It turns out that the Democratic intelligence committee members, including Nancy Pelosi, were briefed on the us of water boarding and other torture techniques that the CIA was planning to use. In particular, these are the captives and techniques that would have been captured on the destroyed videotapes.

There was no objection raised during the briefings, and, according to the story:

Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings. But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation. The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.

As lambert remarks, no wonder impeachment is off the table.

We spend a lot of time complaining about the ineffectiveness of the Democratic leadership, and the party's general failure to follow through on the mandate of 2006. The American people could not have spoken more clearly in a mid-term election.

And nothing has happened. So when we see that Pelosi said yes to torture, and now we see, once more that Bush will be given a free hand in Iraq, you really have to start to wonder whether this talk of ending the occupation is less than sincere.

I've discussed that question at some length before.

Suppose a woman who wanted to run for president had the following life experiences:

While in her second marriage, had a widely publicized, if not actually public, affair with a staffer.

Appointed that staffer to a patronage job when the affair was apparently over.

Conducted another affair, this one publicly--literally parading her lover, ten years younger than she, through the streets.

As a result, went through an acrimonious divorce, and was thrown out of her government lodgings.*

Moved in with a lesbian couple after being thrown out of those lodgings by a judge.

Has been not on speaking terms with her children for some time.

Does this woman stand a chance of nomination to anything?

We've been suffering through two weeks now of Clinton and gender issues, amid claims that she is raising them as a campaign tactic.

I don't think there is a clearer illustration of just how resilient is the double standard in US elections. Giuliani is the frontrunner (not talking here about the apparent irrelevance of values to "values voters") in a presidential race with a personal history that would disqualify a woman from running for Selectman in Old Saybrook.

To watch pundits parse every Clinton phrase in looking for her to take advantage of her gender, while saying nothing about Giuliani's personal life is nothing short of brazen sexism. Seeing Chris Matthews and Tucker Carlson (okay, reading transcripts of Matthews and Carlson) figuratively reaching for the smelling salts, while saying nothing about the gall of that hussy Giuliani running for President is really a little beyond belief.

Reading Dowd run column after column on Clinton's behavior and, frankly, unobjectionable personal life, while not even mentioning Giuliani is really remarkable.

Really, can you think of any woman in American politics who comes close to the shameful way Giuliani has conducted his life?

-------------

(*sidebar: I guess we really don't need those lodgings, do we? Bloomberg doesn't live there either.)

Here's an excerpt:

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote, where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source, where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”

Shouldn't all candidates be asked to comment on this statement? Doesn't this cut to the heart of the role of church and state and contemporary society?

The reason that the Democrats are not coming out forthrightly against the war is precisely because of MJ's attitude ( Where's the outrage?), which is nearly unanimous in the left blogosphere, very widely shared in the Democratic electorate and widely shared in the country as a whole.

Just get out. The US has been placed into a disastrous war by an incompetent. We're enduring the worst foreign policy debacle since 1812 and tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people have died, needlessly, treated as if their lives aren't worth a broken stick.

This is the electorate's consensus.

The Washiington consensus is very different. The Washington consensus is that the US will be in Iraq for at least five more years, probably longer. The permanent bases were the actual motivation for the war, and they will be filled up with 50,000-75,000 soldiers for some indefinite period of time.

Now you can rail away at that consensus, but consider what motivates it.

Iraq has no national defense force. It has no air force. It has no armor. It has no logisistical capability. There is no functioning chain of command. There is no cohesive Iraqi army. Hell, the country doesn't even have reliable access to electricity. What it has is a collection of loosely organized militias with access to small arms and explosives.

This will not defend the country from incursions from Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia or Iran, whether covert or overt.

Washington's FP and military community looks at this situation, and sees no alternative but to remain. If you saw Taylor Marsh at YKos, you heard a clear delineation of this DC consensus. This isn't a matter of reflexive use of force as the only solution by crazy neocons. This is a recognition that Iraq is a failed state without a sovereign government and without the capacity to defend itself. The US Congress passes resolutions declaring what laws Iraq must pass, while the Pentagon makes all military decisions. Iraq's government plays no role other than certifying US policy. And, these days, we're hearing talk of changing the government. That talk is taking place in Washington. And there can be no freely elected, sovereign government in Iraq, because, in the Washington consensus, those bases are more important than a reprentative government--and no represesentative government would permit military bases defending Israel and threatening Iran.

