You wouldn't hit a lawyer, would you?

I mean... it was all in theory and stuff. We couldn't have predicted they would take the memos and run with it....

Former Bush administration officials are launching a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign to urge Justice Department leaders to soften an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts.

[snip]

The memos offered support for waterboarding, slamming prisoners against a wall and other techniques that critics have likened to torture. The documents were drafted between 2002 and 2005.

The sweeping investigation, now in its fifth year, could shed new light on the origins of the memos. Investigators rely in part on e-mail exchanges between Justice Department lawyers and lawyers at the CIA who sought advice about the legality of interrogation practices that have since been abandoned by the Obama administration.

Two of the authors, Jay S. Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge in Nevada, and John C. Yoo, now a law professor in Southern California, faced a deadline of yesterday to respond to investigators.

You must remember this

A kiss is not always applied to the face but sometimes to the butt.

Media Matters explains:

Summary: In 2005, many Republican Senators went so far as to claim the filibuster of judicial nominees was unconstitutional. Now four years later, with President Obama's first Supreme Court appointment looming, will they remain consistent in their position or commit one of the most blatant acts of hypocrisy in the 220-year history of the United States Senate?

Quotes from eight years of Bush ass-kissing and goose-stepping follow. Try to wriggle off those quotes, Senators! We got you on YouTube, you bastards!

Bush and Cheney wanted it.

Torture.

Bastards.

Stupid doesn't begin to cover it

The weirdness of Karl Rove

Attempting to smear Obama while Rove is still steaming from the shitpile of his own legacy in politics.

Why is anyone still listening to this man?

They would really like to hit and run

We want our money back!

What Digby said

About who was actually turning the thumbscrews on torture and on Spain investigating US war crimes by the Bush cabal.

The can of worms has been opened.

Starting off the week

With the top ten conservative idiots, starting off with Glenn Beck!

Bullshit from Cheney's secure undisclosed location

This is so when the next inevitable terrorist attack comes, the loyal Bushies can yell, "SEE? Obama didn't keep us safe!"

Right.

After eight years of poking a stick into the rabid fanatical terrorists groups, ignoring diplomacy, turning up their noses at respectful discourse with Islamic countries and bombing innocents in uninvolved countries, they think they can wipe their brows and declare Bush kept us safe?

Not a fucking chance.

WASHINGTON – Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that Americans are less safe now that President Barack has overturned Bush terrorism-fighting policies and that nearly all the Republican administration's goals in Iraq have been achieved.

"There is no prospect" that Iraq will return to producing weapons of mass destruction or supporting terrorists, Cheney asserted, "as long as it's a democratically governed country, as long as they have got the security forces they do now and a relationship with the United States."

Fulfilling campaign pledges, Obama has suspended military trials for suspected terrorists and announced he will close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as well as overseas sites where the CIA has held some detainees. The president also ordered CIA interrogators to abide by the U.S. Army Field Manual's regulations for treatment of detainees and denounced waterboarding, part of the Bush program of enhanced interrogation, as torture.

Asked on CNN's "State of the Union" if he thought Obama has made Americans less safe with those actions, Cheney replied, "I do."

"I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11," Cheney said.

Bullshit, Dick. Torture begets hate which begets more terrorists.

It's the hard work of diplomacy, understanding and compassion that will keep us 'safer' in the end.

Bill Moyer's interview with Karen Armstrong:

There's been a Gallup poll that asked Muslims what they liked most about the West. And what the biggest thing that they all liked was our freedom. They'd like to see more of it themselves. What do they fear most about the West? What do they dislike most about the West?

What worries them most? [Our] disrespect for [their] religion. And when they hear ill considered, uneducated remarks about their religion, this is a gift to the extremists who can use it to show that the West is making a crusade against Islam. And it's also endangering our own security.

Yes, Rush really does want Obama to fail

Plain and simple. Nice that Limbaugh puts our country teetering on another great depression first ... before his bloated ego. Keep on talking, Rush, we need Democrats to get elected.

Reviews of Joe the Plumber's book

Priceless! The first reviewer is the inestimable Gen. JC Christian!

Now come the denials

It wasn't me, I wasn't there, it must have been somebody else...

