Life in OUR America, Volume 5, the Livyjr Files Options

[Livyjr]

"After Bush election, nation saturated with lies" 

Letters to the Editor 
Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Friday, February 17, 2006

Since President Bush's election in 2000, our country has become as saturated with lies as a baklava with honey.

The mantra we keep hearing from on high is that the truth doesn't matter.

The lying goes on, and there is never any hint of moral compunction or twinge of conscience to interfere with it.

No wonder the Democrats are so helpless.

"Self-defeating war policy - A new analysis concludes that the U.S. military presence has aided radical Muslims"

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Thursday, February 16, 2006

Almost from the day U.S. troops invaded Iraq, critics have claimed that the invasion was counter-productive -- that instead of winning the war on terrorism, as the White House claimed, America's presence would become a recruiting poster for radical Muslims.

But supporters of the war have argued for just as long that toppling Saddam Hussein was an essential step toward stabilizing the Mideast, and that by bringing democracy to Iraq, the terrorists' message would lose its appeal.

Which side is right?

That always has been a difficult question because there is no single authoritative standard by which to judge the merits of both arguments.

But now a new analysis by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point should go a long way toward providing an answer.

Its conclusions are similar to what the critics have been saying all along.

And because the civilian analysis was conducted at West Point -- hardly a bastion of anti-war activity -- it will be difficult for supporters of the war to dismiss the findings as biased.

According to an article in USA Today, reprinted in this newspaper Wednesday, the study concludes, "Direct engagement with the United States has been good for the jihadi movement."

The U.S. military presence "rallies the locals behind the movement, drains the United States of resources and puts pressure" on regimes friendly to America.

The study recommends a more sophisticated approach against jihadists in the Mideast and elsewhere by turning their own words and promises against them.

This tactic is known as indirect propaganda and requires military strategists to delve more deeply into the messages the jihadists are sending over the Internet, as well as speeches and other writings.

In short, know your enemy -- a tactic that is as old as war.

It's true, of course, that the Bush administration has tried to use propaganda in Iraq.

But the tactics used were anything but sophisticated.

Instead, a government contractor paid Iraqi newspapers to print pro-America articles.

Not surprisingly, the crude effort backfired when it became known that the U.S. was manipulating the press.

And the Pentagon was widely, and justly, criticized for undermining U.S. credibility.

A sophisticated propaganda campaign would not engage in manipulating the press.

Instead, it would help Iraqis see how they are being held hostage to a small group of extremists who have nothing to offer but more blood and suffering.

It would remind the Iraqi people of what happened when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.

It would turn the tables on the jihadists who are appealing to Iraqis' national pride by urging them to resist American "occupiers" -- an appeal that so far has gone largely unchallenged by the U.S. in the battle for Iraqi minds.

[Livyjr]

"Congress must remember Bush isn't a king"

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Thursday, February 16, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The next time a president asks Congress to pass something akin to what Congress passed on Sept. 14, 2001 -- the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) -- the resulting legislation might be longer than Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past."

Congress, remembering what is happening today, might stipulate all the statutes and constitutional understandings that it does not intend the act to repeal or supersede.

But, then, perhaps no future president will ask for such congressional involvement in the gravest decision government makes -- going to war.

Why would future presidents ask, if the present administration successfully asserts its current doctrine?

It is that whenever the nation is at war, the other two branches of government have a radically diminished pertinence to governance, and the president determines what that pertinence shall be.

This monarchical doctrine emerges from the administration's stance that warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency targeting American citizens on American soil is a legal exercise of the president's inherent powers as commander in chief, even though it violates the clear language of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was written to regulate wartime surveillance.

Administration supporters incoherently argue that the AUMF authorized the NSA surveillance -- and that if the administration had asked, Congress would have refused to authorize it.

The first assertion is implausible: None of the 518 legislators who voted for the authorization has said that he or she then thought it contained the permissiveness the administration now discerns in it.

Did the administration, until the program became known two months ago?

Or was the authorization then seized upon as a justification?

Equally implausible is the idea that in the months after 9/11, Congress would have refused to revise the 1978 law in ways that would authorize, with some supervision, NSA surveillance that, even in today's more contentious climate, most serious people consider conducive to national security.

Anyway, the argument that the AUMF contained a completely unexpressed congressional intent to empower the president to disregard the FISA regime is risible coming from this administration.

It famously opposes those who discover unstated meanings in the Constitution's text and do not strictly construe the language of statutes.

The administration's argument about the legality of the NSA program also has been discordant with the administration's argument about the urgency of extending the Patriot Act.

Many provisions of that act are superfluous if a president's wartime powers are as sweeping as today's President says they are.

And if, as some administration supporters say, amending the 1978 act to meet today's exigencies would have given to America's enemies dangerous information about our capabilities and intentions, surely the 1978 act and the Patriot Act were both informative.

Intelligence professionals reportedly say that the behavior of suspected terrorists has changed since Dec. 16, when The New York Times revealed the NSA surveillance.

But surely America's enemies have assumed that our technologically sophisticated nation has been trying, in ways known and unknown, to eavesdrop on them.

Besides, terrorism is not the only new danger of this era.

Another is the administration's argument that because the president is commander in chief, he is the "sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs."

That non sequitur is refuted by the Constitution's plain language, which empowers Congress to ratify treaties, declare war, fund and regulate military forces and make laws "necessary and proper" for the execution of all presidential powers.

Those powers do not include deciding that a law -- FISA, for example -- is somehow exempted from the presidential duty to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

The administration, in which mere obduracy sometimes serves as political philosophy, pushes the limits of assertion while disdaining collaboration.

This faux toughness is folly, given that the Supreme Court, when rejecting President Truman's claim that his inherent powers as commander in chief allowed him to seize steel mills during the Korean War, held that presidential authority is weakest when it clashes with Congress.

Immediately after 9/11, President Bush rightly did what he thought the emergency required, and rightly thought that the 1978 law was inadequate to new threats posed by a new kind of enemy using new technologies of communication.

Arguably he should have begun surveillance of domestic-to-domestic calls -- the kind the 9/11 terrorists made.

But 53 months later, Congress should make all necessary actions lawful by authorizing the President to take those actions, with suitable supervision.

It should do so with language that does not stigmatize what Bush has been doing, but that implicitly refutes the doctrine that the authorization is superfluous.

George Will's e-mail address is georgewill@washpost.com

[Livyjr]

"Bush 'gumption' has handed power to terrorists"

Letters to the Editor
Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Thursday, February 16, 2006

A word about gumption to Marcy Burns of Wappingers Falls, who said in a Feb. 7 letter:

"Just think, if former President Clinton would have faced the first World Trade Center bombing with gumption, we might have been spared 9/11."

"President Bush, on the other hand, has demonstrated to the world that we do not placate terrorists."

Consider this, Ms. Burns:

The men who masterminded the 1993 WTC attack are behind bars.

Abdul Hakim Murad, Ramzi Yousef, and Wali Khan Shah will never again see the light of day.

Why?

Because Bill Clinton (who had been president for all of 38 days at the time of the bombing) had those men systematically hunted down, caught, tried and convicted.

However, four years after 9/11, the men who masterminded those cowardly attacks, Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, are still at large.

We know they are alive and free because we have recently seen and heard tapes of both men discussing current events and making new threats.

Now, in light of these two indisputable facts, which president has really shown more gumption in finding the perpetrators of terrorism and punishing the enemies of the United States?

Whatever your feelings on Clinton, it is folly to try to blame 9/11 on him.

In 2000, Bush and his people were warned repeatedly by outgoing Clinton officials that al-Qaida would be a top priority in the near future.

Remember that memo that Condoleezza Rice so flippantly dismissed?

The one dropped on the President's desk more than a month before 9/11 titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."?