This leaves the Democratic candidates in a very difficult position. They are part of this Washington consensus. Their staffers tell them that it is irresponsible to call for a rapid withdrawal, and that it would be a disastrous policy. So they don't talk about withdrawal. They talk about redeployment. They leave room for those 50,000 soldiers to remain there for, variously, border protection, force protection, pursuit of terrorists, training. None of these candidates intends to leave. And none of them can say so. (Nor, you'll notice, will the gutless VSP say anything. They know how unpopular this will be. Hence all the bafflegab.

As for Richardson, I did not see the last debate. But he has, in the events I have seen, always couched his no residual forces position in arriving at a regional security agreement. Like MJ's cry for an international force to replace the US force, as in the Balkans, this is a pretty big instance of wishful thinking. Iraq is not the Balkans. It's bigger. There is oil involved, and it is surrounded by well-armed, mutually hostile neighbors who are very unlikely to quickly reach a security accord. The coalition forces are getting out, not coming in.

IMO, what the Democratic candidates need to do is stiffen their spines and tell the truth about this. They need to say "Bush has created a situation that cannot be unwound in a short space of time. We need to start unwinding it now, by ending the escalation and taking an honest look at what it will take to prevent a war that draws in every country in the region." Challenge Congress, particularly Senate Republicans, to face reality. But to do so effectively, they also have to face reality publicly.

Edwards is right when he says that the "war on terror" is a bumper sticker. But so are Democratic declamations that they will end the Iraq occupation. One reason this war happened is that it never left the bumper sticker level of discourse. The occupation cannot end unless the discussion of its end rises above the bumper sticker level of discourse.

UPDATE

Just so you don't think I'm just making all this up, Kevin Drum reads today's NYT:

The New York Times reports that the intelligence community will release a new assessment of Iraq's future on Thursday:

"The report says that there's been little political progress to date, and it's very gloomy on the chances for political progress in the future," said one Congressional official with knowledge of its contents.

....The report, which was intended to help anticipate events over the next 6 to 12 months, is "more dire in its assessments" than the administration has been in its own internal discussions, according to one senior official who has read it. But the report also warns, as Mr. Bush did on Wednesday, that an early withdrawal would lead to more chaos.

"It doesn't take a policy position," one official said. "But it leaves you with the sense that what we've been doing hasn't been working, but we can't let up, or it'll get worse."

The last paragraph is what this post is all about. I believe that is the Washington Consensus of the result of withdrawal, and that therefore, the WC continues to favor occupation for another FU and then reevaluate, with the eventual desired outcome of a friendly Iraq state that permits a permanent base of about 50,000 soldiers. And ponies for everyone.

My larger point is the real debate should be about whether temporizing in this way has been and is making the aftermath still worse than it would have been. Democrats have been avoiding laying out the issues in such a debate, because they, imo, largely agree with WC.

Oh, and note the frame: "an early withdrawal." Not "long-overdue." Not "as promised at least three years ago." "early." One more FU, coming up.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/cscs/2007/aug/21/blogger_shut_ins

I commented and it turned into a rant:

If "real" journalists need to believe we're all hiding in a closet with our laptops, let them. The truth is: "We The People" on these blogs are "REAL" journalists and writers who don't have the hidden agenda of trying to get an interview with Rove or "Georgie" which taints "real" journalists points of view.

There is a reason this medium has taken on such validity among "REAL" people. Pollsters are taking us seriously. TV and radio pundits on the right fear us enough to trash us at every opportunity. Smart politicians realize that we are a money generating machine for them. Look at how many of the Democratic candidates showed up at Yearly KOS.

I work FULL time. I have two kids in college. I read news at least as much as ANYONE. I, unlike the right wing media, look at both sides of EVERY story before I write a word. The fact that my blogs are always against this admininstration is because EVERYTHING this administration has done is against EVERYTHING I believe America should be.

That said, let them think as they will. Let them dismiss us as crackpots or weirdos who dwell in dark little rooms and hide from reality. "WE" ARE reality, folks! Unfortunately for the right wing, "reality" does not bode well for the Republican Party these days. "Reality" shines that light into the sewer this administration has created and where they all reside. The rats are scampering about that "sewer" trying to hide from the light of truth, subpoenas and indictments.

