Independent Caucus

Democrat Hypocrites On Torture

There is an article on Politico (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22439.html) this morning which cites Democrats from Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, Dianne Feinstein of California, Russ Feingold of Minnesota, and others, accusing the CIA of releasing certain memos detailing briefings given to congressional Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, Carl Levin, and others on the enhanced interrogation techniques used at the time during the Bush administration to deflect blame from themselves.  That they are covering their own butts on this one, and attempting to deflect attention to our lawmakers.

Well hell yeah!  And rightly so!

They even make it sound like the Executive branch is out to get them!  Feingold says, "members of the committee or their staff were not in any way involved in [the release of the document]. It appears to come from the executive branch itself. ... I think it’s unbelievable."

Specifically, he finds it unbelievable that Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan requested from the CIA, and received (sin of all sins on the part of the Executive branch, which includes the CIA), a release of memos detailing these briefings of particularly congressional Democrats who are hollering "torture" now so loudly.

Do Feingold, Feinstein, Levin not think the memos should have been released?  These are some of the same Democrats I heard complain time and again when President Bush was in the Oval Office about its refusal to release such memos, and the overuse, they claimed, of classifying documents in a range of different areas, including the whole brouhaha over the U.S. Attorney firings.

So now not only are these Democrats hypocrites on torture, they are hypocrites on open government!

I say Obama is letting these various memos out - earlier memos which were damaging to the former President, his legal advisers, and his Justice Department in particular, and these CIA memos providing information on briefings, including and especially to Democrats - because he IS in fact a believer in open government.  That's my conclusion at this point, and the only part of this whole story which doesn't reek.

ALL these memos should come out now.  There are no more grand secrets to be kept.  And the public wants to know.  If there are still some particulars which must remain secret, then redact them sparingly, and release the rest.

But here's the most despicable part of this story, and of the objections being offered now by the likes of Feinstein and company - they are saying that most to blame for the fact that these interrogations took place is the CIA!..and that they are trying to cover their butt and deflect blame onto legislators.

It's like blaming the prison guards for Abu Grab!

The CIA are the foot soldiers in all of this.  They are at the end of the chain!  The President and his advisors, lawyers, and his Justics Department are at the top of the chain.  Next after them are the legislators who by law must be briefed, and were briefed, and who serve in our government as a check and balance on the actions of the Executive branch, a check and balance on potential tyranny, as the Framers saw it and designed it.  And it worked exactly as it was supposed to.  Except people like Pelosi and Levin (briefed 5 times between 2006 and 2007) did nothing.  And they need to account.  And the voters need to hold them to account.  Feingold and Feinstein weren't high enough members on an intelligence committee to receive briefings.  They are just despicable for criticising the CIA for implementing (awe say implementing) the policy which the President (their boss) approved, and about which congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle were informed, and did not object.

If I were a CIA guy, I would have rightly concluded that, "Well, this sucks, but our whole government seems to think it's ok."

This would all be campaign fodder which I would be busily accumulating if I were a prospective opposition candidate to these very prominent Democrat Senators.  And Pelosi should lose her seat next time Californians vote.  Not only was she the ranking Democrat overall in the Congress, but also the ranking minority member of the Intelligence Committee back in 2002 and 2003 when, had a bigger stink been made, something could have been done to terminate the program in its infancy.

But check out the article.  If you wonder what the smell is, it's probably eminating right off your computer screen.  As Orrin Hatch said about this, the Republican Senator from Utah, "We’re not without power up here.  Now, they can make a fuss on policy differences, but to try and besmirch the people who had these tough decisions to make during those trying times is really offensive to people like me."  And, as Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas said (top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and someone therefore who knows), when asked whether the relevant Democrat lawmakers were informed of the interrogation techniques, his answer: "A strong, affirmative, yes."

Why Guantanamo Should Close

My brother wrote this, prompted by a letter from Andrew McCarthy to Attorney General Eric Holder, which argued strongly for a continuation of the Bush policy of indeterminate detention for terror suspects until the "end of hostilities".  I post it here, as I strongly agree.  Enjoy.

"The president is convening a roundtable task force to decide what to do about the so-called terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  The president invited a diverse group of people to participate, including conservatives, like Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, and a commentator for the National Review.  McCarthy favors detention of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo until as he puts it in his letter to Eric Holder “the conclusion of hostilities.”  Of course, how one defines the “conclusion of hostilities” is subject to considerable debate. 

In the end, McCarthy favors limitless detention of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo – no opportunity to confront the allegations, no access to counsel, no right to a trial, no right to present evidence in defense of the allegations, etc.  This is the same Andrew McCarthy, who like Sean Hannity, doesn’t think water boarding is torture, but rather “enhanced interrogation.”  Essentially, McCarthy favors an approach to dealing with terrorism suspects that defies the U.S. Constitution and Americanism, and resembles the former Soviet-style method for dealing with political prisoners, i.e. indeterminate imprisonment in Siberian gulags.

There is, of course, a constitutional middle ground.  Where the evidence supports charges of terrorist activity, the persons guilty of that activity should be convicted in court and punished severely.  Where the evidence does not exist, the persons detained should be placed on a ship, and dropped off on the shores of their native countries.  This is the American system of justice, by no means flawless, but nevertheless the best system known to mankind.  Will some of the persons released engage in future terrorist activity?  Perhaps.  But, in this country some of the guilty go free.  That is the price of liberty.  There are countries in this world where all of the guilty are punished, where the political decision has been made to subvert liberty to achieve security.  None of us would want to live in those countries, but they exist.

