Mukasey goes after the last standing stronghold of a free people,

Proving he is a real friend of the neocons.

Glenn Greenwald:

.... before his nomination was formally announced, the White House chose Bill Kristol to announce his selection and, in a lengthy article, to vouch to conservatives for what a fine AG Mukasey would make.

Mukasey was a long-time supporter of the neocons' favorite candidate, Rudy Giuliani and, prior to becoming Attorney General, was part of the Giuliani campaign. And it was Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer -- both with neoconservative leanings (war supporters both, among other things) -- who jointly enabled Mukasey's confirmation by becoming the only Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote in his favor.

Although there are still facts missing -- such as whether this Subpoena was actually approved by Mukasey rather than Gonzales -- it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the Grand Jury Subpoena was done at least with Mukasey's assent. It seems rather clearly to signify the intent of his Justice Department to more aggressively pursue reporters who disclose information embarrassing to the President.

It's hard to overstate how threatening this behavior is. The Bush administration has erected an unprecedented wall of secrecy around everything it does. Beyond illegal spying, if one looks at the instances where we learned of lawbreaking and other forms of lawless radicalism -- CIA black sites, rendition programs, torture, Abu Ghraib, pre-war distortion of intelligence, destruction of CIA torture videos -- it is, in every case, the by-product of two forces: government whistleblowers and reporters willing to expose it.

Grand Jury Subpoenas such as the one issued to Risen have as their principal purpose shutting off that avenue of learning about government wrongdoing -- the sole remaining avenue for a country plagued by a supine, slothful, vapid press and an indescribably submissive Congress. Mukasey has quickly demonstrated that he has no interest in investigating and pursuing lawbreaking by high government officials, but now, he (or at least the DOJ he leads) seems to be demonstrating something even worse: a burgeoning interest in investigating and pursuing those who expose such governmental lawbreaking and turning those whistleblowers and investigative journalists into criminals.

Right. No free press, no real journalism, no ability for checks and balances over the worst administration ever. Thanks.

And tell us again how waterboarding is not torture, Mukasey. That one is always good for a laugh.

Update: Glenn Greenwald links to Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent:

The Justice Department is going after New York Times reporter Jim Risen for the non-crime of revealing President Bush’s illegal domestic surveillance program. It’s pathetic and unsurprising—a fixture of Bush Justice—that the activity DOJ pursues isn’t the blatant illegality of Bush violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but instead the fact that government sources blew the whistle to a great investigative reporter. The right response from the press, and the public, is to put one arm around Risen and, with the other arm, extend a single finger in the direction of the Justice Department.

It's the war, stupid.

Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short

No, not Thomas Hobbes' description of life in nature, the mayorship of Rudy Giuliani. The New York Times has a three page smackdown of his lordship's reign.

And it isn't pretty.



Update: But wait! Chris Matthews thinks Giuliani should not be counted down and out!

9/11/24/7/365....

9/11 ... 9/11.... 9/11:

When asked to comment on Hillary Clinton’s show of emotion just before the NH primary, Rudy Giuliani invoked once again the sum total of his campaign platform: 9/11

I think everybody is their own person and they have to be their own person and this is not something that I would judge anybody on, one way or the other. And the reality is, if you’ll look at me, September 11, the funerals… the memorial services…there were times it was just impossible…not to feel …not to feel…not to feel the emotion.

Shades of Unka Dick!

If you love secrecy, dark sides, and undisclosed secret locations, vote for Giuliani!:

In a Republican presidential candidates‘ debate last week, Giuliani asserted: "My government in New York City was so transparent that they knew every single thing I did almost every time I did it. ... I can‘t think of a public figure that‘s had a more transparent life than I‘ve had."

"He ran a government as closed as he could make it," said attorney Floyd Abrams, a widely recognized First Amendment authority who faced off against city lawyers when Giuliani sought to shut the Brooklyn Museum of Art because the mayor considered a painting sacrilegious.

The litany of questions Giuliani has faced in recent weeks about undisclosed business clients and furtive billing practices for police security during trysts with then-girlfriend Judith Nathan are reminiscent of the dozens of lawsuits filed by news organizations to obtain public records, of the numerous state Freedom of Information Law requests that nonprofits like the Coalition for the Homeless were forced to file, of access to City Hall steps denied to protesters.

Weren't there supposed to be four horsemen?

Or maybe I'm thinking of the three witches of Macbeth?

Just a thought

Would President Giuliani put his next mistress in the Lincoln bedroom? And ask Homeland Security to walk her dog?



Update: Disgusted in St. Louis has more, along with this delightful poster:

A small man in need of a balcony

Wonderful quote from Jimmy Breslin about Giuliani, found via Watertiger's post at Dependable Renegade.