"We The People" won't give up. "We The People" won't surrender our civil liberties without a fight. "We The People" won't allow our country to be stolen and our constitution to be manipulated or destroyed in the pursuit of some fantasy of "Homeland Security."

Go for it, "real" journalists. Belittle the bloggers. Fight against the weird little recluse in the dark room with his laptop. The more "they" try to differentiate "us" from "them," the more validity "they" give "us."

I rest my case.

Why Washington Can’t Get Much Done

Not "Why Republicans Can't Govern."

From 1992 to 2000 Washington got lots of things done. Welfare was reformed. NAFTA got passed. Deficits vanished. The defense department was made a little more efficient. Government shrank. Earmarks were in the hundreds. Iraq was contained. Real advances toward a resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict were made.

From 2000 to 2007, nothing constructive, and lots destructive has happened. What part of the difference between these two periods is difficult to understand? Finally, the republicans got all three elected branches. And they screwed everything--everything--up.

It turns out, though, that Rove is right. Everything that happens is good for the republican party. The republicans have an opportunity to put in the bumper stickers policy regime they have advocated for years. It fails abjectly. Conclusion? "Washington" can't get things done.

Exegesis follows.

But some big issues come to the nation’s capital and never leave, despite the politicians’ best efforts to wrap them up and send them packing. Immigration is one.

Efforts to craft a grand compromise on the perennially nettlesome issue of how to deal with the millions who want to settle in this country collapsed in the Senate in spectacular fashion Thursday night, even though President Bush and the Senate leadership desperately wanted a deal. Almost everyone in Washington believes that America’s immigration laws are an unenforceable mess. But confronted with real legislation built on real compromises, the Senate sank beneath murderous political, geographic and ideological crosscurrents. Despite vows of senators to resuscitate the bill, it may be months — or years — before Congress again comes close to passing a major overhaul of immigration law.

There is exactly one murderous crosscurrent. Moneyed republican interests who want to have continued access to a labor pool that does not require adherence to US labor law came into conflict with the nativist voting base of the republican party. The people who want to be able to pay less than the minimum wage, not pay workman's comp and operate without complying with OSHA came up against the Republican voters who want all these brown people to just go away.

This isn't complicated. This is not a "Washington" issue. This is a Republican issue.

The reform act of 1986 failed not because it was bad legislation, but because it is not enforced. If all the businesses who employ illegal aliens were fined, as required under the law, then the problem would shrink to the purely cash economy of nannies and construction workers.

But immigration is only one of several major policy matters on which virtually all Americans agree that something has to be done, even as Washington seems mired in dysfunction. What will happen when Congress turns next to energy legislation? Or global warming? Health care? Social Security?

Republicans will block any effective legislation.

This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

It sometimes seems that it takes a catastrophe to create consensus. The Great Depression, Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11 all shattered partisan divisions and led, at least for a time, to enhanced presidential power and a rush of bipartisan lawmaking (some of which political leaders later came to regret).

Seems to me the first had more to do with large democratic majorities in the Congress, the second had to do with an actual threat to the US and the third....Well, in the third, the "bipartisan lawmaking" consisted of Republicans rubberstamping the administration on every initiative, citing 9/11 whether it was relevant or not.

Today, however, the partisan chasm in Washington is deeper than it has been in 100 years, according to some academic studies, as moderate blocs in both parties have all but vanished.

WTF? There are plenty of moderate Democrats. There are no moderate republicans. The ones who claim to be moderate vote with the president on every extreme measure, from the MCA to Alito.

There were a number of Democrats who voted for the Iraq supplemental. And, what, two republicans? The extreme party is the republican party. Just because David Broder wants the Democrats to march to the right to make Brent Scowcroft the new center doesn't mean that moderate blocks on the democratic side of the aisle have vanished.

“Remember,” said Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, “these are really big problems and they’re really tough. Solving them is going to involve some major changes in the way we live, the way we tax ourselves, the way we get our health care and the way we transport ourselves.”

Huh? No, these are all easy to solve. Europe has solved them all. Moneyed republican interests are blocking all of them. Transport is the trickiest; the internal combustion engine is a central part of the economy. But the Sierra Club has noted that there are dozens of technologies on the shelf that would greatly ameliorate the carbon production problem. The issue here is that republicans block any change to the status quo.

