get out in front of this thing by painting Lamont as an angry liberal (and Lieberman's favorite trick, after all, is using Republican memes). Trouble is, Lamont doesn't come off as an angry liberal. So the more Joe raises his awareness, the more Ned gets thrown into the spotlight and what Ned needs more than anything right now is to become the focus of press attention.
Of course the possibility still exists Joe is just a thin-skinned moron driving his own campaign and unable to control his mouth. Whatever. As a
supporter of Ned Lamont, I offer my sincere thanks.
Update: Thread Theorist points out -- and rightly so -- that the 93% "had not heard enough about Lamont to form an opinion." Which is a bit different from name recognition. They go on to say that "For Lamont I would interpret that as a good sign, and it would also explain why Lieberman would want to go to the AP just 3 days after Lamont's declaration. Lieberman wants to mold the public's as yet unformed opinion of Lamont." I would agree.
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In the face of a 33% Presidential approval rating, the
New York Times quotes oodles of Republicans this morning who admit that their base is so disspirited that their only hope of holding them together is the Bush Cargo Cultist fear that the Chief Jeep will be impeached.
If that's all they've got, the Feingold resolution has clearly demonstrated that the wingnut tank is on empty. When the number one word that comes to people's minds about George Bush is "
incompetent," impeachment is just not going to have the same primal, reptilian brain pull as gays, gods and guns (and we can now safely add "sluts" I think).
Quite the contrary, impeachment offers the hope of some 24/7 cable news scandal theater, always candy for the Fox News rabble.
As
Jeffrey Feldman says this morning, the frame is now ours -- Feingold's resolution has the GOP is backed into a corner. In the public's eye they tried to sell our ports -- and our national security -- to the very people they've spent the past five years demonizing, all for the sake of a buck. Now their only answer to Feingold is to attack Democrats for being weak on terrorism when they themselves have just been revealed as craven opportunists on that front, willing to exploit it whenever they see fit.
How nice of them to take the bait.
Truly horrible timing -- it makes them look once again like there whole game is playing politics with national security, that they're trying to avoid a debate about the crimes of an unpopular president by engaging in partisan smear tactics.
Even though the press, and the wholly compliant David Kirkpatrick (no doubt the recipient of a truckload of cocktail weenies for that slavish bullshit) are repeating the GOP spin on the Feingold resolution, it is real now. It's concrete. It's on record, in has now entered the public discourse, and the GOP is on the run, playing defense, something they're neither comfortable with nor experienced at.
They can clap and stomp their feet all they want about how great this is, that's pure spin. The latest polls show that
the public supports the censure resolution (as Attaturk says, "
Holden pretty much can build himself a glue factory"). This is a perfectly timed disaster that shows no signs of dissipating no matter what kind of a face they want to put on it.
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