The Last Days
This week at Cafe, Charles Homans is joining us for a special discussion, something we've been gnawing on at Cafe for a while now. The topic: what should be done in the last days of the Bush presidency and the beginning of Obama's term to address the malfeasance of the last 8 years. The conversation will be centered around Charles' upcoming article in the Washington Monthly: Last Secrets of the Bush Administration: How to find out what we still don't know.
It's easy to let this slide out of the public discourse right now. The economy, Obama's new team of appointees, etc, are crowding the table. As Charles writes:
"The thought of revisiting this history after living through it for eight years is exhausting, and both President Barack Obama and Congress will have every political reason to just move on. But we can't--it's too important."
Have you ever seen a President so completely disappear?
Discussing with Charles: Scott Horton, New York attorney specializing in human rights law and the law of armed conflict, and regular contributor to Harper's; Suzanne Spaulding, lawyer specializing in national security issues, including homeland security, intelligence, and terrorism; Daniel Larison, Ph.D student at the University of Chicago and host of the blog, Eunomia; Mickey Edwards, former congressman (R-OK), lecturer at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson school, and Vice President of the Aspen Institute; Anne Weismann, Chief Counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington; and finally, Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies.
Charles' first post up shortly. Join us.
He's not disappearing. He's totally screwing us over...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=49&entry_id=32898
November 24, 2008 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh Swell! Another round of navel gazing, hand wringing, and euphemized beltway bloviation all with the same result:
"We're all agreed that someone else -- should do some damn thing -- at a later date."
The reality is that the ONLY moral, patriotic option: Impeachment For Torture -- is still easily doable.
And unless a majority of House members or 40 Senators wish to publicly proclaim themselves war criminals by defying our treaty obligations (and US Federal Law) in defense of the indefensible, it can be over in less than a week. (There's literally no need for "investigating" or "discussing.")
All we need are up or down votes in both bodies -- from all those Geneva-Covered Gov't Officials in Congress.
The Cowering Obama could even be confirmed to act on an interim basis immediately. (Yes, really. And it may well save us a trillion or so in the ongoing economic crisis.)
But go on. Prattle on about your pipe dreams, quasi-legalizational theories, and pretenses that "learning" or "knowing" or "oversighting" is actually DOING something. (It isn't. Sorry lefty eunuchs).
The rest of us will just live with the fact that "fear of the divisiveness monster" -- and other forms of baseless paranoia -- have rendered us now a War Criminal Nation. And begin the generations-long process of living down Our National Shame as the "Good Germans" have had to before us.
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November 25, 2008 7:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Has anyone heard about this story.
If anyone can shed anymore information, please post.
http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/government/obama_government/news.php?q=1227072513
http://origin.www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/08-570.htm
November 25, 2008 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink