las meditaciones de victoria

A Must Read! ON NSA SPYING: A LETTER TO CONGRESS

Up until now I have relied on the blogosphere for tough commentary on Bush’s illegal spying program. I have been thoroughly dissatisfied with our elected leaders’ ability to respond to the Department of Justice’s defense of domestic surveillance. Finally, in ON NSA SPYING: A LETTER TO CONGRESS published in the current issue of The New York Review of Books, we get a cohesive response to the Bush administration’s NSA domestic spying program; and specifically, to the Department of Justice’s December letter to House and Senate leaders. 

ON NSA SPYING: A LETTER TO CONGRESS is written by scholars of constitutional law from our countries most prestigious law schools and by former government officials (Beth Nolan, Curtis Bradley, David Cole, Geoffrey Stone, Harold Hongju Koh, Kathleen M. Sullivan, Laurence H. Tribe, Martin Lederman, Philip B. Heymann, Richard Epstein, Ronald Dworkin, Walter Dellinger, William S. Sessions, and William Van Alstyne.) I found the letter clear, concise, and long overdue. It is both legal and straightforward – the kind of argument you hear from any excellent lawyer in any court of law. Its rhetoric is what I hope to see from our Congressional leaders. Unfortunately, they instead appear bashful in their opposition to the Bush administration’s illegal and unconstitutional domestic surveillance program.

Our elected leaders seem to have lost what should be at the core of their expertise – rhetorical skill and facility with the law. In other words, know the law and know how to argue it. If the Alito hearings demonstrate anything, it is that our senators do not have the ability to define an argument, question a witness, or summarize a position. The issue with Alito was clear – his extreme point-of-view on executive authority. Instead of making a strong case against Alito, the Democrats functioned on sound bites and long orations that ought to be exclusive to the campaign trail, not the Senate chambers.

I hope all concerned citizens will read this letter. As the authors state: “One of the crucial features of a constitutional democracy is that it is always open to the President – or anyone else – to seek to change the law. But it is also beyond dispute that, in such a democracy, the president cannot simply violate criminal laws behind closed doors because he deems them obsolete or impracticable.” 

Encourage your senators to read this letter to build the case against illegal surveillance in the upcoming hearings on domestic spying.  

IS IT A WAR ON TERROR, OR TERRITORY?

Are US self-interests in Iraq inhibiting the protection of Americans from terrorism? The Bush administration would like Americans to believe that yesterday’s bin Ladin tape demonstrates that Osama bin Ladin is desperate and that he wants to negotiate because he is feeling pressure. Speaking to the press, Scott McClellan said, “We are winning. Clearly Al Qaeda are on the run, and that is why it is important that we do not let up, and do not stop until the job is done.” But doesn’t this Administration’s refusal to negotiate a truce contradict its goal to protect Americans from future attacks?

The Australian Times published an abridged version of bin Ladin’s speech. In portions of the transcript that were not read on CNN or Aljazeera yesterday, it appears that bin Ladin addressed this question. Bin Ladin said that “Bush and his administration do not have the will or the ability to get out of Iraq for their own private, suspect reasons.”

If George Bush and the administration have private, suspect reasons, what are they?

In a January 14 interview with Noam Chomsky on Alternet, Chomsky remarks on two principles he believes govern Bush Administration policies, “stuff the pockets of your rich friends with dollars, and increase your control over the world. Almost everything follows from that. If you happen to blow up the world, well, you know, it's somebody else's business.”

In Osama bin Ladin’s own words, he said, “there is no shame in this solution (referring to his offer of a truce), which prevents the wasting of billions of dollars that have gone to those with influence and warmongers in America who have supported Bush’s election campaign with billions of dollars – which explains the insistence by Bush and his gang to carry on with war.”

Why are Noam Chomsky, a well respected professor of Linguistics at MIT, and Osama bin Ladin making parallel remarks regarding Bush’s motivations for war, while at the same time, the only brief response to come out of the White House is “We don’t negotiate with terrorists. We put them out of business.”

If I were to agree with the administration’s position – We put terrorists out of business – and I were to believe that we, as a nation, are truly engaged in a “war” on terror, then isn’t it in our best interest to try to put a terrorist organization that is offering a truce out of business by accepting the truce? Why, in wartime, would one side deny a negotiation when the other has called for a truce? What do we lose by negotiating a truce? Unfortunately, this brings me full circle to bin Ladin’s accusation of George Bush’s private, suspect reasons for his war in Iraq.

If we accept this truce and bin Ladin does not act in good faith, American’s are in no more dangerous a situation than we are currently in. If bin Ladin does act in good faith, George Bush has won his war. Saudi Muslim scholar, Shikh Said bin Zughair supported the truce, saying reason sometimes beats politics. He accepts the same theory that if bin Ladin is sincere, we will all be winners; if not, we will not lose anything. 

I do not believe that the re-emergence of bin Ladin is an act of desperation. It is merely a response, an act in wartime, an enemy making sure his presence is known and not forgotten. I fear that bin Ladin’s words and the Bush Administration’s insistence to stay the course in Iraq are further evidence that this war is not about terrorism; it’s about territory, and all the valuable riches beneath the soil. One thing that we can certainly expect in the next few days is Bush will use this latest threat to promote his illegal spying program.