In real life, Perle was the ideological architect of the Iraq war and of the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack. But at yesterday's forum of foreign policy intellectuals, he created a fantastic world in which:

1. Perle is not a neoconservative.

2. Neoconservatives do not exist.

3. Even if neoconservatives did exist, they certainly couldn't be blamed for the disasters of the past eight years.

"There is no such thing as a neoconservative foreign policy," Perle informed the gathering, hosted by National Interest magazine. "It is a left critique of what is believed by the commentator to be a right-wing policy."

So what about the 1996 report he co-authored that is widely seen as the cornerstone of neoconservative foreign policy? "My name was on it because I signed up for the study group," Perle explained. "I didn't approve it. I didn't read it."

The last eight years never happened....

Want an overview of the last two months?

EarlG's Top Ten is back! January 12th, January 19th, and February 2nd.

This comforts me

Even though I'm beginning to worry about Loyal Bushie moles and legacy polishers and Pentagon sabotage and Republicans grandstanding and everything....



(via Rook at Rook's Rant)

Bush is counting on an historical perspective

To show he's done a good job:

Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 promising Americans peace and prosperity. He delivered neither.

The 43rd president, who gives his farewell speech to the nation tonight from the East Room of the White House, leaves behind a legacy that includes the weakest job-creation performance since Herbert Hoover’s presidency and the longest U.S. wars since Richard Nixon was in office.

The country is grappling with its deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression, a yearlong recession, soaring budget deficits, and conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its standing in the world has fallen, with polls showing most nations view America less favorably than they did in 2001.

“From the perspective of the present moment, it is pretty hard to regard this as anything but a failed presidency,” said historian David Kennedy of Stanford University in California.

With the Bush minions eyeing January 20th as the time they can spill the beans to Seymour Hersh, and people pretending they've known all along that Bush wasn't a true Republican, I don't think Cheney can shred documents fast enough to silence the truth. We will still be discovering new horrors about the actions the Bush administration did a decade from now.

So, time may heal all wounds, Georgie, but it also exposes all the lies. Trying to cloud things by spewing nonsense may have gotten you a passing grade in college, but it won't work here. Your presidency was an unmitigated disaster and we won't forget.

Ever.



Update: If you read only one thing today, read Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post. Here's a bit:

President Bush famously asserts that history's verdict on his presidency won't come until he's long dead. But far from waiting until his corpse is cold, the verdict is largely in before he's even left the building.

Some things just aren't gonna change, no matter how much time passes. Here is Bush's legacy, in part:

He took the nation to a war of choice under false pretenses -- and left troops in harm's way on two fields of battle. He embraced torture as an interrogation tactic and turned the world's champion of human dignity into an outlaw nation and international pariah. He watched with detachment as a major American city went under water. He was ostensibly at the helm as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression took hold. He went from being the most popular to the most disappointing president, having squandered a unique opportunity to unite the country and even the world behind a shared agenda after Sept. 11. He set a new precedent for avoiding the general public in favor of screened audiences and seemed to occupy an alternate reality. He took his own political party from seeming permanent majority status to where it is today. And he deliberately politicized the federal government, circumvented the traditional policymaking process, ignored expert advice and suppressed dissent, leaving behind a broken government.

The truth smarts, doesn't it, Georgie?

They laid down for Bush without complaint

But they suddenly find their spine to stand against Obama? No, not the Democrats... the Republicans?

House Republicans are determined to oppose the release of the second half of the financial-industry bailout funds, a GOP House leadership aide tells the Huffington Post.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) will work to persuade members to vote to oppose releasing the funds -- an enviable task, considering the unpopularity of the bailout.

The Republican conference position makes approval of the release of the funds difficult for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and other House Democrats, many of whom opposed the original dispersal.

And just why on earth are they doing this? (my bold)

On Monday, Boehner announced that he would be personally opposing the release of the rest of the funds, though he stopped short of calling on his colleagues to do the same. "I remain disappointed about the way TARP has been managed and how its resources have been spent over the last several months. From the outset, the program has been implemented with too little transparency and in a manner inconsistent with the way it was presented to Congress last fall. Until officials can present a clear plan to Congress -- and, most importantly, to taxpayers -- demonstrating how the expenditure of additional TARP funds will benefit our economy and making clear an exit strategy for getting the government back out of the private sector, it would be irresponsible for Congress to release the remainder of these resources. I will oppose the release of these taxpayer funds when the matter is considered on the House floor," Boehner said.

