Wednesday, February 15, 2006
The Coverup
As Tom Cruise said in a certain film twenty years ago, we are in a target-rich environment.
To be a progressive nowadays is to live in a country that is alternately infuriating and rich with possibilities for really nasty commentary. With few exceptions I actually don’t need to go searching for inspiration on what to write about on a daily basis, which is an amazing feeling for someone who has been writing for years.
Normally writing is like chipping away at stone: long, tedious work that nevertheless shows the time and effort you have spent on it, work that shows steady progress. When it comes to writing about politics in this day and age the inspiration veritably stands up, slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and stands over you screaming, red-faced, demanding to be written about.
I mean with such low-lying fruit like this you would really have to belly crawl not to get a black eye from this thing hitting you in the face as you walk by. This is like Dick Cheney grinding puppies into a soup that he drinks for his morning breakfast: you can’t ignore this story. It won’t go away. It can’t be ignored.
To the long list of shame that comprises virtually the entire Republican Party add the names Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb).
Never before have I seen such a craven, cowed congress. I will not hesitate to compare this to Germany in 1933 or Argentina in the days of Peron. I never thought this could happen in America. I was wrong.
I recall Olympia Snowe calling Clinton’s affair “shameless” and “sordid,” voting to censure him for debasing the presidency. Hagel was not so forgiving: he voted to convict the president on both articles of impeachment. Let us never forget that this was about a president perjuring himself to cover up a consensual affair he had with an intern.
I recall Hagel’s statements as particularly apt: “The issue is abuse of power. Did the President abuse his power and therefore violate the Nation's trust in him?”
I laugh, nowadays, remembering Hagel trying to hang Bill Clinton from a gibbet over lying about an affair, sanctimoniously preaching about a president abusing his power.
I think we all know now that Hagel has never really been concerned with a president abusing his power. If this doesn’t strike you as hypocrisy please don’t vote or get near small children, because you are a dangerously delusional human being. Hypocrisy doesn’t get any more clear cut than this, ever, anywhere, anytime.
Need I remind us of DeWine’s concern, when a democrat was in office, of the powers of the presidency? How about this:
But while I have found specific violations of law, it is not insignificant, in my final decision, that these specific criminal acts were committed within a larger context, a larger context of a documented pattern of indefensible behavior--behavior that shows a reckless disregard for the law and for the rights of others.
LOL! He was writing this about Bill Clinton. I remember the time when even a hint that the president might be suborning perjury in a sexual harassment case caused a breakout mob of Republicans to virtually storm the White House. Read all the senators’ comments here.
DeWine no longer has any such concerns about the president. Apparently simply ignoring FISA and eavesdropping without warrants on Americans’ international communication doesn’t count as “a reckless disregard for the law and the rights of others.” In fact, the possibility that it might is so remote he doesn’t even think it justifies an investigation.
As Driftglass has said, I’m not angry about the Clinton impeachment. I’m happy about it. The Clinton Impeachment is the scrim against which all this hypocrisy is so clearly illuminated. These gangsters kept an independent investigator going for seven years with an unlimited budget to look into anything that might be shady about Bill Clinton, even if it was buried in his past or had nothing to do with his policies as president. They searched for years into Whitewater, “Travelgate,” and other assorted “scandals” and got nothing. Now they don’t even want to launch an investigation into the NSA, much less push for and independent investigation.
This kind of complicity is criminal, and it is also indicative of the moral fiber and commitment to a “conservative” philosophy these thugs have. As I wrote yesterday, republican leaders don’t have a commitment to conservativism, they have a commitment to grabbing power hand-over-fist and holding onto it like Nixon. They are all about big governmet, big deficits, and Big Brother. They are out of control.
Dick Cheney took republican congresspeople aside. “They noted that Cheney conducted a Republicans-only meeting on intelligence matters in the Capitol yesterday,” the article noted. WTF?
What I find especially craven is these “moderates” call for new legislation on the matter. Check out Snowe’s comments on the matter. DeWine is even less ambiguous in what I can only charcterize as blatant criminality: “He said he is drafting legislation that would "specifically authorize this program" by excluding it from the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established a secret court to consider government requests for wiretap warrants in anti-terrorist investigations.
What?!? DeWine is saying, on one hand, that the NSA program is legal, and on the other hand drafting legislation to make it legal. Hey! DeWine! You can’t make something legal after the fact!
This is just open, public banditry. This is not a matter of opinion. This is The Theater of the Absurd.
But Hagel is on board, of course: “Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who also signed the Dec. 20 letter seeking an inquiry, said yesterday that the FISA law should be amended to include the NSA program and to provide for congressional oversight.”
Hagel descended further into the moral abyss: “As for Rockefeller's bid, Hagel said: "If some kind of inquiry would be beneficial to getting a resolution to this issue, then sure, we should look at it. But if the inquiry is just some kind of a punitive inquiry that really is not focused on finding a way out of this, then I'm not so sure that I would support that."
Hey! Hagel! If someone breaks the law then punitive action is exactly the kind that is called for!
Joining the call from moderates to ask the president if there was any way that congress could change legislation to legalize what he has already done was Sen. Brownback (R-Ka). The senators from Kansas are really on a roll, man. Have I mentioned recently how much I hate the plains states?
Alright, I’m exhausting myself. Dick Cheney decided to go public with a one-on-one interview with a member of the press. I’ll give you one guess as to which news outlet got that interview.
This is really getting incredible. Whenever Cheney goes on any interview there should be carnival music playing in the background.
Oh, and, BTW, where is Phase II of the intelligence investigation again? It’s been a couple years now.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 3:13 PM 