Six more reasons to be in awe of Rudy Giuliani

Besides 9/11 that is. Jesus' General shows us:

Giuliani is messing with California's electoral votes

Via Phalarope in comments, an opinion piece in the Ventura County Star:

[Giuliani's] confidence of winning his party's nomination and his conclusion that he can't win if California goes Democratic are the logical explanations for the way his camp is now trying to revive a Republican-sponsored plan to split up this state's electoral votes, something only two other states now do — thinly-populated Maine and Nebraska.

Leading GOP lawyers and consultants originally sponsored the effort to award almost all this state's presidential Electoral College votes by congressional district. Such a plan would likely give 20 additional votes to the Republican and take 20 away from Democrats, a 40-vote swing easily could determine who becomes president. But those GOP operatives gave up the idea in September due to miserable poll showings (the proposed measure trails by a 3-1 margin in every survey) and a paucity of donations.

For months, those sponsors kept the identity of their single large donor a secret, before revealing last month that New York hedge fund CEO Paul Singer was the source of a $175,000 donation to Take Initiative America, which relayed the money to the break-up-California's-vote campaign. Singer is a major policy adviser to Giuliani.

Assuming Giuliani is the Republican nominee, this is quite a way to circumvent the federal law limiting individual campaign donations to $2,300 in the primary season and another $2,300 for the general election.

But Singer is far from the only Giuliani cohort involved in the newly revived effort. Leading the initiative's fundraising efforts is Anne Dunsmore, whose immediate previous job was as Giuliani's top fundraiser. There's also Jonathan Wilcox, a GOP consultant in California who was Take Initiative America's spokesmen in the months it refused to reveal Singer was essentially the sole donor to the split-California measure. Wilcox previously was an aide to Bill Simon, the former Republican gubernatorial candidate who now chairs Giuliani's state campaign.

And there's James Lacy, attorney for the initiative, who has donated the legal maximum of $2,300 to the Giuliani campaign. Essentially, all this means the revived effort is a Giuliani affair, designed to benefit him if and when he becomes the Republican nominee.

Great. Giuliani can't win the old fashioned way, he's got to break California into pieces first. Thanks.

Isn't it strange how some people rabidly support the war

When there is no chance they'll ever have to fight in it?

Glenn Greenwald of Salon has an article up about Romney's manly adventure cheering on the Vietnam War while doing all he could to stay far away from signing up:

More repugnantly still, both the NYT article and accompanying video contain all sorts of quotes from Romney and his co-missionaries complaining about how very hard life was for them in France because it was so difficult to convert people, without any sense of how that "hardship" compared to their fellow citizens' fighting and dying in the Vietnam jungle. It's hard to put into words what twisted self-absorption and lack of empathy is required to wallow in such self-pity -- exactly the same strain that led Romney earlier this year to equate his sheltered sons' work on his presidential campaign with other Americans' sons and daughters who are in the Iraq war that Romney so loves and exploits for political gain.

Romney's draft-avoidance isn't quite as shameful as Super Tough Guy Rudy Giuliani's, whose deferment request was denied in 1969, thus placing him at imminent risk of being drafted, when he somehow convinced the federal judge for whom he was clerking "to write to the draft board, asking them to grant him a fresh deferment and reclassification as an 'essential' civilian employee." The very idea that a first-year judicial clerk, just out law school, is "essential" for anything is absurd on its face. Yet the swaggering tough guy Rudy Giuliani used that blatant lie to ensure that someone other than himself was sent to fight in Vietnam.

But Romney's record is hardly better. Although he claims he was ultimately convinced by his dad that the war was wrong, he spent most of the war cheering it on -- from the same safe and sheltered distance where one finds most of our right-wing tough guy warriors today, the ones who understandably recognize themselves in both Romney and Giuliani. Needless to say, a centerpiece of both of their campaigns is how "tough" and courageously pro-war they are.

Giuliani and September 11th

24/7/365.



That's all he has.

What the hell did we do to deserve this?

If Robertson and Falwell said we deserved 9/11 because of gays, the ACLU, the liberals who demanded a secular society.... what does it mean when Robertson endorses thrice-married, pro-abortion, pro-gay, secular Giuliani?



Update: DARKBLACK has an even scarier photo. Be warned...

Maybe because they are both Italian?

I was struck by Giuliani's profile over at Watertiger's Dependable Renegade:



And went searching for a profile of Mussolini to prove my point:



Because I did see similarities here.

Update: Via Josh Marshall of TPM, Steve Benen of the Carpetbagger Report lists the bestest of everything Giuliani list.

