Stygius

This has got to stop

This "signing statement" crap will only end up eroding the legitimacy of the presidency. It's got to stop. Boston Globe:

Bush challenges hundreds of laws

President cites powers of his office

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff  |  April 30, 2006

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Curt Weldon and Michael Ledeen: Ghorbanifar's rubes

Laura Rozen on the puncturing of Congressman Curt Weldon's and ideologues Michael Ledeen's "intelligence" that Osama bin Laden was dead:

Do you notice any similarities between his source and his source, beyond the fact that the source was apparently wrong about the very same allegation? More here and here. A bad tip can happen to all of us. Then again, not all of us are lobbying to get our sources on the US government payroll as an Iran intelligence asset, as Congressman Weldon is.

Ghorbanifar's rubes. So much for Curt Weldon: Man of Intrigue. See previously here and here.

Liberal rags and Cal Thomas

Cleaning out the Bloglines backlog, and - though it's not timely - wanted to highlight this March Editor & Publisher piece:

John Winn Miller, publisher of The Olympian, the Knight Ridder daily in Olympia, Wash., says he's mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore -- especially from popular syndicated columnist Cal Thomas.
 
"I'm tired of hearing radical columnists like you besmirch the good men and women who struggle daily to put out the very best newspaper they can," Miller writes in his paper today. Ironically, The Olympian itself carried Thomas' offending column on Sunday.
 
"Once again you've trotted out that stale cliche that newspapers like mine are undermined by what you claim is a liberal bias," Miller charges. "I know I can't change your mind. But I'll be doggone if I'm going to let your slander of my colleagues go unchallenged anymore."

Miller goes on to condemn the notion of "political litmus tests" in newsrooms. Cal Thomas responds . . . sort of:

Thomas responded, saying the findings of a Project for Excellence in Journalism [site] survey show "continuing distrust of the major media in this country. Rather than defending the bona fides of his newspaper staff, Mr. Miller might consider the findings themselves. If people are not persuaded of the fairness and balance he asserts, they won't buy the newspaper, anymore than people will patronize fast-food establishments they believe serve spoiled hamburgers."
 
The columnist, who's syndicated to nearly 600 newspapers by Tribune Media Services, added: "In business -- and newspapers are a business -- it matters less what the publisher or editor thinks than what the readers believe. As the survey shows, only 7% of journalists identify themselves as conservative and 33% say they are liberal.

See the circularity? Thomas can't point to anything specific, but after years of a concerted movement of jumping up and down about media bias as an influential voice in the pages of said media, he can then point to public distrust of the media as evidence of his original point. Not to argue that the media is therefore unbiased, but only to further point out that it doesn't follow from this that public distrust is attributable to a conservative-liberal ratio of journalists in newsrooms, as Thomas implies. Everyone distrusts the media -- liberals I know are just as paranoid about perceived conservative bias as vice versa.

In fact, this "liberal-conservative" dichotomy is a false one. To bang away at the notion that there are x-number more liberals than y-number conservative totally ignores the presence of moderates in the newsroom.

Here is the PEJ section on journalism and values Thomas is referring to. And here is their chart:

And failing to note the distinction between national and local outlets is also telling. The divide is far less dramatic, and the vast majority of Americans still gets their news from their local papers.  This may not be a big deal in reality, but Cal Thomas is playing fast and loose with the numbers so as to wield his broad brush; after all, The Olympian is not The Washington Post.

Not to argue that Americans shouldn't distrust their media (and they ought to distrust their government more), but only to show that a core pillar of conservative pudits' repetitive victimology is a pillar made of sand.

Ex-FDA boss investigated

Stock options are a bitch. From Jurist:

Lester Crawford, the embattled former head of the US Food and Drug Administration who stepped down in September 2005 after only three months in office in the midst of a furor over the agency's refusal to authorize over-the-counter distribution of Plan B emergency contraceptives, is under criminal investigation by a grand jury for alleged financial wrongdong and making false statements to Congress.