That memo just happened to mention that jihadist forces might try to hijack jets and use them as weapons.

Did Bush do anything about this?

No.

He was too busy squandering his gumption touting tax cuts and looking for phantom weapons of mass destruction to be bothered with the terrorist menace that infiltrated America on his watch.

As to Hamas not "messing" with us: Hamas doesn't have to mess with us, Ms. Burns.

Thanks to Bush's naive, reckless force-feeding of democracy in the Middle East, the people have handed Hamas all the power they could ever want.

If this is what the President's gumption is doing for us, I've had just about all I can take.

JOHN D. P.
Albany

[Snuffysmith]

That's a great letter.

[Snuffysmith]

Where is Harry Bridges when we need him?



CONGRESSMEN THREATEN PROBE OF U.S. SEAPORTS DEAL
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
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Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle yesterday threatened a congressional investigation of a deal to give control of six U.S. seaports to an Arab company, while one key Republican said the Bush administration's security reassurances were not adequate.

Democrats also are threatening legislation to block foreign governments from operating U.S. ports.

"I think we've got to look into this company. I think we've got to ensure ourselves that the American people's national-security interests are going to be protected," said Sen. Evan Bayh, Indiana Democrat. "And frankly, I think the threshold ought to be a little higher for a foreign firm. There can't be a choice between profits and protecting the American people."

The classified deal would let Dubai Ports World (DPW) of the United Arab Emirates run ports in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Miami. London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., which had been running the six ports, was bought last week by the government-owned DPW.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who appeared on "Fox News Sunday" with Mr. Bayh, called the deal "tone-deaf politically at this point in our history" and agreed that "we certainly should investigate it."

"I'm not so sure it's the wisest political move we could have made. Most Americans are scratching their head wondering why this company, from this region, now," Mr. Graham said. "I don't think now is the time to outsource major port security to a foreign-based company."

Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told the Associated Press yesterday that the takeover terms are insufficient to guard against terrorist infiltration.

"I'm aware of the conditions, and they relate entirely to how the company carries out its procedures, but it doesn't go to who they hire, or how they hire people," Mr. King said.

"They're better than nothing, but to me they don't address the underlying conditions, which is how are they going to guard against things like infiltration by al Qaeda or someone else? How are they going to guard against corruption?" Mr. King said.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, whose agency participated in negotiations along with the Justice Department and other administration officials, said he welcomed a review by Congress.

"There is a legal process Congress created for a committee to sit and review this. It's Treasury, Commerce, DHS [Department of Homeland Security], FBI is involved, and DoD [Department of Defense] is involved. We look at these transactions," Mr. Chertoff told CNN's "Late Edition."

Mr. Chertoff declined on several Sunday political talk shows to address specifics of the deal, including whether it has been finalized. He described the process as "very thorough" and said "necessary conditions or safeguards have to be put into place."

"The discussions are classified. I can't get into the specifics here. But what I can tell you in general is this: We examine the transaction; we look at what the issue of the threat is. If necessary, we build in conditions or requirements that, for extra security, would have to be met in order to make sure that there isn't a compromise to national security," Mr. Chertoff said.

The Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection are in charge of port security, not port operators, "and you can be sure that any transaction that goes forward is going to be carefully reviewed, and is also going to be carefully subject to the expertise of Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection," Mr. Chertoff said.

Sen. Robert Menendez, New Jersey Democrat, cited Mr. Chertoff's remarks as proof that the administration "just does not get it."

Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, agreed, calling the secrecy "ridiculous" and saying she will support legislation "to say no more, no way" to foreign ownership of U.S. ports.

"We have to have American companies running our own ports. Our ports are soft targets," Mrs. Boxer said. "Al Qaeda has said if they attack, that's one of the places they're looking."

"I don't think we're being overly paranoid. It's very simple to say that our infrastructure has to be protected and let's have American companies do that or the government itself," Mrs. Boxer said.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, yesterday called on President Bush personally to "override the agreement and conduct a special investigation into the matter." He was joined at a press conference by some family members of September 11 victims.

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This article was mailed from The Washington Times (http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060220-121022-8852r.htm)
For more great articles, visit us at http://www.washingtontimes.com

Copyright © 2006 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.

[Livyjr]

Dick Cheney in the guise of Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica, indeed ....

And SULLA BUSH IRAQINAMICUS .....

Looks like someone is not impressed by the togas with their purple trim .......

"Al-Zawahri Mocks Bush Over Terrorism War"

By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD, Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt - In a new video aired Monday, al-Qaida's No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri mocked President Bush as a "failure" in the war on terror, called him a "butcher" for killing innocent Pakistanis in a miscarried airstrike and chastised the United States for rejecting Osama bin Laden's offer of a truce.

Al-Zawahri, wearing white robes and a white turban and speaking in a forceful and angry voice, also threatened a new attack in the United States — "God willing, on your own land."

"Bush, you are not only defeated and a liar, but, with God's help and might, a failure."

"You are a curse on your own nation and you have brought and will bring them only catastrophes and tragedies," he said.

"Bush, do you know where I am?"

"I am among the Muslim masses, enjoying God's blessing of their support, care, generosity and protection," al-Zawahri said.

He said he had a message "to the American people, who are drowning in illusions."

"I tell you that Bush and his gang are shedding your blood and wasting your money in failed adventures."

"The lion of Islam, Sheik Osama bin Laden, may God protect him, offered you a decent exit from your dilemma."

"But your leaders, who are keen to accumulate wealth, insist on throwing you into battle and killing your souls in Iraq and Afghanistan and — God willing — on your own land," he said.

end quotes

NO ....

Having bin Laden and al-Zawahri appear in quick succession shows that they are alive because George W. Bush is IMPOTENT .....

George W. Bush has been called out in public ....

And now, in the eyes of the watching, waiting world, George W. Bush has a bit of an image problem here ....

Because it is George who has been plotting all of the attacks lately ....

And he has failed in his objective ...

Which fact is being trumpeted to the world by one of his intended victims .....

"LOOK AT ME, WORLD!"

"GEORGE W. BUSH, THE MIGHTIEST MAN ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH, IN HIS OWN BOASTFUL WORDS, TRIED TO KILL ME, AND HE FAILED ..."

In a world of warriors, in a warrior culture, there is a lot of meaning in those words ....

Meaning that tosses a great big ball right in George W. Bush's corner ....

And by extension ...

America's too ....

Because if George W. Bush can't beat these guys in their own county, how will he stop them from getting here?

And if they know how weak George W. Bush really is, which is being demonstrated by al-Zawahri in that tape, that is an incentive for them to come here and try us on for size.

"The Deadly Banners of Carrhae"

By Robert Collins

Like other Romans of his time, the renowned General Marcus Licinius Crassus had never heard of silk.

His sole concern one summer days in the year 53 B.C. was to destroy his foe, the barbarian Parthians (Persians).

He had marched from Syria across the Euphrates river and had driven the enemy deep into the billowing sand dunes of what is now Iran.

Near the city of Carrhae, his seven legions of men-at-arms and horsemen - some 40,000 in all - had just caught up with the Parthians.

As the sun rose they were buckling into their armor.

This very morning, he had absent-mindedly donned a plain black garment instead of the proud scarlet of a Roman general.

He had corrected his error hastily only after someone pointed it out.

None of the signs, however, gave warning of the decisive role that silk was to play in his career.

In spite of the portents, Crassus was supremely confident.

He had commanded many a winning army in his day and these barbarians had shown no sign of fight.

True, they had stopped retreating at last, but this was all to the good.

Crassus welcomed the chance to do battle, after which he could go home.

He ranged his troops in a classic Roman battle style called the "testudo" formation: hollow squares with twelve men on each side standing so close together that their shields overlapped like fish scales.

