Bet I get some folks’ attention with that headline. But it turns out it’s not CIA videotaping, but police videotaping in Illinois, that the story refers to. Apparently Barack Obama was a key player in passing legislation requiring law enforcement in Illinois to videotape interrogations and confessions. At least in Charles Peters’ view, the story says something about Obama’s skills, and (by extension) how he might lead as President: Judge Him by His Laws.
A better-than-usual (which is saying a lot) Glenn Greenwald column that touches on what I believe to be a key part of the destroyed-torture-tapes story: The fact that the top legal advisors of the president and vice president were present at a meeting where an act of obstruction of justice was apparently discussed (an act that subsequently came to pass), and the public is being kept in the dark as to what action they advised: Oligarchical decay.
In case after case, our political establishment has adopted the “principle” that our most powerful actors are immune from the rule of law. And they’ve adopted the enabling supplemental “principle” that any information which our political leaders want to keep suppressed is — by definition, for that reason alone — information that is “classified” and should not be disclosed.
I think I’ll be making another one of my periodic calls to the office of my congressional representative, the otherwise-awesome Lois Capps, to encourage her to break with Nancy Pelosi on the subject of impeachment. Because loyalty to one’s party is one thing. But complicity with torture is the sort of thing that tends to look bad when reflects on it later in life.
I think I’m inclined to think that Larry Johnson knows what he’s talking about here: Who Obstructed Justice?
The key question surrounding torture tape gate is not who authorized the destruction of the tapes in 2005. Nope. The real priority is who in the Bush Administration knowingly lied to a Federal Judge in the spring of 2003. Either the CIA told DOJ the truth and DOJ lied or the CIA lied to DOJ or the White House directed DOJ to lie. It is that simple.
And it’s a felony. And it’s grounds for impeachment. Start the hearings already.
Dan Froomkin does a good job of summing up the last few days’ hijinks from White House press secretary Dana Perino regarding what the White House did, and didn’t, know and do back in the day regarding the CIA torture videos: The Tell-Tale Stall.
Perino’s currently stuck in trying-to-have-it-both-ways mode: She doesn’t want to talk about the subject (because talking about it threatens to reveal the truth, which is almost certainly that folks like Addington were up to their eyeballs in pushing the CIA to ignore judicial orders and destroy the evidence of the torture they’d been committing). But at the same time, she wants to push back against the New York Times reporting that in the first few days after the story broke, the White House was peddling (via anonymous leaks) that Harriet Miers had been telling the CIA that the agency should not destroy the tapes.
There’s a constitutional provision specifically designed for handling situations like this. It’s called impeachment. And Nancy Pelosi needs to get off her skinny ass and start that process.
In the meantime, here are the highlights of yesterday’s White House press briefing. I know she doesn’t know what the Bay of Pigs was. And she’s defending torturers. But I have to admit: I’ve kinda got a crush on Dana.
I admit I found reference to this in a Glenn Greenwald post, but rather than link to that, I’ll link directly to the original speech Bush recently gave before the Federalist Society. Go read it in its un-spun, un-commented-on form, as I believe it speaks entirely for itself.
One (small) comfort while watching our collective descent into being a state sponsor of torture has been the notion that the evil is at least confined to the CIA and the Defense Department. But of course that’s not true; the evil extends throughout the government. And it turns out that you don’t have to actually engage in torture to slide down the slippery moral slope it creates. For example, check out this item from Steve Bergstein: A tale of two decisions (or, how the FBI gets you to confess).
This is a side to the foolishness of the Bush administration’s use of torture that doesn’t get enough attention from those who support it. It’s not just that it’s wrong. It’s stupid — because using coercive techniques simply guarantees that your victims will tell you whatever it is they think you want to hear, even if it’s not remotely close to the truth. And even if you don’t actually torture them directly, but merely threaten to give the names of their family members to the Egyptian police.
I’m with Sean Penn on this: The people engaging in this kind of thing, and writing legal opinions allowing it, and pushing others to use it, belong in fucking jail.