Wooing Aliyev

The Christian Science Monitor gives an overview of the geopolitics of US-Azerbaijan relations prior to its president's visit to America, despite Ilham Aliyev's dubious record on democracy and human rights.

Hamas diplomacy

Nice catch by Athena. The Jordan Times reports on Hamas "elements" plotting to attack Jordanian targets:

The         government on Tuesday said Hamas members arrested         recently were close to attacking officials and         installations in Jordan under orders from a movement         military leader based in Syria.

It's an interesting development, but this article's non-specificity reeks of behind-the-scenes government spin designed to apply certain kinds of pressure in Syria and Ramalla. The Jordanians are claiming that Hamas' "military wing," based in Syria, has some dude that ordered this. A list of notable Hamas leaders here.

Afghanistan and power

From American Footprints:

IWPR reports convincingly that the Taliban are more powerful than the government in some parts of southern Afghanistan.  Mainly as a show of this authority, they have banned automobiles in Ghazni province.

From IWPR, this passage chilled me:

“We very rarely see a police patrol or a government team to come to our village, but we see armed Taleban patrolling the area every day,” said Rahmatullah, a shopkeeper in Safaraz village. “Whom should we fear more?”

“This is a test of who rules the area,” said one Taleban commander, who did not wish to be named.

Doesn't it seem rather mad that Afghanistan, al-Qaeda's refuge, has become the invisible war in the United States?

Pat Roberts' "intelligence"

Murray Waas castrates:

When the CIA announced on Friday that it had fired an employee who the agency claims "knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence" with a newspaper reporter, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, immediately praised the agency's action, saying that "unauthorized disclosures of classified information can significantly harm our ability to protect the American people."

[snip]

But three years ago on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Roberts himself was involved in disclosing sensitive intelligence information that, according to four former senior intelligence officers, impaired efforts to capture Saddam Hussein and potentially threatened the lives of Iraqis who were spying for the United States.

A moon-sized crater

Aren't you glad White House chief of staff Josh Bolten got Karl Rove out of his way by putting him in charge of keeping the Republican Congressional majority? CNN.com reports:

In the telephone poll of 1,012 adult Americans carried out Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN, 32 percent of respondents said they approve of Bush's performance, 60 percent said they disapprove and 8 percent said they do not know.

Wow. Only 8% are wishy-washy? This country is solidifying against its president; implying the stability of that 32% mark. And summer has just begun . . . .

Against the neo-Jacobins

In an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun, Colin Powell's former chief-of-staff, Larry Wilkerson, aggravates my sense the America stands on history's knife edge. It is a gut feeling that accounts for the growing anti-Bush quality of a blog that started with more transcendent pretentions.

As Alexis de Tocqueville once said: "America is great because she is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great - as happened to all great powers before it, without exception.

From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin.

It is difficult these days to say, "We Americans." The deliberately developed divisions required to render that are frustrating. But it is my faith in the Nation and the Constitution that leads me to believe that it is in the process of recoiling from a precipice of lunacy. In the meantime, thank goodness for Larry Wilkerson:

Unprecedented interpretations of the Constitution that holds the president as commander in chief to be all-powerful and without checks and balances marks the hubris and unparalleled radicalism of this administration.

Moreover, fiscal profligacy of an order never seen before has brought America trade deficits that boggle the mind and a federal deficit that, when stripped of the gimmickry used to make it appear more tolerable, will leave every child and grandchild in this nation a debt that will weigh upon their generations like a ball and chain around every neck. Imagine owing $150,000 from the cradle. That is radical irresponsibility.

I regret that I find myself looking in this piece for a glimmer of political opportunity for  Democrats; but in a way it is our charge, at this point. In here, I find more than the glimmer of an antidote to this absurd mind virus of the Republican Party as the security party. Can Americans in general any longer accept the tired mantras that have been thoroughly disproven by their own leadership?