Protecting each hollow square of foot soldiers was a prancing squadron of cavalry.

Surely no enemy could breach these solid blocks of steel.

But it was the familiar story of an outmoded form of warfare suddenly facing a new, flexible style.

The Parthians were mobile and tricky, and, in the manner of guerrillas, they refused to fight on the enemy's terms.

They evidently understood psychological warfare, also.

To the Romans they looked more like beasts than men.

They wore their hair long and bunched over their foreheads.

Shaggy animal skins hung over their shoulders.

They began the attack with noise - wild inhuman cries and the thump of hide-covered drums hung with bronze bells and copper rings.

The sound, so the historian Plutarch wrote a century and a half later, was a "low dismal tone, a mixture of a wild beast's roar and a harsh thunder peal."

The Romans stood momentarily terrified at the uproar.

Then the Parthians threw off their skin cloaks to reveal thick dazzling steel helmets and breatplates.

Even their horses were armor-clad.

Suddenly they swooped in, unleashing a torrent of long arrows from powerful bows - weapons that made Roman bows look like toys.

The arrows literally nailed the hands of the Romans to their shields and their feet to the ground.

Sometimes two men were impaled with a single shot.

Again and again the Parthians swept near, kicking up clouds of dust, wheeling just beyond reach of Roman swords, and releasing a fresh volley of arrows as they galloped away.

(So the phrase "Parthian shot" was added to our language, meaning any damaging last-minute blow by word or deed.)

The Roman general's son, Publius, led a charge and died.

The Parthians mounted his head on a spear and paraded it before the shattered legions.

"This, O my countrymen, is my own peculiar loss!" Crassus cried, "but if anyone be concerned for my love of this best of sons, let him show it in revenge...."

For a time the Romans doggedly held their ground.

Then just at noon when the sun was highest, the Parthians staged their coup.

As they charged the Romans with their drums sounding, they unfurled their banners.

These were of a gleaming, shimmering material such as Roman had never seen before, brilliant in color, embroidered with gold.

Shining like fire, the banners spelled power and invincibility.

The Romans - exhausted and suffering from wounds and thirst, their "invincible" testudo shattered - broke ranks in terror before this awesome sight and fled.

Over the next two days the Parthians had little left to do but murder the wounded and mop up the stragglers.

Some 20,000 Romans died and another 10,000 were taken prisoner.

Crassus himself was lured into a trap and killed, and his head was sent home to the Parthian king.

It was one of the greatest defeats in Roman history.

To the survivors, the side effects went unnoticed at the time: the glittering banners were the Roman's introduction to silk.

It was a rude beginning, but silk was soon to be the most coveted item in their world and the basis of one of the greatest trade routes in history.

This road was to stitch the known world together from Pacific to Atlantic, and to mirror that area's history.

Cities, empires, and civilizations rose to power and fell to waste along its way.

A motley assortment of explorers, adventurers, merchants, warriors, and priests trudged its ruts.

Ideas, philosophies, religions, and inventions flowed intermittently back and forth.

Even when wars raged around it and kingdoms toppled, the silk trade usually pressed on.

It was more important than empires.

Silk was prized beyond belief, at times literally worth its weight in gold.

It was a symbol of luxury, a treasure to be haggled for, fought for, died for.

Seventeen years later another small event was recorded, but its significance, too, went unnoticed by historians for centuries.

In 36 B.C. a Chinese force attacked and captured a Central Asian town, Li-chien, some 3,700 miles east of Rome.

It had been held by another band of barbarians, the Huns, but in the town the Chinese captured 145 foreign mercenary soldiers.

There were three peculiar aspects to this town.

The name, Li-chien, was one of the Chinese names later applied to the Roman Empire.

It was protected by wooden stockades, a Roman technique.

Its soldiers employed the testudo formation of overlapping shields.

Were those nameless soldiers of Li-chien a remnant of Crassus' army?

If so, the battle of Carrhae provided another link with the history of silk because these foreign mercenaries were almost certainly the first "westerners" to set foot on the mighty Silk Road.

In the time of Crassus, few Romans had more than a vague awareness of territory east of Persia.

The Chinese, similarly, heard only the faintest rumors of a world west of Central Asia.

The two great empires were little oases of civilization, separated by vast, uninhabited stretches and barbarian hordes.

Though he little knew or cared, the ill-fated Crassus in his last hours on earth had glimpsed one of the wonders of ages.

http://www.silk-road.com/artl/carrhae.shtml

[Livyjr]

"The Deadly Banners of Carrhae"

By Robert Collins

Like other Romans of his time, the renowned General Marcus Licinius Crassus had never heard of silk.

His sole concern one summer days in the year 53 B.C. was to destroy his foe, the barbarian Parthians (Persians).

He had marched from Syria across the Euphrates river and had driven the enemy deep into the billowing sand dunes of what is now Iran.

Near the city of Carrhae, his seven legions of men-at-arms and horsemen - some 40,000 in all - had just caught up with the Parthians.

George W. Bush ....

The dissolute, dissipated, profligate son ...

As SULLA BUSH IRAQINAMICUS .....

OUR DICTATOR ...

And the BIG GRIZ from Wyoming, Dick Cheney, in the guise of Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica ....

THE MAN BEHIND THE POWER .....

Who, of course ...

Actually holds the true power ....

And what a pair they are ....

To OUR detriment ...

"Bush should cut his losses in leak case"

By CRAGG HINES

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Tuesday, February 14, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Can the President fire the vice president?

That would be an interesting extrusion of the faddish concept of the nation's chief executive as unitary authority, which is so popular in the current administration.

The question (to which the constitutional answer is "no," but to which a political response is less cut and dried) arises as we juxtapose a damning claim from Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, the indicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, against President Bush's once definitive determination to "take appropriate action" if anyone in his administration leaked classified information.

As emerged in news reports, Libby told a grand jury that "superiors" told him to leak to reporters in June and July 2003 information about Iraq's weapons capability.

Let's examine this megawatt info, which is in a letter written in January by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and made available publicly in court papers filed by Libby's defense lawyers.

But first, a recap.

Libby was indicted in October on charges of obstructing justice, making false statements and perjury in connection with media disclosures about CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

Her husband, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, is a central figure in what was a growing challenge to the Bush administration contentions about the threat posed by Iraq's alleged program of weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the U.S. invasion.

Libby claims he is not guilty and seems ready for a take-no-prisoners fight.

There are wisps of flame coming from Libby's court filings.

They hint at, among other things, a Nuremberg "only following orders" defense (you remember how well that worked, at least in cases decided by judges acting as jury).

In short, Libby's legal team appears ready to rope in and drag along as many big names as may seem necessary.

Which leads to the question: What is meant by superiors?

Libby didn't have that many "superiors."

Bush, Cheney and, at least organizationally, White House chief of staff Andrew Card.

Or could there be some higher, metaphysical "superiors" being suggested, which would be interesting jurisprudentially if not strategically (unless there's to be a sudden shift to an insanity plea)?

Or was it a common enough error of using a plural when the exact meaning is singular.

Superiors is used by Fitzgerald in a letter to Libby's lawyers in a description of Libby's grand jury testimony that "he had contacts with reporters in which he disclosed the content of the National Intelligence Estimate" of Iraq's nuclear weapons capability.

"We also note that it is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors."

Any way you slice it, that's an attention-getting claim, with National Journal and The Washington Post reporting that superiors referred to Cheney.

After Plame's CIA connection was first made public, in a Robert Novak column in July 2003, the White House tried to row away as quickly as possible from the shipwreck.

When, almost three months later, Bush was pinned down on the issue, he thundered, in answer to a series of questions:

"I want to know the truth."

"If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business."

"... I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information."

"If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action."

In the wake of his indictment, Libby resigned.