He added: “Many of these questions are caught up in ideological differences that really are quite fundamental. On all of them right now there is no consensus in the country and therefore the political system has to try to create one where none now exists.”

Voters have certainly reached consensus on these questions. The problem is a Republican party (and some apostate democrats) wedded to a culture of corruption.

A sign of how hard it is to fashion a compromise on these big questions is the length of time between major legislative actions on them. It took almost a decade from the collapse of the Clinton administration’s health care initiative in 1994 to the passage of the new Medicare prescription-drug benefit.

This is because the insurance lobby and Big Pharma blocked any effective reform, beginning in 1994. It was only when the medicare drug bill passed with guarantees of maintaining high drug prices that there was any "reform" possible.

Even the relatively new issue of global warming has been batted around since 1988, when Al Gore began talking about its potentially dire effects. Now, despite a foot-high stack of proposed legislation on the subject, virtually nothing has been done.

Let's see. Since 1988 the republicans have been insisting that there is no such thing as global warming. Oil companies have been producing "scientific" reports claiming that there is no global warming, or if there is, it has nothing to do with burning, of the course of a few decades, carbon that has been sequestered for tens of millions of years.

Oh, and of course, for the last six years, the administration has had their political team review scientific reporting on climate change, and "correct" the reports to leave open the possibility that the reports are wrong.

This, again, is not a government failure. It's a failure of one party committed to large corporate special interests intervening, generally illegally, in processes legislatively authorized.

Mr. Gore said it was extremely difficult to move the political system when it is paralyzed by partisan passion and beset by well-financed and well-organized interests. He refers to the combination of the oil, coal and automobile industries as the “carbon lobby,” which he said is very difficult to defeat.

Ahem. Mr. Broder, these interests are not part of the "government."

After all, the Medicare drug benefit, too, was a much-heralded attempt to lower the costs of medicines for the elderly, but it created mountains of burdensome paperwork and huge unanticipated costs for the government.

The degree to which this was unanticipated depended on whether you read the official testimony of Bush officials or whether you read their actual estimates. Nobody who paid any analytical attention to this program believed it would actually lower drug costs. The program was a shuck, to get Bush reelected without costing big Pharma anything. You can't blame this on "Washington" when, in fact, this was republican legislation, passed on a party line vote that everyone knew would fail.

Government stasis was not unintended. The Founding Fathers designed the American system of government to cool public passions and created numerous impediments to rash action. They might not be surprised that two decades passed between significant action on immigration law or government old-age pensions. But they might have had trouble conceiving the complexity of the issues facing modern Washington, like global warming or the need to find a way to provide even basic medical care to one in seven Americans.

I am pretty sure they would be appalled at the degree to which the will and the needs of constituents are subordinated to other interests.

And nothing ticks me off more than this "complexity" business. What that really means is that it is really hard to find a way to reduce energy consumption that doesn't hurt the oil companies, or to make medical care delivery efficient without lowering insurance industry revenues and profits. The only complexities involve moving the pigs out of the trough.

And those pigs, by and large, are part of Delay's K street project, which, I am quite certain would have appalled the Founders.

The molasses pace of governance in America is frustrating to many in and outside Washington. But the framers recognized that the dangers of succumbing to fleeting enthusiasms are often far greater than the slow process of fashioning a consensus from the competing interests of a sectional country.

So now the reason that we can't get universal health care is because the need to cover every American may be a "fleeting enthusiasm."

There's no lack of consensus in a sectional country. There's the Beltway, and the constituents. So, I guess, in the end, this may be a problem in "Washington," but not the way that Broder means.

At the SC Democratic debates, Mike Gravel was portrayed as some kind of loony tunes crazy uncle at the party. I didn't see the debate live (I've really come to hate the artificialty and the contentless questions. The contrast with the MoveOn Town Hall session is very striking.) But radar magazine put up a highlight reel , which I did watch.

Here's an excerpt from his first answer:

Well, first off, understand that this war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis. Understand that. Now with respect to what's going on in the Congress, I'm really embarrassed.

So we passed -- and the media's in a frenzy right today with what has been passed. What has been passed? George Bush communicated over a year ago that he would not get out of Iraq until he left office. Do we not believe him?

