« Meet George W. Bush »; he can’t catch a break, even from « an old comic book character ».

Now, « meet Deborah Davis ».

And « meet Al-Jazeera ».

And finally, « meet Frank Rich », who sums it all up rather nicely.

Joining my rather long blogroll is a fascinating read: « Rational Revolution ». Highly recommended. Check it out.

“How amazing is it that we live in an empire that impeaches presidents over legal consensual sex acts but not over illegal wars which kill hundreds of thousands of people?”

Just keep piling up « the evidence » baby, maybe we’ll have an impeachment yet:

‘Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, [the Emperor] was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter. The administration has refused to provide the Sept. 21 [Emperor’s] Daily Brief, even on a classified basis, and won’t say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.
‘The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the “[Emperor’s] Daily Brief,” a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders. One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources.’
—National Journal

How amazing is it that we live in an empire that impeaches presidents over legal consensual sex acts but not over illegal wars which kill hundreds of thousands?

Wow. Winter’s back. And it’s already Thanksgiving! Where did the year go?

“… it’s impeachment time and then let’s replace the dipsticks with a bipartisan McCain and Murtha combination, acknowledging the even division in the electorate.”

Everybody needs to take note of this rather extraordinary thing that has happened: the Iraqi government that our Empire installed has called for our legions to be withdrawn and declared that killing said American legions is « perfectly acceptable »:

‘Leaders of Iraq’s sharply divided Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis called Monday for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces in the country and said Iraq’s opposition had a “legitimate right” of resistance. The final communique, hammered out at the end of three days of negotiations at a preparatory reconciliation conference under the auspices of the Arab League, condemned terrorism, but was a clear acknowledgment of the Sunni position that insurgents should not be labeled as terrorists if their operations do not target innocent civilians or institutions designed to provide for the welfare of Iraqi citizens. The participants in Cairo agreed on “calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable, through putting in place an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces … control the borders and the security situation” and end terror attacks. The conference was attended by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish lawmakers, as well as leading Sunni politicians.’
—The Guardian

Let’s repeat: The only people who want American troops left in Iraq, under fire from both Islamofascist terrorists AND a ‘democratically elected legitimate’ government are … the Emperor and his hard-core supporters.

The communique went on to condemn attacks on Iraqi civilians and property and called for an end to Abu Ghraib-like abuse and Guantanamo-like snatch-and-grab detainee policies:

‘“Though resistance is a legitimate right for all people, terrorism does not represent resistance. Therefore, we condemn terrorism and acts of violence, killing and kidnapping targeting Iraqi citizens and humanitarian, civil, government institutions, national resources and houses of worships,” the document said. The final communique also stressed participants’ commitment to Iraq’s unity and called for the release of all “innocent detainees” who have not been convicted by courts. It asked that allegations of torture against prisoners be investigated and those responsible be held accountable. The statement also demanded “an immediate end to arbitrary raids and arrests without a documented judicial order.”

And what’s significant is that in two places, one specific and one implied, our American troops are seen as legitimate targets for Iraqi resistance.

We have no more reasons to stay. Not national pride (that was dragged into the mud long ago), not Iraqi democracy (that democracy just spoke loud and clear and said, ‘Get your butts outta here or die!’), not world opinion (the coalition is now, what, us and 168 Mongolian warriors? C’mon!), and definitely not a clear and significant majority of the American public which is paying for, bleeding from, dying in and mourning over this illegal, disgusting and immoral war.

I say if there is not a plan for withdrawal in place by Christmas to have our boys and girls home where they belong by, oh, say, Easter, then it’s impeachment time and then let’s replace the dipsticks with a bipartisan McCain and Murtha combination, acknowledging the even division in the electorate.

Enough is more than enough.

I love this!

‘… I thought he sought the privacy of rain,
the one time no one was likely to be
out and he was left to the intimacy
of drops touching every leaf and tree in
the woods and the easy muttering of
drip and runoff, the shine of pools behind
grass dams. He could not resist the long
ritual, the companionship and freedom
of falling weather, or even the cold
drenching, the heavy soak and chill of clothes
and sobbing of fingers and sacrifice
of shoes that earned a baking by the fire
and washed the fatigue after the wandering
and loneliness in the country of rain.’
— Robert Morgan
from Working in the Rain
in the Garrison Keillor anthology Good Poems for Hard Times

Comments are working again, thank goodness. Fire away.

Commenting is broken at the moment. Something in the CSS of the new skin. Will be back later today.

“The fact that government is secretly tracking my life and sharing that information with private corporations in a completely unaccountable way shows me that America has crossed over into a fascist twilight of sorts.”