But Bush's deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, who remains under investigation by Fitzgerald, has been shown to have leaked.

He's still firmly ensconced in the White House.

That, in part at least, is because Bush last summer moved the goal posts for what it takes to get the heave-ho.

"If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration," Bush said.

That's a lousy benchmark for someone who, as Bush did repeatedly in the 2000 campaign, swore he would uphold the "honor and dignity" of the White House.

Under Bush's sliding standard of leaking as a firing offense, as long as Rove remains unindicted, he apparently can hang around.

Now we have Libby reaching for Cheney's throat -- at least as a pretrial tactic.

Yes, leaking, even of classified information, is not new in Washington and often goes unpunished and even sometime unremarked on.

But this is the case that is before us now.

And it seeps its way closer to the Oval Office because an obstinate Bush will not keep his word and cut his losses.

Cragg Hines writes for the Houston Chronicle. His e-mail address is cragg.hines@chron.com.

[Livyjr]

George W. Bush ....

The dissolute, dissipated, profligate son ...

As SULLA BUSH IRAQINAMICUS .....

OUR DICTATOR ...

And the BIG GRIZ from Wyoming, Dick Cheney, in the guise of Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica ....

THE MAN BEHIND THE POWER .....

Who, of course ...

Actually holds the true power ....

And what a pair they are ....

To OUR detriment ...

"Bush still the partisan divider"

By TOM TEEPEN

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Tuesday, February 14, 2006

We now know what this year's national elections will look like.

They will look like the 2002 and 2004 elections.

Republicans will wave the bloody flag they save for just such occasions.

Karl Rove, the White House play-caller, says so.

Rove, remember, just six or so months after 9/11 and with the wounds still raw, was counseling Republican congressional candidates to use the attacks for partisan purposes in the '02 elections, thus wrecking the bipartisanship that had been obtained up until then.

Now Rove is calling for a repeat.

Vice President Dick Cheney is working that angle, too, of course, and Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, recently seconded Rove's motion.

"These are people, we know, who love their country," he said, meaning "Democrats" by the rhetorically distancing "these people."

"The question is: Can they protect it?"

Just to raise such a question is to suggest a negative answer.

It has become a GOP habit first to entertain the idea that Democrats might be patriotic but then to discount their possible patriotism as inoperative anyway, for reasons of -- what?

Bush won re-election as the warrior-president who landed on a carrier, in full Ace regalia, and proclaimed "Mission Accomplished."

To slip around the awkward fact that Bush had dodged Vietnam in a privileged Air National Guard berth while his opponent, John Kerry, had been piling up medals in Vietnam combat, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were gimmicked up to slander Kerry's volunteer service as phony.

This year, the plan is to leverage illegal and unconstitutional domestic spying as an election winner.

Democrats who object to any part of the National Security Agency sweeps or to any section of the Patriot Act are cast as sissies doing the terrorists a favor, perhaps not intentionally.

That approach skips over the fact that a growing if still small number of Republican legislators are uneasy with the programs' dubious features, and it ignores the reality that there is a large, ready bipartisan majority in Congress for the core mission of both programs if the President would only drop the unproductive excesses that violate traditional American values.

Here, again, Bush chooses to pass up a chance to be the uniter he said he would be and instead, for partisan advantage, plays the divider he said he wouldn't be.

If in the process our long-standing civil liberties needlessly get kicked over, hey, who ever heard of a war without collateral damage?

Tom Teepen writes for Cox Newspapers. His e-mail address is teepencolumn@coxnews.com.

[Livyjr]

And here is an update on a TAY-RIZM case from REPUBLICAN George Pataki's capital city of Albany, New York that we have been tracking in here ....

And actually, I started tracking this case on the old John Kerry forum ....

Before the November 2004 elections ....

When this "big bust" was made ...

And REPUBLICAN BUSH WATER-CARRIER George Pataki had his face right there on the TV ....

Telling us how lucky we were to have REPUBLICANS in power here in OUR America ....

And how sorry we would be ....

If George W. Bush lost to Democrat John Kerry ....

The PATAKI STING .....

And DUE PROCESS OF LAW is right out the window ....

Here in George W. Bush's America ...

"Shaky case keeps imam stuck in jail"

Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Tuesday, February 14, 2006

On Friday, the Albany imam facing terrorism and money laundering charges stemming from a phony missile launcher sting operation in 2003 again was denied bail by U.S. Magistrate David Homer.

So it was back to the Rensselaer County jail for the religious leader of an Albany mosque, Yassin Aref, 35, until the government can get its act and its case together.

Homer's bail denial is understandable, but barely, at this point.

Technically, this is a terrorism case.

But as terrorism cases go, this one is unusually shaky, along the lines of Vice President Dick Cheney's quail-shooting skills.

The government's sting operation was a clumsy affair that left us wondering if the accused was far more interested in making an illegal buck than he was in fomenting terrorist activity.

For 13 months, the imam was free on $250,000 bail, wearing a monitoring ankle bracelet.

At least he was able to work and support his young family.

As far as we have been told, the imam was a model bailee.

But bail was revoked five months ago because the government plopped down a superseding indictment that intimates the imam actually had documented connections to known terrorists.

Maybe.

Depending, no doubt, on translations that the government has blown before, and on what are to be considered "connections."

The imam's lawyers haven't seen any of this so-called damning evidence.

It's of a piece with the way this entire dismal case has progressed, more as a political sideshow than anything else.

At some point, this has to become about the rule of law, and actual illegalities, not concocted ones, and appropriate punishment for those illegalities.

The court, and the people of the region, have been patient, too patient.

It's time for the government to put up or shut up.

The federal prosecutor, William Pericak, in responding to the latest failed bail attempt, brushed aside claims of "Justice delayed is justice denied," by saying, "I think the case will be tried long before January" 2007.

I wonder.

In the meantime, what's wrong with the imam going back out on the street until that trial?

Law enforcement can effectively monitor his whereabouts, and save the taxpayers a ton of money in the process.

Also, the court can and should send out the appropriate message that the government's enormous power to accuse does not trump the individual's presumption of innocence.

Not unless there is compelling evidence otherwise.

So far, none is visible.

The joker in all this is that the imam may well turn out to be the victim of illegal wiretaps by the government anyway, which makes even the superseding indictment shaky.

This case was specifically cited as justification for the Bush administration's secret domestic electronic surveillance that has Washington deservedly in an uproar at the moment.

Next month, the imam has a scheduled hearing before Magistrate Homer on the potentially illegal wiretaps, and tossing the case out because of it.

An appropriate gambit, but probably fruitless.

There's no indication at this point that the furor over the wiretaps will be settled one way or the other by next month.

In fact, it may be years before that happens -- and the trial can be held.

Aref should not be penalized for such a delay.

Put two ankle bracelets on him if it makes the government feel more secure, but until there's a trial, let him walk.

Fred LeBrun can be reached at 454-5453 or by e-mail at flebrun@timesunion.com.

[Snuffysmith]

Today the world faces a single man armed with weapons of mass destruction, manifesting an aggressive, bullying attitude, who may well plunge the world into chaos and bloodshed if he miscalculates. This person, belligerent, arrogant, and sure of himself, truly is the most dangerous person on Earth. The problem is that his name is George W. Bush, and he is our president: Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Ammendment, Yale Law School, September 22, 2002

[Livyjr]

"The problem is that his name is George W. Bush, and he is our president"

- Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Ammendment, Yale Law School, September 22, 2002

Back then, in 2002, this was a very courageous statement, Snuffysmith ...

And today ...

It remains so ...

Thanks for making us aware that there are such people out there in OUR America ...

This law professor, I mean ....

You'd have to be dead in your grave for ten years or better not to know of the menace to OUR world that George W. Bush and his well-armed pack of thugs represents .....

[Livyjr]

Today ....