It has long been known that we are torturing, holding detainees in secret prisons beyond the reach of law and civilization, sending detainees to the worst human rights abusers to be tortured, and subjecting them ourselves to all sorts of treatment which both our own laws and the treaties to which we are a party plainly prohibit. None of this is new.
And we have decided, collectively as a country, to do nothing about that.
I still remember the visceral reaction I had to the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. They were televised, and a lot of people watched them as the controversy over his alleged sexual harassment of Anita Hill was explored. And in watching the parade of people testifying for and against Thomas, in particular in watching Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas themselves testify, it became increasingly clear to me that she was telling the truth, and he was lying.
That was shocking enough. But then came the double-whammy: watching the senators on the judiciary committee close ranks behind Thomas, vilifying Hill and making speech after speech that (again, to my eyes and ears) was so out of touch with the reality I’d just watched as to leave me breathless.
This one makes me cranky: Papers Please: Arrested At Circuit City. It’s a near-carbon-copy of Hiro’s receipt-check story, except that in this case, the guy who knew his rights and stood up to the intimidation by a security guard (and then by a police officer) ended up getting arrested.
Can you say “wrongful arrest suit”? I knew that you could.
Thomas Nephew thinks out loud about the basis for impeachment. In light of the Bush team — with the Democratic Congress’s help — retroactively making some of its lawbreaking officially legal, what should the focus of impeachment proceedings be? Nephew concludes that it should be the fraudulent case for this war — and the next one.
You probably saw this video already. If not, it’s definitely worth taking a look at. The thing that gets me is the sheepish reaction of the undercover provocateurs when they’re accused of being cops. And then, of course, the odd response of the riot police when the agents flee behind their line: At first, they take the guys down, but then, almost instantly, the majority of the riot cops turn their attention back to the real protesters.
Police said the three were told to monitor protesters who were not peacefully demonstrating to prevent any violent incidents, but they were called out as undercover agents when they refused to throw objects.
Hm. Really? Granted, we don’t see what came before the footage shown in the YouTube video, but in the video the union organizer repeatedly demands that the cop holding the rock should put the rock down. I think the union version of what happened comes much closer to passing the smell test than the police version.
This is far, far from the worst of abuses inflicted by Americans on others in the name of security, but it hit home for me — perhaps because I’m very often in strange airports in other countries. Read the story of a British reporter caught in the new American security bureaucracy that shames our nation.
Josh Marshall posts the telling Ashcroft-hospital-visit-question video clip, and points out what’s really wrong with this picture. This isn’t a congressional witch-hunt, or political theater, it’s congress doing their job, and Gonzales demonstrating that he — the Attorney General of the United States — simply doesn’t give a damn about pesky checks and balances. I think the only reason he even shows up to these hearings is because refusal to appear would create enough drama for CNN to write a headline that might actually get the public’s attention.
Josh says:
It really requires stepping back in this case to take stock of this exchange. Testifying before Congress is like being called to testify in court. You have to answer every question. Every question. You can fudge and say you don’t remember something and see how far you get. Or you can invoke various privileges. And it’s up to the courts to decide if the invocations are valid. But it’s simply not permitted to refuse to answer a question. It is quite literally contempt of Congress
And what does the Constitution say that we do when the Executive Branch is in contempt of Congress, class?
This latest assertion of power — to literally block U.S. Attorneys from prosecuting executive branch employees — is but another reflection of the lawlessness prevailing in our country, not a new revelation. We know the administration breaks laws with impunity and believes it can. That is no longer in question. The only real question is what, if anything, we are willing to do about that.
Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.
It’s really pretty remarkable, even for Bush. As Fein and Nichols would say, he’s asserting monarchical powers.
Impeachment has to go back on the table. Yes, I realize that the two-thirds majority of senators required to convict probably will not be findable. But Nancy Pelosi is wrong to view the process as a waste of time. It is her duty; as Patrick Leahy would say, her paramount duty. Nothing trumps preserving and defending the Constitution. If Bush and Cheney are not convicted, every senator voting to acquit who is up for re-election in 2008 will have to defend that vote.