« Here’s » something interesting that needs to be more widely read than it will be:

‘The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters — one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people — are extending the bureau’s reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans. Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot. The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks — and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, [the Emperor] signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for “state, local and tribal” governments and for “appropriate private sector entities,” which are not defined.’
—Washington Post

More than 30,000 top secret NSLs with no oversight of any kind. And perhaps even more egregious: Sharing of all this data with ‘appropriate private sector entities.’

Which would be … who? Your employer? Wal-Mart? Experian? Blackwater? Undoubtedly. The fact that government is secretly tracking my life and sharing that information with private corporations in a completely unaccountable way shows me that America has crossed over into a fascist twilight of sorts. It certainly is not the nation that I grew up believing I lived in or of which I was a comfortable citizen. Simply put, this is an imperial tyranny.

Another feature of this article is how the people who create monstrosities like this look back and are amazed that what they created has been turned into something else entirely:

‘In Room 7975 of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, around two corners from the director’s suite, the chief of the FBI’s national security law unit sat down at his keyboard about a month after the Patriot Act became law. Michael J. Woods had helped devise the FBI wish list for surveillance powers. Now he offered a caution. “NSLs are powerful investigative tools, in that they can compel the production of substantial amounts of relevant information,” he wrote in a Nov. 28, 2001, “electronic communication” to the FBI’s 56 field offices. “However, they must be used judiciously.” Standing guidelines, he wrote, “require that the FBI accomplish its investigations through the ‘least intrusive’ means. . . . The greater availability of NSLs does not mean that they should be used in every case.” Woods, who left government service in 2002, added a practical consideration. Legislators granted the new authority and could as easily take it back. When making that decision, he wrote, “Congress certainly will examine the manner in which the FBI exercised it.”
‘Looking back last month, Woods was struck by how starkly he misjudged the climate. The FBI disregarded his warning, and no one noticed. “This is not something that should be automatically done because it’s easy,” he said. “We need to be sure . . . we don’t go overboard.” One thing Woods did not anticipate was then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft’s revision of Justice Department guidelines. On May 30, 2002, and Oct. 31, 2003, Ashcroft rewrote the playbooks for investigations of terrorist crimes and national security threats. He gave overriding priority to preventing attacks by any means available.’

Well, duh. Let’s see. You made it possible for the FBI to do this, but told them not to use it very much. And now … 30,000 NSLs a year. Who knew?

‘To Jeffrey Breinholt, deputy chief of the Justice Department’s counterterrorism section, the civil liberties objections “are eccentric.” Data collection on the innocent, he said, does no harm unless “someone [decides] to act on the information, put you on a no-fly list or something.” Only a serious error, he said, could lead the government, based on nothing more than someone’s bank or phone records, “to freeze your assets or go after you criminally and you suffer consequences that are irreparable.” He added: “It’s a pretty small chance.” “I don’t necessarily want somebody knowing what videos I rent or the fact that I like cartoons,” said Mason, the Washington field office chief. But if those records “are never used against a person, if they’re never used to put him in jail, or deprive him of a vote, et cetera, then what is the argument?” Barr, the former congressman, said that “the abuse is in the power itself.” “As a conservative,” he said, “I really resent an administration that calls itself conservative taking the position that the burden is on the citizen to show the government has abused power, and otherwise shut up and comply.” At the ACLU, staff attorney Jameel Jaffer spoke of “the profound chilling effect” of this kind of surveillance: “If the government monitors the Web sites that people visit and the books that they read, people will stop visiting disfavored Web sites and stop reading disfavored books. The FBI should not have unchecked authority to keep track of who visits [al-Jazeera’s Web site] or who visits the Web site of the Federalist Society.”’

‘Civil liberties objections are eccentric.’

I repeat:

An Imperial official says, ‘Civil liberties objections are eccentric.’

Gosh.

I never thought I’d ever agree with Bob Barr on anything, but hell, I’d shake the bastard’s hand over this one. The abuse is in the power itself, exactly.

‘In the executive branch, no FBI or Justice Department official audits the use of national security letters to assess whether they are appropriately targeted, lawfully applied or contribute important facts to an investigation. Justice Department officials noted frequently this year that Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reports twice a year on abuses of the Patriot Act and has yet to substantiate any complaint. (One investigation is pending.) Fine advertises his role, but there is a puzzle built into the mandate. Under what scenario could a person protest a search of his personal records if he is never notified?’

Well, that’s obviously the point. A completely secret government operation doing things that no one ever finds out about. Such as konzentrationslagers in eastern Europe.

What a country.