The world faces a single man .....

Armed with weapons of mass destruction ....

Manifesting an aggressive, bullying attitude ....

Who may well plunge the world into chaos ....

And bloodshed ....

If he miscalculates .....

This person ....

Belligerent ....

Arrogant ....

And sure of himself ....

Truly is the most dangerous person on Earth ....

The problem is ....

That his name is George W. Bush ....

And he is our president ...

- Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Ammendment, Yale Law School, September 22, 2002

George W. Bush ....

The dissolute, dissipated, profligate son ...

As SULLA BUSH IRAQINAMICUS .....

OUR DICTATOR ...

Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78 BC)

Lucius Cornelius Sulla stemmed from a good, though not very wealthy Roman family.

He came to prominence most of all in the Social War (91-89 BC).

When in 88 BC Mithridates, King of Pontus, attacked the Roman province of Asia, where a alleged 80,000 Romans and Italians were massacred, the senate decided on Sulla, who was then one of the current consuls, to be commander of the army against Mithridates.

But the Tribune of the People Suplicus Rufus called for the command to be given to Marius.

The concilium plebis backed this proposal.

But Sulla proved a man not to be messed with.

He marched on Rome at the head of six legions and forced the reversal of this decision.

This type of action was to prove typical of Sulla's methods.

After successfully completing his campaign against Mithridates Sulla returned back to Italy.

Other than having command of a battle-hardened army he held no office.

Sulla was not to wait for anyone to offer him any political position.

He simply marched on Rome and took it by force.

The consuls Gnaeus Papirius Carbo and Marius the Younger could not raise an army powerful enough to fend him off.

And so Sulla took charge.

He was not to take power as an elected consul, but in the position of dictator, a post specially set aside in the Roman constitution for times of military crisis.

Though this was not a military crisis and Sulla hardly cared.

The position simply allowed him complete power.

He now introduced a new judicial device called "proscription".

This meant the publication of lists of any people he deemed undesirable.

Rewards would be made to those who brought them in, be they dead or alive.

It goes without saying that Sulla used this device in order to annihilate any political opposition, rather than to track down any real criminals.

40 senators and 1600 equestrians supposedly died in this first wave of gruesome proscriptions.

Sulla undoubtedly had all the hallmarks of a Stalin, Mussolini or Hitler.

He even revelled in calling assemblies at which he would hold grand speeches, threatening and intimidating all those he claimed to be his enemies, as well as his own audience.

But dictators like Sulla don't just stop killing because the names on the list are exhausted.

Instead he began adding new names of people who had become "enemies of the state".

There was no place people, once on those lists, were safe.

Even those who took refuge in temples were killed.

Some might have been hauled before him and thrown at his feet.

They were killed nonetheless.

Others fell victim to the mob, being literally lynched by a bloodthirsty crowd.

Those suspects who only had all their belongings confiscated and were then thrown out of Rome were indeed the lucky ones among those who felt Sulla's wrath.

And should any have managed to flee, then an intricate network of spies sought to track them down overseas.

Alas, Sulla was not only to be remembered as a butcher.

He also used his position to reform the constitution.

Strangely for a man who himself ignored the senate's wishes and who killed an unprecedented number of its members, he did much to restore its authority.

After the damaging conflicts with the Gracchi brothers and their infamous use of other assemblies, the senate was now reaffirmed as the highest body, entitled to veto any decision reached by another assembly.

The power held by the Tribunes of the People was virtually abolished, as they now no longer possessed the power to challenge the senate.

Membership to the senate was roughly doubled, many equestrians and magistrates of other cities being added to their ranks.

Further he introduced a law by which any new member to be admitted to the senate had at least to have held the position of quaestor beforehand.

This was no doubt to assure the senate remained a body of political and administrative experience.

Also, in order to prevent the re-emergence of serial office holders like the Gracchi, Sulla restored the ten year waiting period before one could hold the same public office a second time.

Additional to this, perhaps to prevent any meteoric rise to power by people like the Gracchi brothers, he introduced a rule by which anyone holding office would have to wait at least two years before he could be nominated for the next higher office.

Of course such restrictions were to make the struggle for power among the ambitious young sons of powerful families all the more intense.

Sulla also instituted legal reforms, which created new courts for particular types of crime.

Also his reforms highlighted between civil and criminal legal procedures.

Here, too, the senate found its authority strengthened, as Sulla's reforms allowed only senior senators to sit as judges.

Unusual for a tyrant, Sulla retired in 79 BC.

He spent his last years on his country estate, writing his memoirs.

Within a short time he died of old age.

http://www.roman-empire.net/republic/sulla.html

[Livyjr]

And leaving SULLA BUSH IRAQINAMICUS and his belligerence and just plain, old-fashioned unpleasantness as far behind us as we can for the moment, we move along through our list of topics under consideration in here to the ecology ...

Or as some might say ..

The "environment" ....

In the 1960's, up here where I am in OUR America ...

In the corrupt REPUBLICAN-controlled EMPIRE of New York .....

There was a realization among the people ...

That OUR "environment" up here was being damaged ...

And destroyed ....

FOR MONEY ....

With the concomitant ...

That WE THE PEOPLE ...

Were being left with nothing ....

But the BILLS were still due ...

As if ..

There were something still there ...

OUR air was foul ...

The Hudson River was one of the most polluted in the nation ...

If I recall properly, Lake Erie had actually caught fire .....

Our groundwater for drinking water supplies was threatened ...

Or already harmed ....

And so ...

WE THE PEOPLE took action ....

WE Amended OUR state Constitution ....

So as to protect the world ...

In which we must live ...

As organisms ...

Subject to being harmed ...

By all of the various poisons ...

That we as human beings are able to subject ourselves to ...

As a result of somebody else's "lifestyle" .....

And almost as soon as we managed to amend OUR constitution ....

The lobbyists and politicians got together ...

And pretty much ...

Threw it right in the ****-can ....

And so ...

"China to step up environmental protection efforts"

Mon Feb 20, 2:00 PM ET

BEIJING (AFP) - Chinese government officials who "sacrifice" the environment for economic development will be punished as part of stepped-up efforts to control the nation's ecological degradation.

China's environmental and supervisory authorities said they would team up to investigate and better enforce existing anti-pollution laws.

"As the pace of economic development has sped up, a conspicuous lack of coordination between economic development and environmental protection has worsened daily," said a statement on the State Environmental Protection Administration's website.

"The appearance of paying too much attention to economic development and too little attention to environmental protection has resulted prominently in some laws not being enforced, others not enforced seriously and widespread violations of the law."

The new efforts will not only target polluting enterprises, but also seek to hold government officials who turn a blind eye to the environmental degradation legally responsible, the statement said.

"Leaders of some local governments and departments have not established a scientific view of development... and in a one-sided drive for economic development, have paid for it by sacrificing the environment," the statement said.

"All workers and officials at all levels, all responsible leaders of enterprises must maintain a responsible attitude toward the public and implement the new regulations in a complete and all around way."

The State Council, or China's cabinet, announced last week that environmental improvements, including the control of water, air and soil pollution, will be a major national priority over the next 15 years.

It requires environmental quality in key areas and cities to be improved by 2010 and "markedly improved" by 2020.

[Livyjr]

And leaving SULLA BUSH IRAQINAMICUS and his belligerence and just plain, old-fashioned unpleasantness as far behind us as we can for the moment ....

And a short moment it always seems to be ....

George W. Bush and HIS are like dust ...

No matter how good you clean ...

As soon as you turn around ..

There is some more ..

And it never goes away ....

"Gonzales rejects calls to step aside in Abramoff probe"

By PETE YOST, Associated Press
First published: Friday, February 17, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused requests on Thursday that he remove himself from the investigation of Jack Abramoff and the lobbyist's ties to Bush administration officials and members of Congress.

