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Bush Signs Law That Voids U.S. Constitution — America Yawns

Jon Ponder

Q: Does this mean that under this law, ultimately the only thing keeping you, I, or the viewer out of Gitmo is the sanity and honesty of the president of the United States?

A: It does.

When President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 on Tuesday, he gave himself unlimited power to arrest and detain anyone — American citizens like yourself — without charges or even explanation. If think this is hyperbole, check out Keith Olbermann’s interview of constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley, who was a major advocate for the impeachment of President Clinton:

“This is going to go down in history as one of our greatest self-inflicted wounds. And I think you can feel the judgment of history. It won‘t be kind to President Bush. But frankly, I don‘t think that it will be kind to the rest of us. I think that history will ask, Where were you?” What did you do when this thing was signed into law?
— Jonathan Turley, constitutional expert and Clinton impeachment supporter

OLBERMANN: I want to start by asking you about a specific part of this act that lists one of the definitions of an unlawful enemy combatant as, quote, “a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a combatant status review tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the president or the secretary of defense.”

Does that not basically mean that if Mr. Bush or Mr. Rumsfeld say so, anybody in this country, citizen or not, innocent or not, can end up being an unlawful enemy combatant?

TURLEY: It certainly does. In fact, later on, it says that if you even give material support to an organization that the president deems connected to one of these groups, you too can be an enemy combatant.

And the fact that he appoints this tribunal is meaningless. You know, standing behind him at the signing ceremony was his attorney general, who signed a memo that said that you could torture people, that you could do harm to them to the point of organ failure or death.

So if he appoints someone like that to be attorney general, you can imagine who he‘s going be putting on this board.

OLBERMANN: Does this mean that under this law, ultimately the only thing keeping you, I, or the viewer out of Gitmo is the sanity and honesty of the president of the United States?

TURLEY: It does. And it‘s a huge sea change for our democracy. The framers created a system where we did not have to rely on the good graces or good mood of the president. In fact, Madison said that he created a system essentially to be run by devils, where they could not do harm, because we didn‘t rely on their good motivations.

Now we must. And people have no idea how significant this is. What, really, a time of shame this is for the American system. What the Congress did and what the president signed today essentially revokes over 200 years of American principles and values.

It couldn‘t be more significant. And the strange thing is, we‘ve become sort of constitutional couch potatoes. I mean, the Congress just gave the president despotic powers, and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to, you know, “Dancing with the Stars.” I mean, it‘s otherworldly.

[…]

Wash Times: GOP Baker Commission’s ‘Plan B’ for Iraq Includes Coup to Install Dictator

Jon Ponder

Last spring, President Bush reluctantly appointed GOP uber-operative James Baker to chair a task force to come up with alternatives for extricating U.S. forces out of the quagmire in Iraq.

The commission has finished its work and its findings — which are collectively called “Plan P” — are ready to be released. Typically, however,the Bush Administration is keeping the Baker report secret until after the elections next month.

Someone has leaked the results to — of all places — the ultra-rightwing Washington Times. One of the three proposed strategies is radical in the extreme:

Coup in Baghdad: According to the scenario, the new U.S.-trained [Iraqi] army, along with elements of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist-led army, would stage a coup to oust the al-Maliki government and replace it with one led by a more effective figure — by most accounts Mr. [Iyad] Allawi.

Other solutions in Plan B include:

Partition: Under this plan, notably advocated by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat, Iraq would be divided into Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurdish regions, each enjoying a high degree of autonomy.

Phased withdrawal: Under this plan, U.S. troops would be gradually withdrawn over a period of months and a reserve force would be redeployed elsewhere in the region.

In a healthy democracy, our politicians would be debating these alternatives now as a part of the midterm campaigns. It is emblematic of the Bush presidency that Plan B is being kept secret now, and will only be revealed after voters have cast their votes.

Poll: GOP, President Bush Losing Evangelicals’ Support

Buck Banks

Burning Bush: It appears that Bible thumpers, tongue speakers, snake handlers and full-immersionists are joining Wal-Mart shoppers in turning away from the president and the Republican Party. After reading Jon’s post, I checked my e-mail and, lo and behold, therein found a Pew Research Center poll analysis on the same topic. Following are highlights of the analysis:

White evangelical Protestants make up over a third of those who identify with the GOP and vote for its candidates. But they, like other voters, are feeling voter disillusionment with President Bush and the Republican Party, and their level of support has significantly diminished from where it was in 2002 and 2004.

Evangelicals are no different from registered voters as a whole in their overall likelihood of voting.

From 1999 to 2004, the number of evangelicals identifying themselves as Republicans grew dramatically from 39 percent in 1999 to 47 percent in 2001, peaking at 49 percent in 2004 and 2005.

Signs of Evangelical Frustration
The number of evangelicals who have a favorable opinion of the GOP was 74 percent in the 2004 election. But it dropped to 54 percent last fall following Hurricane Katrina, before recovering to 63 percent earlier in 2006. By July of this year, however, it had declined to 54 percent.