Now this is an absolutely central point at this momenet in time. The US in engaged in an indefinite occupation of Iraq. There is no chance of attaining the goal sought, but never stated, of establishing pliant secular client smackdab in the middle of the Middle East, to serve as a base for military and diplomatic activity. The plan, documented in Fiasco and Imperial Life in the Emerald City and countless other places, was to parachute in exiles, set up a fake democracy, and run the country through those puppets.

As Josh pointed out last week, this effort has failed. The goal cannot be attained. The reason the US forces are lurching from pillar to post trying to identify the enemy is that there really isn't any enemy that is preventing the goal from being attained. Once Al Sistani forced the US to hold real elections, the game was over. A real election will select an islamist government that will not want the US to be in Iraq, and certainly will not want to advance American goals in Israel.

Gravel is pointing this out. You would think that this would become a central debating point. this is the most important issue in the country at the moment. And it is actually asking a very important question--is the immediate American foreign policy goal a muscular imperialism driven by a trumped-up threat of global terrorism? Is US foreign policy going to continue to be driven by a nearly non-existent threat that, in any case, cannot be dealt with militarily?

But that question appears to be off the table. The response to Gravel's remarks is embarrassed laughter.

Later on, Gravel doesn't mince words on these questions:

We have no important enemies. What we need to do is to begin to deal with the rest of the world as equals. And we don't do that.

We spend more as a nation on defense than all the rest of the world put together. Who are we afraid of?

Who are you afraid of, Brian? I'm not. And Iraq has never been a threat to us. We invaded them. I mean, it is unbelievable. The military industrial complex not only controls ourgovernment, lock, stock and barrel, but they control our culture.

Again, the reaction is that he has gone out of bounds. These questions, these issues cannot be permissably raised. It is taken for granted by everyone else in the room that there is somebody to be afraid of, that there is an enemy that requires the possession of thousands of nuclear warheads, of fighter jets that have no targets, of aircraft carriers groups that have no threat to respond to.

Again, this is a very legitimate question. The press reaction to his raising this questions is to treat him like a crazy old man.

But is there anything he says in these two excerpts that is not well worth discussing? Haven't all the post war threats turned out to be much less dire than proposed? And isn't the current bogeyman--stateless guys in caves--at some point actually laughable?

It's like going into the Senate. You know, the first time you get there, you're all excited, "My God, how did I ever get here?"

Then, about six months later, you say, "How the hell did the rest of them get here?"

And I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me -- they frighten me. When you have mainline candidates that turn around and say that there's nothing off the table with respect to Iran, that's code for using nukes, nuclear devices.

I got to tell you, I'm president of the United States, there will be no preemptive wars with nuclear devices. To my mind, it's immoral, and it's been immoral for the last 50 years as part of American foreign policy.

Williams: Let's use a little moderator discretion here. Senator Gravel, that's a weighty charge.

Who on this stage exactly tonight worries you so much?

Gravel: Well, I would say the top tier ones. The top tier ones. They've made statements.

Oh, Joe, I'll include you, too. You have a certain arrogance. You want to -- you want to tell the Iraqis how to run their country.

I got to tell you, we should just plain get out -- just plain get out.

It's their country. They're asking us to leave. And we insist on staying there.

And why not get out? What harm is it going to do? Oh, you hear the statement, "Well, my God, these soldiers will have died in vain." The entire deaths of Vietnam died in vain. And they're dying in vain right this very second.

And you know what's worse than a soldier dying in vain? It's more soldiers dying in vain. That's what's worse.

This is not, Brian Williams, a "weighty charge." It is simply the truth. The US is the only country that has used a nuclear weapon. It is the only country that has endorsed first use of a nuclear weapon against conventional forces. This administration has reestablished research programs for the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

And this is all happening in an environment where there is no credible threat The most serious threat is probably an overthrown government in Pakistan--which is nowhere near any kind of existential threat. The US has no reason for a defense posture any more aggressive than Canada.

When Gravel points this out--when he says that he will take the nuclear option off the table--expressly because it would be wrong, and inconsistent with longstandingly asserted US principles of a commitment to peace and democracy.