*Hello? fzzzt click prrzzzz Hello?*

Motorola and Giuliani need to explain what happened to the firemen's radios:


(found via Morse of Republic of Sestakastan)

As Biden said:


(stolen from Morse again)

Update: Giuliani caught in a lie:

Ring a little harder, dear

I can't hear you...
This just in: Rudy Giuliani will not be taking any more cellphone calls from his wife -- or anyone -- during speeches.

"I have become technologically more proficient," Giuliani admitted this evening during a conversation on the Fox New Channel's "Hannity & Colmes." "I figured out how to put it on vibrate ... If anybody is offended by it, I won't do it again."

Look at the Neocons Giuliani is choosing for his advisors

And be afraid... very afraid.

Josh Marshall of TPM:

Bernie Kerik Rudy Giuliani Bernie Kerik Rudy Giuliani

Just helping out...

For all of Rudy Giuliani’s many controversial associates, I suspect he’d be most pleased if the name “Bernie Kerik” is never uttered in public again. Kerik, of course, was Giuliani’s police commissioner and the man Giuliani recommended to head Bush’s Department of Homeland Security.

And while Kerik’s name quickly became an embarrassment for the former mayor, it keeps getting worse.

Bernard Kerik’s legal nightmare is about to get worse, with federal prosecutors expected to file charges against the former police commissioner that will likely include allegations of bribery, tax fraud and obstruction of justice, the Daily News has learned.

The indictment, expected next month, could prove to be an embarrassing obstacle for Kerik’s former mentor Rudy Giuliani, who is cruising at the top of the polls heading into the presidential primary gauntlet.

The bribery allegations against Kerik stem from a secret meeting at a bar in Tribeca, according to two sources familiar with the federal probe.

For several years, Kerik had no greater champion than Rudy Giuliani, who promoted him to New York correction commissioner, then to police commissioner. Giuliani then gave Kerik a job at Giuliani Partners, before urging the Bush White House to make Kerik the top man at the Department of Homeland Security.

The New York Daily News noted that Kerik’s latest charges “will have direct implications for Giuliani.” I think that’s a safe assumption.

Giuliani caught in lies about Clinton

Apparently he cannot get his head around the fact a popular Democratic president actually fought terrorism:

In fact, President Clinton was eager — at the recommendation of his counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke — to retaliate against al Qaeda for the U.S.S. Cole. But that attack took place in October 2000. As Clinton explained in a 2006 interview, both the CIA and FBI “refused to certify that it was Bin Laden was responsible” for the attack on the Cole until early 2001 which foreclosed on the possibility of a full response during the Clinton administration.

Further, while Giuliani asserted that “America needs leadership to remain on the offense,” on national security issues, his “12 Commitments” to America doesn’t contain a single reference to the war in Iraq. Giuliani defended the omission, claiming “the fluid situation there makes it hard to speak in specifics about the war.”

“Iraq may get better; Iraq may get worse. We may be successful in Iraq; we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people.”

Guiliani’s comments demonstrate exactly how far out of touch with the American people he truly is. As a spokesman for American Against Escalation in Iraq said, “The notion that the war in Iraq does not need to be addressed by presidential candidates because it is ‘in the hands of other people’ is simply preposterous.”

Giuliani clearly needs to be on tv more. Give the man as much air time as he wants....

The gameplan of Rudy Giuliani

Is to declare the Democrats are too afraid of terrorists to stand up to them.

I am tough on terror! I am! I am! I am!



Greg Sargent of TPM Cafe: (my bold)

The Rudy game plan here, we think, is to refight the war with liberalism he fought over crime in New York City in the 1990s.

Back then Rudy argued that poverty wasn't the root cause of crime, casting his foes as pansies who cared about the welfare of criminals and thugs and didn't have what it takes to deal with them. Now he's merely parroting the same points that worked for him last time, replacing the word "crime" with the word "terrorism." Indeed, he actually used the word crime in the above excerpt.

Rudy's broadside today was the same stuff: He knows what it takes to deal with them and understands that the only thing they understand is a kick in the teeth. Dems are wussies who don't get this.

This is clearly Rudy's emerging strategy. Despite having exactly zero national security experience, he's audaciously positioning himself as the most trustworthy and credible voice on terror and what to do about it. And incidentally, the political media is already signaling that it may let him get away with this monumental ruse. The media appears willing to cede Rudy an aura of national security experience based on nothing more than the fact that he held a bunch of press conferences in the aftermath of 9/11.

Rudy's argument may be absurd and simplistic and reveal that he has, well, no idea what the heck he's talking about. But it's an argument all the same. We'll be hearing a lot of it. And if Dems don't rebut it, no one will.

Well, if all it takes to be tough on terrorists is to hold press conferences, Bush must really be doing well....

Right?