The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: Health of the Republic

  • Real Leadership

    “Leadership” is a word tossed around a lot today, especially by those who evidence none of it. But today, in the United States Senate, Christopher Dodd (D-CT) stood up for the rule of law and demonstrated the sort of leadership that once made this nation great. Faced with Harry Reid’s inexplicable kowtowing to the forces of secrecy and intimidation, Dodd first placed a hold on the awful Senate Intelligence Committee bill to “fix” FISA (by, for example, exempting telecom companies from liability). When Reid ignored that (despite centuries of tradition), Dodd fought an underhanded rule change and then signaled his intent to filibuster the bad bill with all his strength.

    How strongly did he feel? He abandoned the Iowa campaign route not three weeks before the caucuses. Let’s repeat that: He gave up his campaign, temporarily, so that he could return to Washington and do his job securing the rights and liberties of American citizens. There are three other Democratic Senators running for office; none of them did the same. I’m looking at you, Clinton, Obama, Biden. People will remember who acted and who only talked about acting.

    I’m not in Dodd’s camp, but I just went online to make a contribution to his campaign. Let’s keep him in the race — let’s help him keep the others honest.

  • Health of the Republic: Down 3% to 12%

    Calling Orwell…. Calling George Orwell… Or maybe Kafka is a better target. US military prosecutors have asked for — and now have been granted — a blanket order preventing the defense counsel of a Gitmo detainee from discussing the identity of any prosecution witness with anyone, the defendant included. The defense argues (correctly!) that this contrary to typical process in American courts, not to mention an affront to the values embodied in the Constitution. The prosecution argues that there is absolutely no attempt to hide the operation of the trial from public scrutiny.

    This would be more convincing if the prosecution hadn’t made that argument via a series of emails explicitly meant, themselves, to be secret.

    Secret trials. Secret witnesses. Collusion between judge and prosecutor to achieve a result result politically useful for the present party. Prisoners whisked off to a legal limbo far removed from the usual apparatus of justice. I would have sworn that the Unites States had beaten the USSR in the Cold War. Now it turns out we just stole their methods. Yay, democracy!

  • Recycled: What’s So Wrong About Military Tribunals, Anyway?

    Another piece written some time ago (circa 2002 January) that reads chillingly a propos today. This was written before the series of judicial rebukes to the President’s overreaching constitutional “doctrine” of unlimited executive power. Sadly, those rebukes have not rendered the points raised moot.

    (more…)

  • Waterboarding

    I don’t like me-too blogs but every once in awhile, someone writes on a topic in a way that exactly captures my own feeling, a way that I could never match, much less trump. This piece by Joe Galloway is one such.

    My God, how did we come to a point when Senators and Representatives of the United States Congress cannot seem to comprehend what “torture” is? Seven years ago, I would never have believe we could fall so far so quickly — and I fancied myself a student of history and a cynical observer of human nature.

    I weep for my Republic. I truly do.

  • Recycled: Just Wrong

    Long before this blog, I kept an equally-erratic literary journal called A Voice in the Wilderness. And while nothing written there was particularly world-shattering, I don’t want it to get lost in the mists of cyberspace. So to do my part to save the planet, I’m going to recycle and reuse that content, putting the save-worthy stuff here on Mongrel Dogs. Today we start with a piece written in reaction to an op-ed in the Washington Post written by one Victoria Toensing, on 2002 September 23, about the then-nascent Bush policy of secret detention and arbitrary arrest. Sadly it’s five years later and we are five years deeper into the pit, the cause of liberty even more undermined by its alleged defenders.

    The piece is reproduced below the fold.
    (more…)

  • Worrisome Phrase

    In reading this AP News story on the upcoming speech by the President, I came across the following:

    Bush and his senior advisers are likely to hear the initial thinking from Ryan Crocker, Bush’s envoy in Baghdad
    [emphasis added]

    Isn’t Ryan Crocker the accredited ambassador to Iraq? Confirmed and empowered, one would hope, by the United States Senate? He’s not some office flunky that Bush sent over to Iraq for a look-see. He’s the full-time diplomatic representative (to an allegedly sovereign nation) of the United States of America, not of George W. Bush. Talk about your imperial presidencies! It’s about as bad as when Bush himself said, of Rumsfeld,

    Good. He’s done a heck of a job. He’s conducted two wars, and at the same time is out to transfer my military from a military that was constructed for the post-Cold War to one that is going to be constructed to fight terrorism.

    Ominous phrases, both.

  • Health of the Republic: Down 10% to 15%

    With exactly 18 months left to go in office, this President has made a sweeping and unprecedented play for unchecked power. According to a Washington Post article, the President intends to claim that Congress cannot pursue its investigation into the political firing of 9 US Attorneys, because the President has exerted a broad “executive privilege” that (he claims) exempts his former underlings from testifying. By statute, enforcement of a contempt-of-Congress citation is handled through the Department of Justice, which must convene a grand jury on the matter. According to the Bush faction, because the Justice Department is a part of the executive branch and because Bus claims that the executive branch is “unitary” (an untried and abominable constitutional theory), the DoJ cannot take action that doesn’t conform to the “will” of the President.

    Let that sink in there. Our government is now to be determined by the “emanations of the will of the President” — not by, say, the laws on the books (which clearly mandate that the DoJ pursue any contempt-of-Congress charge sent to it). One scholar called the attempted power grab “almost Nixonian in its scope and breadth of interpreting its power”. It’s time to stop pussy-footing around. This makes Nixon look like a little child. Even Nixon recognized that there were some checks on Presidential power; the Bush White House feels there are none.

    More below the fold.
    (more…)

  • Health of the Republic down, 4% to 25%

    The Health of the Republic bar has dropped another 4% in recent weeks. This is largely due to the unfolding three scandals at the Department of Justice:

    • The blatantly-political firing of eight US prosecutors
    • The new revelations about presidential interference in the internal DOJ audit of the warrantless wiretapping program
    • The rampant abuse of National Security Letters by FBI agents

    More below the fold.
    (more…)

  • Health of the Republic down, 1% to 29%

    The Health of the Republic bar has shifted downward another percentage point. This follows the promulgation of a presidential decree that gives the White House a greater say over the issuance of policy guidelines by agencies. Previously most such documents were crafted by civil servants but now, they must pass through a politically-appointed gatekeeper (a so-called regulatory policy office) before they can be issued. The clear intent is for Bush to “regain control” over rogue agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, which for some reason seems determined to ignore presidential philosophy and, you know, do its legally-mandated job.

    Not surprisingly, the new policy — demanding an aggregate estimate of costs and the determination of a “market failure” before any new regulation is promoted — was hailed by financial backers of the Bush administration, primarily businesses who find it irksome that regulatory agencies actually regulate.

    This is only a 1% drop because — believe it or not — this administration has done such other egregious damage to American freedoms, that this Kremlinesque gathering-in of economic control, in comparison, ranks as a relatively minor matter. How we lived in diminished times!

  • Health of the Republic down 3.3%, to 30%

    After hearing that the President of the United States has asserted his untrammeled power to read even physical mail, without warrant or other legal constraint, I have decided to move the Health of the Republic bar to 30%. It’s only a 3% shift because in the end this is only slightly more outrageous than the earlier warrantless wiretapping to which the President has already admitted. Also, today, the Democrats return to the majority and, perhaps, oversight returns to Washington.