True patriotism ain’t easy.  It requires adherence to American values even when it isn’t convenient or politically expedient.  This country was founded on the defense of “inalienable” human rights.  For obvious reasons, the detention facility is fundamentally un-American, and President Obama is right to shut it down."  - Tom Intili

A Hundred Days, An Overview

Apparently my readership is about to increase, so, time to write something interesting, update the photo, etc, etc.

Anyone who has happened upon this blog knows that its posts are not of typical blog-length.  Some would say article-length; others, tome length.  Whatever.  Practice your attention span, I say.  Besides, why only be fascinated for one or two paragraphs.

But this post is more a compendium of things which have occurred over Obama's first 100 days - that completely irrelevant measuring stick of performance which somehow or another is here to stay.

Inauguration Speech:
You know, just ok.  I wrote a post on this.  And I was there, 30 yards away, maybe.  We were crammed in, and people were full of hope, where I was, and all down the mall, which was just a thumbnail of how people felt across the country, and around the world, whether they voted for Obama or not.  The tide definitely changed that day, from threat-level "orange" to hope.  And like him or not, that fact, in aggregate, was undeniable, as name the last time 2 million people packed the National Mall.

Stimulus Bill:
I wrote a post on this, too, and I said I thought it would have been a good time for him to ring a bell long and loudly to the leaders of Congress, namely, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, that "change" had arrived in Washington, by publicly calling for a rewrite of the bill whose authorship began at his request before he was even president, and was replete with, in "old-Washington" fashion, plenty of constituent goodies, as well as plenty other rightly stimulative things and investments in infrasture of the kind he had campaigned about.  And if they wouldn't rewrite it, I said he should have vetoed it.  Now, I freely acknowledge this may reveal my naivete about Washington.  Jimmy Carter tried to come in and change Washington on day one from its usual way of doing things, and all he accomplished was to alienate himself from the Congress, leaving him with few allies in advancing his legislative agenda.  The difference - and I think it matters - is that Jimmy Carter did not have 2 million people on the National Mall, and approval in the mid-70s, with Congress' approval at that same time in the teens, where it had been for some time, even lower than the mid- to high-20s George Bush had been managing in the last couple years of his presidency.  Obama had and still has a mandate for change, and I thought that stimulus bill was a good time to fire across the bow of his own party, as well as the Republicans.  That said, I'm still glad it passed, and I believe we are seeing some of the positive effects now.

Emphasis on "New" Energy and Education:
Much of that emphasis was contained in the stiumuls bill, and it's why I'm glad it passed.  That stimulus bill, as many commentators have said, was the equivalent of about four-years worth of policy initiative for any other president.  And that's why you loved it or hated it, I suppose.  There was tons of money for new energy, and for education, especially college education; and he advanced that latter goal even further with his announcement yesterday, that part of the "new" form of unemployment insurance would be federal money for taking yourself back to school, in order that America can quickly retool and respond to the serpentine path in which a free-market economy flows and develops.  A heckuva good idea, and money well-spent.

Notre Dame Bruhaha Over Conferring Its Traditional Honorary Degree to A New President:
Notre Dame is being really dumb, I'll just say plainly.  Or, rather, those who are making such a stink about presenting Obama with an honorary degree when he is a pro-choice president, where that flies in the face of the Roman Catholic Church's official pro-life position.  I was raised Roman Catholic.  It is still my religious denomination of choice.  But this is why I hate religion as Man inevitably practices and governs it.  While the Bible and the Koran, which are the bases for the major world religions, have in common the promotion of love, compassion, and generosity to your fellow man, once human beings get involved, they inevitably cherry-pick those same documents to advance and promote an us-and-them view of the world, wrapped effectively and cleverly in a spiritual bow inevitably tied to one's prospects for holy salvation.  Enter the "holy war", be it the Crusades, or the insanity that Islam is permitting in this day and age, where blowing up women and children in the market place, or mowing them down in the lobby of a hotel is an act worthy of martyrdom, and the highest reward by their God.  A religious zealot is someone for whom a few specific religious beliefs trump nearly all other judgments.  This is what Notre Dame does when it says Obama should not receive the degree.  Does the Catholic Church not view as beneficial the social investments on which Obama campaigned, education being just one of them?  Do they not think that will save lives?  What about his professed desire to engage more with our adversaries?  Do they not think that might save some lives?  Obama has simply removed executive orders which in fact ran counter to the established law of the land since, what, 1973?..and that is the Roe v. Wade decision, which in the subsequent 36 years has only been upheld time and again by an array of different challenges and decisions.  Time for Notre Dame to understand that President Obama is not President of the Roman Catholics, by the Roman Catholics, and for the Roman Catholics, who, incidentally, if Notre Dame cared at all, and they don't, vote overwhelmingly for Obama, 55% to 45%.

Cuba:
President Obama, you go!  I don't even smoke cigars but when someone sticks one in my hand, and still I'm looking forward to the day here soon when the wrapper says "producto de Cuba".  Come on.  We engage all these years with China, but not Cuba?  It's just dumb.  Why is economic engagement with China the right policy, but embargo the right policy for Cuba?  Canada, Mexico, the rest of the world dropped their embargos a long time ago.  We're left looking like the knuckleheads.  I don't like it when my country looks like a knucklehead.  I'm looking foward to my first Cuban beach vacation in the VERY near future, y cervezas a la playa.

Pelosi:
Is it just me, or is it fun to watch her backpedal on what she knew about the aggressive interogation techniques employed by the Bush administration, now that everyone (nearly), and most importantly our new President and Justice Department have officially deemed them torture.

Ok, enough fun.  And it's warm outside, and not raining, so far, so no time to waste.  That's my take.  Let me know if you have a different one.  And I'll tell you what's wrong with it.  Ha.  Naw, you know that's not how I work.  Happy Satuday, readers, especially those new ones, who, I'm told, tend toward the inflammatory.  Bring it on!