Even if you think Gravel is wrong, these are both valid and pressing points in a world with no enemies beyond a few thousand impoverished extremists. The states who speak in threatening terms, like Iran, pose no credible threat. Iraq posed no credible threat. An Afghan government hijacked by foreign extremists did pose a credible threat. And that government was removed from power, although the extremists were left at large.

But there is certainly room to debate whether we really need to be on a permanent war footing, in a world where the most potentially threatening country is on of our largest trading partners.

But this is a debate that the media and the establishment candidates will not permit to happen. Gravel will continue to be mocked and marginalized--and the issues he is raising will be ignored.

This is from a WSJ article, according to Hugh Hewitt.

This explains why they hate us, in particular why the pundits hate us.

They hate us because they've arrived at the pinnacle of their profession, a position achieved after years of hard work and corporate maneuvering, even formal education. And then Glenn Greenwald and Josh Marshall show up. Glenn and Josh don't merely beat them at their game by doing original journalism. They also expose the pinnacles that they have reached as hollow. It turns out that the very apex of the journalistic world--political commentary out of Washington DC--consists of high school politics over your best friends' friends, and a series of incestuous, sometimes literally sexual, relationships. This leads to extremely narrow reporting and opinion-making that, in practice, is closely aligned with partisan Republican narrative. We've seen this over and over again.

They have no choice but to smear us, because they cannot win an argument on the merits, as Glenn has been demonstrating wrt ABC's inflammatory anthrax reporting and Josh has with his US Attorney work and Firedoglake has done with the Libby trial.

So they willfully mischaracterize a constitutional lawyer, a working journalist, a former prosecutor and so forth as "some guy in the Bronx." Is it really possible that Brian Williams is unaware of the FDL Libby coverage or the work Josh has been doing? We know for sure that there was interest in the FDL work by people with .mil, .doj, .wh, and .cia in their ip address name.

This is a willful, intentional and dishonest attempt to devalue work that is becoming a product of significantly higher quality than that put out by Brian Williams network. And it won't work. All that will work is for them to start doing a better, more transparent and accurate reporting.

Just a little background for people new to the blogosphere. The kid here was expressing his devotion to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a sect that arose in response to the fuss about teaching evolution in Kansas.

Pastfarians believe that people evolved from pirates, hence the kid's decision to express his FSM devotion. Bryan Killian is his name, and he makes the following point:

“I feel like my First Amendment was violated,” Killian, 16, said. “Freedom of religion and freedom of expression. That’s what I tried to do, and I got shot down.” (Citizen-Times)

PJ Myers points out that when school officials say things like this:

"It has nothing to do with religious beliefs," school district spokesman Stan Alleyne rushed to say when asked about the suspension. "We respect students' religious beliefs."

they are picking and choosing which religious expressions are permitted.

Now, of course, you can object that this kid doesn't really believe that the FSM exists, and he's being satirical, making fun of other religions. But, first, it's hard to come up with a symbol that expresses belief in nothing, and second, satirical speech doesn't get excluded in the Bill of Rights.

Moreover, if the kid sticks with it, as does the FSM website, and does it completely deadpan, who is to say that he's lying? Are we gonna cross-examine all the cross-wearers to confirm the sincerity of their belief?

Atrios has been writing about this recently--about how some beliefs are legitimate, and receive support from the state and the political apparatus. This is another illustration that there are permissible and impermissible beliefs, and that atheist expression is to be suppressed at all times.

That's ten Beltway journalists, all unanimously saying "Move along people. Nothing to see here."

What is going on here? They're all right on republican message, talking point by talking point.

Not a single one of these ten people expressed any concern about the impact on the justice system caused by these actions, even though there is not shortage of commentary from people within the justice system decrying.

Why? What motivates these people? Is it really just Sally Quinn's circle? And, if so, how did Karl Rove get in there?

Check:

The biggest question is how far can Democrats go in opposing this president? The biggest risk is going so far that they feel the sting of a backlash — of being transformed from the fresh new face of change to the latest cast of Washington players enmeshed in partisan wrangling.

Need civility?

Check:

There is a recent history of aggressive Congressional majorities paying a price for being overly confrontational. The Republican Congress that impeached President Bill Clinton went on to lose five seats in the midterm elections; generally, the opposition party can expect to gain seats in midterms during a president’s second term.

“Voters were looking for more civility and more cooperation between Republicans and Democrats,” Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader, said of last fall’s election. “There have been moments when this has happened, but we still have a long way to go on this.”