Gonzales, who was White House counsel for four years before taking over at the Justice Department, said the inquiry is being run by career prosecutors who are not influenced by politics.

Thirty-one Senate Democrats said in a letter to Gonzales that he was too close to the President and administration officials who dealt with Abramoff and immediately should step aside from the investigation.

"Considering 28 of the 31 Democrats have received Abramoff-affiliated funds themselves, it appears their hypocrisy has exceeded even their partisanship," said Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the attorney general "can avoid any appearance of impropriety by recusing himself."

"If there was ever a case that was both sensitive and rife with potential conflict -- it is this one."

"We've got career prosecutors involved in this investigation as we do in all investigations; these are folks that are not motivated by any political agenda," Gonzales said on Fox News Radio.

Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said Gonzales has followed all department guidelines and that there is "no reason for him to recuse himself from the investigation at this time."

"I had my picture taken with him, evidently," President Bush said of Abramoff on Jan. 26.

"I've had my picture taken with a lot of people."

"I frankly don't even remember having my picture taken with the guy," Bush added.

"I don't know him."

Abramoff has since been quoted as saying that he had met briefly with the President nearly a dozen times and that Bush knew him well enough to make joking references to Abramoff's family.

Three former associates of Abramoff said this week that the lobbyist told them he had ties to the White House through presidential confidant Karl Rove.

Lobbying invoices sent by Abramoff's firm to one client, the Northern Mariana Islands, show at least 200 contacts between Abramoff's lobbying team and the administration in Bush's first 10 months in office.

[Snuffysmith]

Time out for reflection:


http://writ.news.findlaw.com/leavitt/20060221.html

Nuremberg at 60: How The United States Is Turning Away from Its Proud History
By NOAH S. LEAVITT
----
Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2006

This past weekend in Seattle, Amnesty International USA convened a group of several hundred lawyers to assess the legacy of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, sixty years later. The meeting focused on the principles behind the Nuremberg project, and surveyed the state of international justice now.

The United States led the way in the Nuremberg trials - underscoring the need for strict, aggressive adherence to the rule of law in the face of mass lawlessness. And since then, adherence to the rule of law has proved not only to be the touchstone of Nuremberg, but also the United States' best foreign relations tool. The U.S. Constitution is taken as a model by other countries who are constitution-building; America's grants of asylum offer haven to those who are fleeing the persecution of lawless regimes.



Until now: Now, I will argue, the Bush administration has very significantly undermined the Nuremberg legacy, by departing from the rule of law, and openly flouting international law.

Nuremberg's History: The Contemporaneous Controversy over the Trials

Most people know that the Allied powers -- United States, Russia, Great Britain and France -- convened the Tribunals in 1945 to try high-level leaders of the Nazi government. What is not as well known, however, is that the trials were fraught with controversy and behind-the-scenes politicking. Indeed, the trials almost did not happen at all.

In the United States, two radically opposing factions developed. In 1944, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau proposed summarily executing many prominent Nazi leaders, and banishing others to far corners of the world. Under his proposal, German prisoners of war would be forced to rebuild Europe. Even Winston Churchill supported a version of this plan, preferring to simply shoot the leaders.

At first, President Roosevelt leaned in this direction, too. But Secretary of War Henry Stimson had a different idea: He pushed for some sort of tribunal, believing that the rule of law needed to be reinforced where the Nazis had mocked it. He considered the Nazi activities as war crimes that called for a judicial response - and therefore, his counter-proposal called for trying Nazi leaders in open court.

Stimson eventually convinced Roosevelt, who gave his approval for the Tribunal only months before he died in April 1945. That approval paved the way for the U.S. to become the prime mover behind the trials.

How the U.S. Saw Nuremberg: The Victory of Law Against Lawlessness

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Shortly after he assumed his new office, President Truman allowed Justice Robert Jackson, who was at the time sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, a leave of absence so that Jackson could become Chief Prosecutor of the main Tribunal.

Jackson was an inspired choice. Representing the U.S position, Jackson proclaimed, "This Tribunal is not the product of abstract speculation… It represents a practical effort to use international law to meet the greatest menace of our time ...We are able to stop this menace only when we make all men and nations equally answerable to the law."

The rest is history. The Tribunal indicted high-level defendants on charges of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, which it defined as "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation...or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds." At no prior time in history had the leaders of a nation been brought to trial for killing their own citizens. But at Nuremberg, within a year, 21 defendants were tried and 18 convicted.

Among the many breakthroughs, the tribunals established individual accountability for mass atrocities -- previously, only nations could be held accountable. They also furthered the concept of international law as a separate and enforceable set of legal standards --creating a way to find an individual liable for massive crimes even if he might be found innocent under domestic law.

The tribunals eliminated any immunity based on the official position of a defendant - giving birth to the concept of "command responsibility." They also created a legal basis for finding private actors - not just public officials - responsible for atrocities.

And at a larger level, they established that due process needs to be followed even after mass atrocities.

Even Churchill, when the Tribunal ended, admitted that his initial skepticism had been wrong.

After Nuremberg: A Period of Quiescence, with Some Progress

Yet, after the tribunals closed in 1948, there was an almost fifty-year period in which international justice seemed to disappear from among the world's priorities. Until the Statute for the International Criminal Court was drafted in 1998, there was no comprehensive international justice system in place.

Still, progress has been made: For instance, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda broke ground by establishing rape as a war crime that can be utilized in prosecutions.

Another post-Nuremberg development is the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The UN established this body to prosecute war crimes, specifically of individuals, not governments or corporate entities. Although frequently mentioned for serving as a soapbox for Slobodan Milosevic, during its decade-long existence the ICTY has expanded the boundaries of international humanitarian and international criminal law.

And, as FindLaw columnist Anita Ramasastry discussed at the Nuremberg conference, the trial of prominent industrialists established that private economic actors can be prosecuted for violations of international law.

U.S. attorneys have drawn on this development to utilize the Alien Tort Statute, which designates that federal district courts have jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort committed in violation of international law. Although part of the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Statute was not used until the late 1970s when lawyers used it to bring to justice a Paraguayan police officer who kidnapped and tortured a defendant. To date, approximately 100 cases seeking justice for human rights abuses have been filed under this law. Some of these efforts include bringing charges against companies that collude with repressive governments in places like Burma and Nigeria.

Other speakers also cited the upcoming prosecution of Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia as a positive, albeit late, outgrowth of Nuremberg.

How the U.S. Is Betraying the Principles of Nuremberg

But the great irony, lately, is how far the United States has moved away from the sentiments expressed by Jackson about the importance of the rule of law in addressing radical challenges to our open, democratic way of life.

Greater U.S. and international cooperation - as I discussed in a prior column - might have prevented the Saddam Hussein trial from becoming a mockery. Situating the trial abroad could have addressed very serious security concerns - and opting for an international panel of judges could have mooted allegations of bias. As it is, the trial may be doing permanent harm to the possibility of bringing dictators and high-level human rights violators to trial.

And the Saddam trial, of course, is not the only way the U.S. has fallen short - as conference participants noted. Gruesome new photos from the Abu Ghraib prison show the U.S. - once an enforcer of international law - is now a repeat violator of it.

Meanwhile, U.S. prisoners elsewhere have also been treated in ways that violate the law. Five United Nations experts recently called for the U.S. to either bring the detainees at Guantanamo Bay to trial or release them, in accord with international due process norms articulated in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other binding agreements. But the U.S. said no. Previously, the U.S. had refused even to allow the detainees access to attorneys until the Supreme Court's 2004 decision in Rasul forced it to do so.