There also has been a significant downturn in the number of evangelicals who believe the Republican Party “governs in an honest and ethical way.” In January 2006, a majority of evangelicals (55 percent) said that this phrase better described the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. In a poll conducted this month, however, just 42 percent of evangelicals still held this view, ­ a drop of 13 percentage points.

Evangelicals also became less likely over the past year to say that the Republican Party was “religion friendly.” In a July 2006 poll, 49 percent of white evangelicals described the GOP as friendly to religion, a decline of 14 percent from one year earlier.
[…]

McCain Threatens Suicide if Dems Prevail

Trish

Remember when we all shamed Bill O’Reilly into keeping his word and apologizing that he was wrong to support Bush’s invasion of Iraq? Well, stock up on letterhead because I’m sure you’ll want to hold John McCain to his word as well.

“I think I’d just commit suicide,” McCain told reporters

McCain, on a visit to Iowa to campaign for Republican congressional candidates, was asked his reaction to a potential Democratic takeover of the Senate in the November 7 elections.

“I think I’d just commit suicide,” McCain told reporters, to accompanying laughter from Republicans standing with him. “I don’t want to face that eventuality because I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

Yuck it up now, bald guy, because your day is coming.

Democrats must pick up six seats in the Senate and 15 seats in the House of Representatives to win control of both chambers.

Polls show Democrats within striking distance of reclaiming the Senate, and in a strong position to claim a majority in the House.

Fundies Are Furious Because Condi and Laura Recognized Gay Official’s Partner and Family at Swearing In

Jon Ponder

“I think it’s a tragedy to have a sodomite living with another man and being the AIDS coordinator.”
— Southern Baptist Convention Official

In the wake of the Foley scandal, disaffection among members of the GOP’s powerful anti-gay faction has escalated again — this time over the swearing-in ceremony for the new U.S. global AIDS coordinator, Dr. Mark R. Dybul, who is gay.

The ceremony was held at the State Department on Oct 10, 2006. It was conducted by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, with First Lady Laura Bush standing in for the president. Fundamentalists are angry because Dybul’s partner, Jason Claire, was allowed to hold the Bible during the swearing-in — and because Secretary Rice described Claire’s mother as Dybul’s “mother-in-law.”

No decent person would find these niceties to be controversial in the least, but among the champions of bigotry and intolerance there has been a great gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.

Southern Baptist Convention official Wiley Drake:

“I think it’s a tragedy to have a sodomite living with another man and being the AIDS coordinator …because we all know that if we do away with sodomy we’d almost eradicate AIDS… I certainly … believe most Baptists would be like me; they would be appalled at what Condoleezza Rice has done, and in general [with] what the Republican Party is doing with things like Log Cabin Republicans and other sodomites [in] trying to get their vote.”

Peter Sprigg, a vice president at the Family Research Council:

We have to face the fact that putting a homosexual in charge of AIDS policy is a bit like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse,” says Sprigg. “But even beyond that, the deferential treatment that was given not only to him but his partner and his partner’s family by the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is very distressing.”

Sprigg says in light of the Foley scandal, “it’s inexplicable that a conservative administration would do such things.” He also notes that Rice’s comments defy an existing law on the books protecting traditional marriage. “So, for her to treat his partner like a spouse and treat the partner’s mother as a mother-in-law, which implies a marriage between the two partners, is a violation of the spirit if not the letter of the Defense of Marriage Act,” the FRC spokesman states.

With election day just 20 days off, fundamentalists’ anger over gays in the GOP is becoming a wild card in the midterms. The conventional wisdom is that they might stay home on Nov. 7 in sufficient numbers to cause Republicans to lose the House.

Rumsfeld Articulates Bush Administration’s Position on North Korea Issue

Buck Banks

Idiot savant: Yesterday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld demonstrated to reporters his grasp of the fine details and keen insight into the nuclear standoff with North Korea:

“We’ve seen them do things in multiples rather than singles. And of course, very recently they fired off some missiles — six or eight, as I recall, shorter range — and then the Taepo Dong II. There is speculation that they might want to do something additional. There’s also speculation they may not.”

Reading that, I can’t understand why folks are clamoring for Prez Bush to fire Rummy, can you?

Republicans Tell Blacks, “Democrats Will Kill Your Babies”

Trish

Somebody stayed up late to come up with this one. A new ad campaign by the Rebooblican America’s PAC is being aired on urban radio stations. The campaign starts by telling African-American listeners that Democrats favor abortion as a means of wiping out blacks.

A female announcer says, “Black babies are terminated at triple the rate of white babies.” Democrats support “liberal abortion laws that are decimating our people”

In one particularly provocative spot, as a baby cries and thunder clasps in the background, a female announcer says, “Black babies are terminated at triple the rate of white babies.” Democrats support “liberal abortion laws that are decimating our people,” she says, while “the individual’s right to life is protected in the Republican platform.”

