Day: February 5, 2008

I ambled down the street to my polling place, the rec room of a condo building, at about 11 a.m.
There are no Republicans for miles and miles around, so half the booths reserved for Republican voters stood empty in both polling places.
Our polling place changes from election to election — this precinct in West Hollywood is the only one among the dozen or so I’ve lived in where this happens. The venue seems to depend on the type of election (municipal, county, state, federal) but this is the first time there have been two polling places open simultaneously — the one where I voted and another one in a community building in a pocket park next door. Not sure what, if anything, this means.

My fear was that the writer’s strike would make the polling places as crowded as the coffee shops and lunch spots have been. I inadvertently went to the park first, so I can report that both places were busy but there were no lines, which is normal.

There are no Republicans for miles and miles around, so the GOP booth stood empty in both polling places. I did overhear the poll worker give her spiel to the guy ahead of me: “You’re listed as an unaffiliated voter. I can give you a Democratic ballot or a nonpartisan ballot.” (Independents can’t vote in the Republican primary. The nonpartisan ballots don’t include the presidential candidates, just the votes for the six or eight propositions in this round.) He spoke up: “I want the Democratic ballot.

Separately, I heard Sen. Barbara Boxer tell David Gregory on MSNBC that over 1 million of California’s 6.75 million Democrats had voted by mail, most of them before the Obama surge hit the state over the past three or four days. We can expect that number of absentee ballots to double, and then some, before the counting is over.

Stay tuned.

A trillion-dollar federal deficit isn’t enough. A slime trail of obfuscation and secrecy is not enough. A record of trampling on our constitutional rights with secret wiretaps and illegal Internet monitoring is not enough. Now George Bush wants to cement his legacy by tying us to Iraq indefinitely by means of a “status of issue agreement.”

The agreement that Bush wants states that the United States will defend Iraq whenever and wherever — forever. There’s no end date, no out point. There has never been a clearer expression of Bush’s long-term goal in Iraq than the status of issue agreement, which ties us to the occupation indefinitely.

As far back as 2004 the army was building 14 “permanent” bases in Iraq. But somehow, Bush’s overall plan to maintain bases in Iraq long-term to use as launching pads for aggression against Iran or Syria, to protect oil supplies and quell insurgents continues to fly just under the media’s radar.

And the worst part of this status of issue agreement is that there are members of the Senate who say that Bush is within his rights as president to strike such an agreement without consulting Congress.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said she believes Bush probably does have the power to strike such a deal if he wants.

“He would have authority, I think,” said Feinstein. “Based on what I know, he would.”

Fortunately, there are some senators who are of the opinion that Bush would need the ratification of Congress for what is, in effect, a treaty:

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had a one-word answer as to whether Bush had the legal authority he is claiming: “No.”

And Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the administration in a letter that the proposed status of forces agreement obligates the United States to use force to protect Iraq’s security — the kind of commitment he says the Constitution requires Congress to bless.

“A commitment that the United States will act to assist Iraq, potentially through the use of our armed forces in the event of an attack on Iraq, could effectively commit the nation to engage in hostilities,” Biden wrote. “Such a commitment cannot be made by the executive branch alone under our Constitution.”

Tough talk, no doubt about it. But Congress has shown a marked inability or lack of will or just plain lack of intestinal fortitude when it comes to bucking this imperial presidency. Bush has ruled by proclamation, repetition and obfuscation for so long that he knows that all he has to do is repeat the same lies enough times and the citizens of the Benighted States of America will nod like the pod people we have become and let him get away with whatever atrocity du jour he proposes.

But we can’t allow him to tie us to Iraq indefinitely. That’s a legacy none of us can afford and one we shouldn’t have to even countenance.