Elsewhere, the U.S. continues the practice of extraordinary rendition: sending suspected terrorists to a reported CIA-run network of secret prisons in third countries to face interrogation - precisely because the U.S. could not legally conduct such interrogation on its own. Even the U.S.'s ally the European Union is currently investigating this practice, because of allegations that the CIA moved detainees through European airports.

Domestically, the Administration has tried to evade the application of the law to its detainees - even when they are American citizens such as Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla. Hamdi was claimed to be highly dangerous - then the government agreed to release him, without charges, as long as he agreed to be deported to Saudi Arabia. Padilla was claimed to be a "dirty bomb" conspirator, then charged with separate crimes - with the change of facts dramatic enough to trouble even the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

In short, as one of the conference participants suggested, the U.S. - seeing 9/11 as primarily an intelligence failure - has vowed since then to gather intelligence by any means necessary, legal or not. No wonder, then, that the latest headlines have revealed not only the CIA-run network of secret prisons, but also the NSA's Presidentially-authorized program of warrantless wiretapping.

Nuremberg's Lesson: Voices Must Be Raised in Favor of Abiding by the Law

As I noted above, the Nuremberg trial might never have occurred were it not for vocal rule-of-law advocates like Henry Stimson. President Roosevelt might well have chosen, instead, to impose unilateral power by executing the Nazi leaders and using prisoners of war to rebuild Germany along American economic interests.

Yet, thankfully, voices within the government stood against that approach, and fought for Americans to remember that the country was built on laws, not the exercise of absolute power. When those voices won out, the result was a high-water mark in international legal development.

Now, sixty years later, America is exerting its power once again over a defeated country, and it appears to have forgotten that the rule of law must guide each step of the way. Fortunately, though, there are voices - on both sides of the aisle -- that recall Secretary Stimson. Conservative activists, too, have begun to call for the system of checks and balances to be used to halt the White House's power grab.

And within the federal government, some are speaking out: At the end of January, Newsweek profiled several senior Justice Department lawyers who challenged the White House's power grab. And the February 27 edition of the New Yorker describes how a former Navy General Counsel warned the Pentagon as early as 2002 that legal arguments advanced by Bush administration officials seeking to avoid international prohibitions against torture were wrong, and could lead to the abuse of detainees.

We are also beginning to hear a few Republican voices in Congress - such as those of Senator Pat Roberts and Representative Heather Wilson -- calling for oversight of some of the Executive Branch practices, such as the legality of the NSA's warrantless wiretapping.

One of the core lessons of Nuremberg was this: When we are confronted by a mass atrocity - such as a genocide or a massive terrorist attack - which mocks the notion of legal norms, the best reaction is to reinforce, not reject, the importance of those norms, both at home and abroad.

President Bush, who has repeatedly sought to exempt his Administration from any legal oversight or limitations, must be reminded of this lesson, especially from those within his own party. To ignore it would be to make a mockery of America's history.

[Livyjr]

Time out for reflection:

President Bush, who has repeatedly sought to exempt his Administration from any legal oversight or limitations

Must be reminded of this lesson ....

Especially from those within his own party .....

To ignore it would be to make a mockery of America's history ....

Time out for reflection, indeed, Snuffysmith .....

In fact ...

It seems to be way past time ...

But that is just how it goes ...

I guess ....

And here, Snuf ...

My premise is that .....

America's history was already made a mockery of ....

Some time ago ...

Which is HOW we came to have George W. Bush ...

As TYRANT ...

Here in OUR America ....

People believe that George W. Bush is the "BEGINNING" of something ...

Whereas ...

I see him as the CULMINATION of something else, instead ....

And here ....

I am drawing parallels ...

From other times ...

In the history of man ...

Which certainly includes women, as well ....

And so ....

To me ....

America's "history" has been tossed right in the ****-can ....

Long ago, in fact ...

At least up here where I am ....

And so ....

WE DON'T HAVE A "HISTORY" NO MORE .....

And so ...

We don't have an "identity", either .....

Other than that which is given to individual herd animals ....

Like cattle ...

Out there in a Kansas feedlot somewhere ....

Like an "ear tag" number ....

Or a tattoo ....

Which is one of the prime reasons that I started this thread .....

Right after the November 2004 elections .....

So as to be able ...

To "track" this ...

As it made its way along ,...

To right here ...

And now ...

Where we can more clearly see ..

What patterns develop ....

Here in OUR America ...

As a result of this intentional power grab ...

By the REPUBLICAN PARTY ...

Of America ...

And the world ....

As you can appreciate, Snuf ...

From your extensive travels across OUR America ....

It is indeed a big place ...

And so ...

In a lot of ways ....

We don't know how other Americans "live" ....

Or even what they may know ...

AND IT IS NOT ALL THE SAME .....

Even in the best of times ...

And the best of times ...

These days of the FABULOUS FLYING BUSHCOS ....

CERTAINLY ARE NOT .....

I have to go back and study this piece some more, Snuf ....

But I did want to say initially ....

That it is naive ...

To assume ...

That REPUBLICANS ...

The HARD-CORE ones ...

Are anything like us ...

AT ALL .....

And so ....

WHY ON EARTH ARE OTHER REPUBLICANS GOING TO SAY A WORD TO GEORGE W. BUSH ABOUT WHAT HE IS DOING ...

When the record clearly demonstrates ...

That what George W. Bush is doing ....

IS REPUBLICAN PARTY BUSINESS ....

And policy .....

To fulfill THEIR agenda ...

Which is not OURS ...

At all .....

Which is why I made this post above here ...

About Sulla ...

The DICTATOR of Rome ....

Who could not have maintained his existence as DICTATOR ....

Without a host of willing supporters ...

Who were to benefit ....

From their association .....

With him ...

And his policies ....

Especially PROSCRIPTION .....

Which made some men in Rome ...

Very wealthy .....

And so .....

[Livyjr]

Time out for reflection:

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/leavitt/20060221.html

"Nuremberg at 60: How The United States Is Turning Away from Its Proud History"

By NOAH S. LEAVITT

Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2006

This past weekend in Seattle, Amnesty International USA convened a group of several hundred lawyers to assess the legacy of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, sixty years later.

The meeting focused on the principles behind the Nuremberg project, and surveyed the state of international justice now.

The United States led the way in the Nuremberg trials - underscoring the need for strict, aggressive adherence to the rule of law in the face of mass lawlessness.

And now ...

What we have in OUR America .....

Is very aggressive adherence ....

To the destruction of the rule of law ....

Which has given us ....

Mass lawlessness, instead .....

And the principal culprit .....

Is what is purported to be ...

OUR OWN SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT .....

And so .....

Earlier today, I was thinking of this ..

With respect to the up-coming elections later this year ...

HOW WE, THE PEOPLE, REALLY HAVE NO REPRESENTATION AT ALL ....

In what is purported to be ...

OUR GOVERNMENT ......

Because ...

What are purported to be OUR representatives .....

Are not representing us ...

At all .....

Rather, they are bought and sold .....

Like commodities themselves ....

Because in this day and age of "party politics" ...

That is exactly what they are ......

Commodities ....

And so .....

[Livyjr]

Time out for reflection:

Shortly after he assumed his new office, President Truman allowed Justice Robert Jackson, who was at the time sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, a leave of absence so that Jackson could become Chief Prosecutor of the main Tribunal.

Jackson was an inspired choice.

Representing the U.S position, Jackson proclaimed,

"This Tribunal is not the product of abstract speculation…"

"It represents a practical effort to use international law to meet the greatest menace of our time ..."

"We are able to stop this menace only when we make all men and nations equally answerable to the law."

The rest is history.

Well ...

That was certainly a moment in time and space, anyway .....

This man saying these words above here, I mean .....

BUT ....

The rest is not all all clear ...

What happened from there ...

Because right now today ....

Right here in OUR America ...