“Don’t buy the Democrats’ lie,” intones a male announcer as he reads the ad’s tagline. “Killing unborn babies is no way to help those in poverty.”

Another ad asks, “Why do our leaders in Congress support the pro-abortion agenda of the Democrats? Or more to the point: Why do we support them?”

I guess this has a certain appeal. More damaging, since it’s often true, might be the ads from the same group that say Democrats take black voters for granted.

The ads targeting African-American voters have been largely cleared on urban music stations owned by Lanham, MD-based Radio One, a minority-owned group which calls itself the “Urban Media Specialist.”

…”When someone you’ve called a friend betrays you, the truth can hurt,” a female announcer says. “For 50 years now, we’ve trusted the Democrats for education, health care and economic opportunity. And the truth is, today’s Democrats take us for granted.”

Least effective might be the ads targeting Latinos.

The group is also running ads on Hispanic stations in Denver, Albuquerque, Sacramento and Las Vegas, among other markets. The New York Sun reported one of those ads says, “Republicans respect the Latino soldier… Enough with these Democrats.”

Hear all the ads for yourself.

Sgt. Merideth Howard, 52, Killed on Duty in Afghanistan

Jon Ponder

Not so long ago, the idea of putting women in the line of fire was controversial — even unthinkable to some. Now it’s all but routine:

On Sept. 8, 2006, Army Reserve Sgt. 1st Class Merideth Howard was killed while on duty in Afghanistan. She had been assigned to the 364th Civil Affairs Brigade which was tasked with rebuilding roads and water systems.

Sgt. Howard was killed when a car bomb exploded near a military Humvee in which she was riding. She was 52 years old, which makes her the oldest female casuality of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

When she traveled with her unit, Sgt. Howard manned an M-240 machine gun. Yet, the Army consistently tells the American public that women are only positioned in areas of safety, and not exposed to battle.

GOP Leaders Fail Pop Test on the Difference between Sunnis and Shiites

Jon Ponder
One take-away from the story of the schism between Shiites and Sunnis is that these are people who can hold a grudge of centuries. This would have been a factor to consider before we invaded and pissed them all off.

In August 2006, Peter Galbraith, the former ambassador to Croatia, revealed that in the run-up to invading Iraq President Bush did not know that Muslims in the region were split into two sects, Shiites and Sunnis, and that these two sects had been in conflict for over a thousand years.

Now that the president has led United States forces into the middle of an escalating civil war between the two sects, you might think his Republican cohorts in Congress would have a basic knowledge of the issues that divide the two sides. If so, you would be wrong:

Take Representative Terry Everett, a seven-term Alabama Republican who is vice chairman of the House intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence.

“Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?” I asked him a few weeks ago.

Mr. Everett responded with a low chuckle. He thought for a moment: “One’s in one location, another’s in another location. No, to be honest with you, I don’t know. I thought it was differences in their religion, different families or something.”

To his credit, he asked me to explain the differences. I told him briefly about the schism that developed after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and how Iraq and Iran are majority Shiite nations while the rest of the Muslim world is mostly Sunni. “Now that you’ve explained it to me,” he replied, “what occurs to me is that it makes what we’re doing over there extremely difficult, not only in Iraq but that whole area.”

Representative Jo Ann Davis, a Virginia Republican who heads a House intelligence subcommittee charged with overseeing the C.I.A.’s performance in recruiting Islamic spies and analyzing information, was similarly dumbfounded when I asked her if she knew the difference between Sunnis and Shiites.

“Do I?” she asked me. A look of concentration came over her face. “You know, I should.” She took a stab at it: “It’s a difference in their fundamental religious beliefs. The Sunni are more radical than the Shia. Or vice versa. But I think it’s the Sunnis who’re more radical than the Shia.”

Did she know which branch Al Qaeda’s leaders follow?

“Al Qaeda is the one that’s most radical, so I think they’re Sunni,” she replied. “I may be wrong, but I think that’s right.”

Did she think that it was important, I asked, for members of Congress charged with oversight of the intelligence agencies, to know the answer to such questions, so they can cut through officials’ puffery when they came up to the Hill?

“Oh, I think it’s very important,” said Ms. Davis, “because Al Qaeda’s whole reason for being is based on their beliefs. And you’ve got to understand, and to know your enemy.”

The schism between Shiites and Sunnis started with a conflict over succession of leadership after Mohammed departed the planet around 700 C.E.:

Sunnis have their historical roots in the majority group who followed Abu Bakr, an effective leader, as Muhammad’s successor, instead of his cousin and son-in-law Ali. The Sunnis are so named because they believe themselves to follow the sunnah or “custom” of the Prophet. Shi’ites are those Muslims who followed Ali, the closest relative of Muhammad, as Muhammad’s successor.

One take-away from the story of the schism between Shiites and Sunnis is that these are people who can hold a grudge of centuries. This would have been a factor for the president and the Republicans to have considered before we invaded and pissed them all off.