The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Category: Health of the Republic

  • Health of the Republic: Down 7% to 5%

    I’ve been meaning to write this post for a little while but net issues have been keeping me away. In any event, the recent passage of the so-called “FISA reform” (now with telecom immunity!) has sent the Health of the Republic tumbling downward. I had begun to be cautiously optimistic that American liberty might begin to recover now that we are approaching the end of the Worst Administration Ever.

    But Senator Obama and the Senate Democrats blew this call. Somehow they believe there is a huge constituency for enhanced domestic spying, for rewarding lawbreakers, and for undermining the Constitution. I understand the political calculus, I think, but I’m pretty sure it’s flat-out wrong and it’s disturbing to see the “change” candidate get stuck in worn-out thinking. Usually, Sen. Obama treats Americans as smart and engaged. He is never better than when an issues is nuanced and charged. This time, he just surrendered to the “We must sacrifice liberty to survive the Evil Terrorists” meme.

    I’m still going to vote for him and I’ll probably even continue to donate money. After all, the only hope of addressing the ills of this bill lie with a Democratic President and Congress — you can be sure McCain won’t do anything to rein it in. But something has gone out of my enthusiasm. The public finance thing and the slow withdrawal thing didn’t really faze me. But this was important.

    It was a chance to lead, and he blew it — and we don’t have all that many chances left.

  • My two cents

    I suspect I will write more on this, eventually, but for now, here’s what I’ve sent to the Obama campaign regarding the Senator’s disappointing collapse on FISA:

    I have contributed over $500 to the Senator’s campaign, more than all my previous contributions in my life. I had intended to donate all the way to the $2300 limit. No more. I am finding it hard to even type the words that express my disappointment and my revulsion at the Senator’s craven position on the amended FISA bill that was just passed by the House. His words are disingenuous and misleading, and indicate either that he does not understand this issue or that — cynically — he assumes ordinary Americans won’t understand it.

    As a senator he has taken an oath — the same oath he hopes to take on Inauguration Day — to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic. A law that circumvents the Fourth Amendment, hands the executive unfettered powers of surveillance, and grants immunity to those who have flagrantly broken the law to date — that sort of law is the death knell of a free republic.

    The Senator claims to offer change. I had hoped that the change would be Democrats standing up for what is right, stepping up to defend the Constitution. I had hoped the Senator would know to put principle before politics. I am no rosy-eyed daydreamer. I understand that taking the right stand would entail risks and would expose the Senator to the vacuous accusations of unpatriotism that is the forte of the rabid Right. I even concede that, with so many of his colleagues abandoning their own duties, there is a good chance that he would expend political capital only to be defeated.

    I don’t care.

    There are times to play the cards you’re dealt, and there are times to kick over the table and refuse to play the game. True leaders understand the difference. When fundamental protections that have been hallowed by centuries face erosion and destruction, I think the line is pretty bright. Senator Obama should have known that this is an issue on which there should be no compromise. This is the issue to take to the American people, who are smart enough to understand the threat. This is the issue to take to the wall, to the very edge, because if we tolerate the destruction of our Constitution, there will be no America in which to raise our children.

    I am surprised and shocked and saddened that apparently the Senator does not see this. And until I see evidence that he does in fact have both the savvy and the character I thought he did, I will not contribute another penny. I will route that money, instead, to groups like ActBlue and the ACLU, who have their eyes on the ball.

    The final irony here is that — literally at the moment I heard the news — I was clicking over to this site to donate another $100 as my show of support for his decision to reject public financing. From what I know of his supporters, he might come to regret that decision… a lot of us will be holding back.

  • Call to Action: Oppose Telecom Immunity

    Tomorrow (Jun 20) the House is likely to pass a “compromise” revision to the FISA law so as to, in effect, grant complete immunity to telecommunication companies who knowingly broke the law in supporting the Bush administration’s illegal eavesdropping program. Make no mistake: This isn’t about the telecoms per se — House Democrats offered to “substitute” the federal government in place of the telecoms if they were assessed damages, and the Republicans balked. This is about protecting President Bush and his crony cabal from the process of discovery, because a civil lawsuit stands as a major route of investigating the lawlessness of this junta.

    Glen Greenwald has more details and he writes more cogently than I could. Right now, I’m joining his call for any freedom-loving American to contribute whatever you can to ActBlue’s campaign against the perpetrators of this travesty. Clearly the only way to reform the poor behavior of the Congress is to punish those who transgress, and raising money for blistering ads to run against vulnerable members is one way to do that. Please, follow the link and consider donating.

    Let America be America … help restore the rule of law.

  • 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.

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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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