When Will They Ever Learn?

Yesterday, when no one was looking, the great deflector George Bush finally showed up in New Orleans.  While he was there, Anderson Cooper spent nearly one hour of his primetime news coverage discussing James Frey’s memoir and Condoleezza Rice carefully orchestrated a declaration that Iran has “shattered the basis for negotiation” regarding its nuclear facilities. All this went on while our Democrat superstars at the Alito hearings failed miserably to provide us with a clear picture of why Alito was chosen by the President and what his nomination really means for this country in terms of executive power.

I give the Democrats, at this week’s dog & pony show, a C at best. (The fact that I am blogging may indicate that I like to hear myself as much as Joe Biden does, but I sincerely hope you are not left with that impression.) Alito’s membership in CAP and his failure to recuse himself from cases involving Vanguard pale in comparison to the issue of presidential power. The severity of the Democrats ineffectiveness is equivalent to a pre-paid full-fare ticket for Bush and his Cronies to the Middle East and into your living room. The unfettered power of executive authority Bush hoped for when he nominated Alito will put everyone at risk– women, men, minorities, and even 10 year old children. The norms of individual liberties that the framers of this nation worked so hard to erect are at stake and can fall like dominos, leaving pre-emptive warfare and unlawful government intrusion in their wake.

And what is the Democrats solution? From Democrat insiders we are hearing it is Hillary Clinton. As a supporter of the Bush imperial policy in Iraq she too has confused this republic for an empire. At this point we need a leader who truly understands the principles upon which this nation was founded and who is willing to acknowledge when mistakes have been made.

I’m left wondering, how it is that as a country we don’t mature like individuals do. Generally, I find myself learning from my mistakes and growing up. As a kid I used to hit my sister when she angered me or didn’t comply with my expectations. As a teenager, I lied to my parents. In my twenties, I discovered credit and recklessly spent money I didn’t have. Today I don’t hit, I try very hard to be honest and I try not to spend money I don’t have. How is it that this country seems to systematically forget history and allow it to repeat itself?

When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?

HIT THE ROAD JACK!

Well, my friends, it looks like Jack Abramoff is going down.  And, from the look on his face in the morning papers, he has a good idea of where he is going to spend the next few years.  Ironically, just this morning, before I picked up the paper and saw the headlines about the guilty pleas, I was reading an historical text about Native Americans in California.  The passage I was interested in was a quote from the editor of the Los Angeles Star from March 13, 1852. (The Los Angeles Star was one the city’s original weekly papers that until 1855 was printed half in English and half in Spanish.)  The 19^th Century editor openly referred to Native Americans as “the most degraded race of aborigines upon the North American Continent” and who warned the government that “to invest them with the rights of sovereignty, to teach them that they are to be treated as powerful and independent nations, is planting the seeds of future disaster and ruin.” 

Abramoff, whose respect for Native Americans apparently is as lacking as the Star’s 1852 editor, was hired by at least four tribes to represent their casino and gambling interests in Washington D.C.  He instructed the tribes to hire former Tom Delay aide Michael Scanlon as their publicist and directed them to make political donations to specific politicians while he and Scanlon laughed all the way to the bank.  Remember when Scanlon bragged in emails made public last fall?  “Weez gonna be rich” he wrote.  Today’s news published Abramoff’s favorite names for his clients: “troglodytes,” “plain stupid …Morons” and “Monkeys.”  It’s hard to quantify racism on a scale, but what is clear is that there is little difference in attitude between the Los Angeles editor and the actions and attitudes of Abramoff and Scanlon.

In 2003 I had lunch at Jack Abramoff’s Capital Hill restaurant, appropriately named “Signatures,” where so much of his illegal dealings went down.  I was visiting D.C. and was dining with a childhood friend who was working for the Bush administration.  At that time I didn’t know that restaurants on The Hill were partisan; and therefore, I had no idea I was dining in a Republican lair!  I had just assumed, because I felt so out of place, that I just wasn’t a politico.  Now, I am comforted to discover, I’m just not a Republican. 

In this morning’s article I also learned that Abramoff’s earliest scandal went down at my neighborhood elementary school.  Apparently, back in 1972 during his campaign for 8^th grade student body president, he was disqualified in a runoff election for exceeding his campaign spending limit.  Which brings us to the root of this mess – Money. 

Members of Congress, congressional staff and lobbyists’ involvement with fraudulent donations involving kickbacks is out of control.  Abramoff is just one sleazebag who got caught.  The connection today between public officials who take us to war, who allow raging crimes against the environment, and who outsource American business to sweatshops abroad as kickbacks to special interest groups dominates our government.  Moira Brennan from the California Clean Money Campaign calls it “the best government money can buy.”  Their Clean Money, Clean Elections campaign sets out to reform political campaigns by financing candidates who reject all private money.  Clean campaigns means no kickbacks.  This puts us, the voters, back on a map where only special interest groups exist today.  LA Times columnist George Skeleton said it best, “Either the public buys the politicians, or the special interests will.”  You decide.