How'd that all work out for you Tom?

Gotta pass bills, and not get bogged down in investigations?

Check:

Democrats will have room to maneuver as the tough hall monitors of this administration — think hearings on Katrina and Walter Reed Hospital, more push-back on Iraq and, yes, more subpoenas. But not unless they can also compile a record of legislation by the time the next election comes around.

“If Democrats want to do well in 2008 on the House side and the Senate side, they have to show they can govern,” said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. “They have to show they can do more than investigate and push back on the president.”

Note the democrats aren't tough cops outing criminals. They're wussy hall monitors keeping the children in line.

Gotta work with Republicans?

Check:

The party holds a slim advantage in the Senate. For all intents and purposes, it will be impossible to pass big legislation without a few Republican defections.

Oh, and of course, weak on terror?

Check:

On Iraq, the party could be perceived as so broadly antiwar that it could undermine its efforts to reassure voters that it can keep them safe in an age of global terror (a theme that even a weakened White House and Republican Party continue to push hard).

Now when the Democrats were a slim minority, then they had to cooperate and be civil in order not to be seen as obstructionist.

The security reference is laid out just the way the white house would want, with "age of global terror" (which you really, at this point, have say has not turned out to be so). It ignores recent polls that show Democrats are now more trusted than republicans on national security. Nags also fails to point out that it might well be a good thing to be clearly identified as the party opposed to a war that is opposed by Americans in 60 percent and above range.

Why don't they just hire Ken Mellman or somebody, and stop pretending.

The only thing you can conclude is that they don't actually research anything. They chat with friends and then write columns. The only good thing about all this is that we're now getting a pretty good idea why the administration has been able to peddle obvious lies on a routine basis.

So here's an introduction to this subject I can't do this in words of one syllable, but I'll try.

The issue here is actually very important, and speaks to the foundation of how the United States operates under the constitution. I shouldn't need to say this, but at this point, with four Beltway pundits all missing the point, I'm going to.

Brooks seems to get this:

"but the founders, who had a low but accurate view of human nature, figured that wasn’t possible. They placed the federal prosecutors within the executive branch of government, a political branch. They ordained that prosecutors would be overseen by the attorney general, a political officer."

Yes. And that is why the constitution calls for the _confirmation_ of US Attorneys. This is not as clear cut as I thought. You should read discussion in comments about this.

Got that? The key to preventing the executive branch from using the judicial system as a dirty tricks adjunct is to use the third branch of government to review these appointments. So that they can't do things like appoint Karl Rove's favorite oppo researcher as the US attorney in a purple state.

Back to the story. Last year, according to the then chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, a staff member inserted a provision into the Patriot Act that reversed the Founders and made it possible for the president to appoint US Attorneys without confirmation hearings. He did so without the knowledge of any of the senators.

Let's just stop there for a minute. This is a bad thing. Senators are supposed to vote on little things like this. At the very least, they're supposed to know about them. So, you know, right here is something that is worth paying attention to.

Now why did the administration get this staffer to do this? They did it so they could appoint people who could not be confirmed, like the aforesaid oppo researcher. In fact, they did it so they could appoint people that they would be embarrassed to put in front of even Specter's committee.

This is a very bad thing, especially because it's clear that the project the appointees would be working on is "voter fraud." That is, doing all they could to suppress voting in Democratic precincts. This would include investigations into activity that the current crop of prosecutors found without merit and, more importantly, NOT investigating the various vote suppression schemes Republicans engaged in in the last three elections.

And, whoa, whattya know? What states got the new appointees? Utah and Massachusetts? Nope. NM and AZ. Purple swing states. 5 out of 8 were purple swing states. 2 were CA, including Carol Lam, who was prosecuting cases of corruption that pretty clearly would reach the White House. One, apparently, was included because performance reviews were so awful that it would have made the performance excuse transparently false.

Sorry for the length of this. But it looks like they need some help in understanding this.

Deep in the bowels of Washington, hidden from public scrutiny and prying cameras, there is an illicit underworld where people are subtle, reasonable and interesting. I have occasionally been admitted to this place, the land of RIP (Reasonable in Private).