Thanks directly to at least one federal district court judge here in OUR America who was selected by George W. Bush to spread George W. Bush's "judicial philosophy" across OUR land, and who was subsequently appointed to the federal bench by the REPUBLICAN-controlled United States Senate, all men are NOT EQUALLY ANSWERABLE TO THE LAW ...

And in fact ....

Some are not answerable ...

AT ALL .....

And this is right out in plain sight .....

No mysteries .....

Nothing hidden and out of sight ....

For the last several months, at least ...

All we would hear about, over and over, was that George W. Bush was selecting people to be judges, here in OUR America ....

Because they SHARE HIS JUDICIAL PHILOSOPHY ....

And never ...

Did we ever hear ...

What that judicial philosophy might even be ...

Or why it would be beneficial ...

For OUR America ...

To just discard or jettison the last several hundred years of OUR history ...

Just because George W. Bush decided one day ...

To do so ....

It is as if we are undergoing the biggest book burning of all time ...

Right here in OUR own America ...

And the very first books to go into the flames ...

To be consumed ...

Are the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure .....

Along with all of OUR precedents ....

BECAUSE .....

Well ....

George W. Bush wants it to be that way ...

And so ....

[Livyjr]

"Gonzales rejects calls to step aside in Abramoff probe" 
 
By PETE YOST, Associated Press
First published: Friday, February 17, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused requests on Thursday that he remove himself from the investigation of Jack Abramoff and the lobbyist's ties to Bush administration officials and members of Congress.

Gonzales, who was White House counsel for four years before taking over at the Justice Department, said the inquiry is being run by career prosecutors who are not influenced by politics.

And since Snuffysmith has got us over here onto this subject of "rule of law", and "due process", which is at best a chimeric concept in OUR America today ....

And an absolute joke up here where I am .....

I have to say ...

After reading these words of Alberto Gonzales above .....

That I wonder ...

At just how stupid ...

He thinks ...

We really are here in OUR America ....

With his blather above ....

About the Abramoff inquiry .....

Being run by career prosecutors who are not influenced by politics ......

Who is he trying to kid here .....

About these Justice Department lawyers not being influenced by politics .....

Those Justice Department lawyers are there because of politics .....

Not in spite of it ......

Up here where I am .....

When George W. Bush became OUR TYRANT .....

He requested the resignations of every U.S. Attorney who was not appointed by him ...

Regardless of what they might have been working on .....

And then ....

Because George W. Bush was a REPUBLICAN ....

And wanted only "trustworthy" REPUBLICANS in HIS Department of Justice ....

Which is not OURS at all ....

The task fell to George W. Bush's WATER CARRIER up here, the REPUBLICAN Pataki, to scour around and find some lawyers that were beholden to him and the REPUBLICAN PARTY .....

To be the new U.S. Attorneys up here ....

BECAUSE OF POLITICS .....

And so .....

Who exactly is Alberto Gonzales trying to kid ...

Besides himself, that is .....

[Livyjr]

And while we are on the subject of George W. Bush and his crowd looting OUR national treasury, while at the same time, gutting our body of law, here in OUR America .....

We have ...

George W. Bush apparently putting OUR America up for sale to the highest bidder .....

Whatever other country out there wants to buy up OUR america ....

Just see George ....

He's got the keys right there in his pocket ...

Just make sure the check is in the mail ...

And so ....

"Bush: Arab Co. Port Deal Should Proceed"

By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer

41 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Tuesday that a deal allowing an Arab company to take over six major U.S. seaports should go forward and that he would veto any congressional effort to stop it.

The Senate's Republican leader had promised just such an effort a few hours earlier.

"After careful review by our government, I believe the transaction ought to go forward," Bush told reporters who had traveled with him on Air Force One to Washington.

"I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company."

"I am trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to the people of the world, 'We'll treat you fairly.'"

Bush took the rare step of calling reporters to his conference room on the plane after returning from a speech in Colorado, addressing a controversy that is becoming a major headache for the White House.

He said the seaports arrangement had been extensively examined by the administration and was "a legitimate deal that will not jeopardize the security of the country."

Earlier, Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist urged the administration to reconsider its decision to allow the transaction, under which a British company that has been running six U.S. ports would be acquired by Dubai Ports World, a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates.

Frist said he'd introduce a bill to delay the deal if the administration doesn't do so on its own.

The British company, Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., runs major commercial operations at ports in Baltimore, Miami, New Jersey, New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia.

"The decision to finalize this deal should be put on hold until the administration conducts a more extensive review of this matter," said Frist.

"If the administration cannot delay this process, I plan on introducing legislation to ensure that the deal is placed on hold until this decision gets a more thorough review."

Frist, who spoke to reporters in Long Beach, Calif., where he was on a fact-finding tour on port security and immigration issues, said he doesn't oppose foreign ownership, "but my main concern is national security."

Two Republican governors, New York's George Pataki and Maryland's Robert Ehrlich, voiced their own doubts a day earlier, as have other members of Congress.

But Bush, who has yet to issue a bill in more than five years in office, said sternly he would not back down.

"They ought to listen to what I have to say about this."

"They'll look at the facts and understand the consequences of what they're going to do," he said.

"But if they pass a law, I'll deal with it with a veto."

In a sign of how volatile the issue has become in the uneasy climate after the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Bush pressed the topic yet again immediately upon his return to the White House, to make sure his position would be on camera as well.

"This is a company that has played by the rules, has been cooperative with the United States, from a country that's an ally on the war on terror, and it would send a terrible signal to friends and allies not to let this transaction go through," the president said after emerging from his helicopter on the South Lawn.

At the Pentagon, the UAE was praised as an important strategic military partner by both Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Rumsfeld said a process was in place and "the process worked."

"Nothing changes with respect to security under the contract."

"The Coast Guard is in charge of security, not the corporation," Rumsfeld said.

The administration insisted that national security issues had received a full airing before the interagency panel that reviews such transactions gave the go-ahead.

In Los Angeles, Sen. Susan Collins, who heads the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said she and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asking that the committee be fully briefed on the ports deal.

Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., a ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said they are going to introduce a "joint resolution of disapproval" when they return to Washington next week.

Other lawmakers, including Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said they would offer emergency legislation next week to block the deal ahead of a planned March 2 takeover.

Both governors indicated they may try to cancel lease arrangements at ports in their states because of the DP World takeover.

"Ensuring the security of New York's port operations is paramount and I am very concerned with the purchase of Peninsular & Oriental Steam by Dubai Ports World," Pataki said.

"I have directed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to explore all legal options that may be available to them."

The arrangement brought protests from both political parties in Congress and a lawsuit in Florida from a company affected by the takeover.

Critics have noted that some of the 9/11 hijackers used the UAE as an operational and financial base.

In addition, they contend the UAE was an important transfer point for shipments of smuggled nuclear components sent to Iran, North Korea and Libya by a Pakistani scientist.
___

Associated Press writers Will Lester, Terence Hunt, and Devlin Barrett in Washington, Matthew Verrinder in Newark, N.J., and Tom Stuckey in Annapolis, Md., contributed to this story.

The problem for George and his crowd ......

Is that they have absolutely no credibility left to them ...

Whatosever .....

And I personally cannot credit George W. Bush with having the intelligence required to (a) know that it is raining; and (b) to know that he is even getting wet, let alone that it is time to come inside ....

And so ...

WHO IS GOING TO BELIEVE A SINGLE WORD GEORGE W. BUSH HAS TO SAY ON THIS MATTER ....

Besides himself ...

And Donald Rumsfeld ...

And this general of George's, of course ...

For what choice does he have ...

If he wants to keep his job .....

And those shiny stars ....

And those fancy hats those big boys down there in the Pentagon get to wear ....

So we yokels out here in the hinterlands of civilization ...

Will know just how self-important ...

They really are ....