The unpopular bailout has only become less popular over the last few months, as banks and the Treasury Department have refused to reveal details as to how the taxpayer money -- or, more accurately, future taxpayers' money -- has been spent.

Republican opposition, however, is a political freebie: the president will still get the money. He can veto congressional disapproval of the funds; House Democrats then need only 144 votes to sustain such a veto and authorize the money's release without any Republican consent. If they do, however, they may earn the sole political ownership of the bailout they fought so hard to avoid.

Oh, nice try guys! But you supported Bush and his neocon buddies for eight solid years, you own this economic disaster.

We can't recall exactly what it was that he did

That was good for the country. Nothing comes to mind. We can't recall.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- under whose tenure the Justice Department often appeared to take its orders from the White House political office -- sat down with the Wall Street Journal in an effort to clear his name. But we're guessing he did himself more harm than good.

Gonzo appeared genuinely unable to grapple with why he might be unpopular. "What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" he asked.

He doesn't recall? Let's help him remember:

Quibbling with the Constitution and the right of Habeas Corpus.

Dragging his heels about sharing info on the anthrax attacks.

Harassing Ashcroft as he was recovering in the hospital from gall bladder surgery, trying to make him sign off on warrantless wiretapping.

Perverting the judicial system and FISA, and demanding that judges do what the president wants.

Lying to Congress. As Attorney General. LYING to the nation. Lying about the firing of the US attorneys.



Caging voters.

Going down to Gitmo and WATCHING an interrogation or two.

Quibbling about the meaning of the word torture and redefining torture so it no longer means torture even though it is just because Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld liked torture. (And those lawyers and doctors who helped establish torture techniques? We want their names.) And no one has asked the question WHY?



Being a total toadie for Georgie Bush. Surrounding himself with toadie minions, zealots intent on bringing the US a theocracy, and loyal bushies.



Being thrown under the bus and thinking we should feel sorry for him.



Blaming everybody else.

Being a toadie sucks when you're facing a war crimes tribunal, doesn't it, Abu?

crossposted at American Street

Burrowing

Under the skin, to continue to poison us with the neocon virus. What will it take to purge these people from the government?:

With only 44 days left in office, President Bush continues to “burrow” people into government positions that will continue long after President-elect Obama is sworn in. “All told, Mr. Bush has made roughly 30 personnel moves since the November election, some in nominations that will require Senate approval, and others in direct appointments that will last well into President-elect Barack Obama’s term and beyond.” The New York Times reports that on Tuesday of last week alone, Bush hired 18 people for administration jobs.

Forgetting Sarah Palin

Won't happen any time soon.

Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof:

I know we're all tired of hearing about Sarah Palin, but as Andrew Sullivan noted, she still matters because she is the icon for a Republican Party that thinks the most important thing is winning an election, not governing after. And they have a cynical view of the electorate: give 'em red meat and they'll follow you anywhere.

It's the same as the last eight years. Vote for someone who hates government and will not govern.

Then you have to ask... What are the Republicans THINKING when they let Palin have more air time? When she gets the spotlight at the governors conference? You guys didn't learn from Bush's two terms what horrific damage an uneducated, incoherent, neoconservative, fundamentalist, ideological, yet want-to-drink-a-beer-with whackjob can do to the country?

You betcha!

Go for it! Please!:

In a new Rasmussen poll out today, Republicans overwhelmingly say that they want Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as their presidential nominee in 2012. Sixty-four percent of GOP respondents said that Palin would be their top choice in 2012..

Psst... Governor, you'll need this:



Update 11/16: The 'Africa as nation not continent' is apparently a hoax. I find it fascinating how iconic stories like these, even though fake, go to the heart of the matter: Governor Palin's ignorance and lack of depth illustrated in one joke about not knowing about Africa. Often not true (Ford was not a klutz, Quayle actually had some intelligence...), the stories take hold and are hard to eradicate. I have done my share of repeating false information, as with this one. It was too delightfully funny to be true.

Update 11/18: Dick Cavett writes a riff for the New York Times where he delightedly mocks Palin's style of speech:

What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, “How was it she talked?”

My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.

And, she concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any.