I have been in the Senate dining room and heard senators, in whispers and with furtive glances, acknowledge the weaknesses in their own arguments and admit the justice of some of the other side’s points. I have seen politicians fess up to their own evasions and acknowledge the trade-offs inevitable in tough decisions.

I have always felt honored when politicians admit me into the realm of RIP, because if it ever got out that these pols were sensible and independent, it would ruin their careers. If it ever got out that they could think for themselves or often had subversive and honest thoughts, they would be branded traitors to their party and uncertain champions for their cause.

Um, David, does it not occur to you that having these secret conversations makes you part of the problem? That you are doing your readers a grave disservice by knowing the actual views of their elected officials and not sharing that knowledge? I mean, it’s all very nice that you can brag to your readers that you’re a member of the very kewlest club, but don’t you see that it’s not really your job to be in kewl clubs?

It’s your job to write about what really goes on in Washington. You've picked a particularly poor time to be pointing this out, because we’re finding lots and lots about Irving Libby’s kewl kids club.

In our democracy, presidential aspirants spend a few months fighting a general election but two years positioning themselves for the primaries. That means they spend the bulk of their time in transcontinental cattle calls, competing to most assiduously flatter the prejudices of their most febrile supporters. They traffic in pre-approved bromides while searching with their hyperattenuated antennas for their party’s maximum sweet spot of approval, love and applause.

[snip]

And yet the politicians have completely failed to institutionalize that sense of sobriety in the public sphere. Instead of having a serious debate, the Senate disgraced itself with mind-bendingly petty partisanship. Meanwhile, the Democratic presidential candidates engaged in an unholy bidding war to get out of Iraq soonest, which had nothing to do with realities in Iraq and everything to do with applause lines in Iowa.

Right. Taking a position supported by two thirds of the American people is pandering to the voters in Iowa. And which candidates is he talking about? Clinton, parroting republican talking points on Fox TV? The strongest position on the war comes from Senator Feingold, not from anyone in the Presidential race.

This also reminds me of a recent WaPo chat with

Shailagh Murray:

Would you want a department store manager or orthodontist running the Pentagon? I don't think so. The reason that many politicians are squeamish about hard and fast goals of any kind in Iraq is that there is no simple response or solution -- it would have emerged by now. A withdrawal by year's end carries enormous, very serious implications.

The people can’t have role in any decision that carries very serious implications. No, this is a job for Senators and their media contacts to work out behind closed doors, while collaborating to present politicians’ false public image. Note that we’ve moved on from the DFH to the entire American populace outside the Beltway. Mere voters can’t have a voice, because they don’t get into these special, secret conversations that Brooks and Murray do.

All they know about is the material served to them, by Brooks and his ilk, on a platter like a fake turkey in Baghdad.

Back to Brooks

In a week when the private mood was grave, the public action was partisan and shortsighted. Instead of trying to educate public opinion by stressing the realities described in the National Intelligence Estimate, the political class, by and large, publicly ignored those findings. The Republicans maintained near lock-step solidarity even though privately, Republican opinions are all over the place.

David sees his job as telling us that the majority of republicans are lying, but not his job to tell us which ones these are. It’s his job to assist them in stifling debate and preventing the public from knowing what their elected officials think.

David, do you really not see that even if you are not part of the political class (I think you are, as Cheney’s opinion of Meet the Press as messenger service indicates), you are at the very least enabling the atmosphere you are deriding here. Again, isn’t it your frickin’ job to tell us what these lines of debate are? Even if it’s all hush, hush and on the QT or you’re out of the club, can’t you at least report numbers and positions, if not names? (ed—in point of fact, he can’t because his interpretation of his job is transmitting the official republican message that he’s decrying the existence of.)

The Democrats ignored the intelligence community’s warning about withdrawal after spending three years blasting the Bush administration for ignoring intelligence.

Yeah, and why has the media also ignored it? It’s the elephant in the living room. The real debate is not whether bad things will happen when the US leaves. It is 1) whether the US remaining indefinitely will do anything but delay the bad things until US casualty figures become as intolerable to Senators as they already are to orthodontists and department store managers.

It is also 2) whether the US presence is making the bad things that will happen still worse by increasing the sectarian division and hatred, as the Iranian ambassador suggests in a very lucid column next to his.

It’s certainly true that we need to have that debate. You’d do your readers a greater service by advancing that debate in public, rather than whispering about in his secret club.