The Hill reports that Former Republican Senator and one time Majority Leader, Trent Lott (MS), thinks that the Republicans should aggressively pursue Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and bring him over to their side of the aisle in The Senate.

Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) says Senate Republicans should pull out the stops to persuade Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to join their ranks.

"They should aggressively pursue him," Lott told The Hill, offering advice to his former colleagues in leadership and those close to the former Democrat-turned-Independent.

Jeffrey Young, "Lott: GOP should 'aggressively pursue' Lieberman", The Hill, October 30, 2008

Farther into the article is found another great reason to vote for Obama: "If McCain wins the presidency, Lieberman is seen as a candidate for a cabinet position, such as secretary of defense".

My second exccerpt from The Nation's Founding regarding this week's TPM Cafe Book Club topic is: Anti-Federalist Richard Henry Lee, writing under the pen name, Federal Farmer, about the synergistic dangers in giving Congress the powers to lay and collect internal taxes, along with its powers respecting the armed forces.

The power in the general government to lay and collect internal taxes, will render its powers respecting armies; navies and the militia, the more exceptionable. By the constitution it is proposed that congress shall have power "to raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; to provide and maintain a navy; to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union; suppress insurrections, and repel invasions: to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia;" reserving to the states the right to appoint the officers, and to train the militia according to the discipline prescribed by congress; congress will have unlimited power to raise armies, and to engage officers and men for any number of years; but a legislative act applying money for their support can have operation for no longer term than two years, and if a subsequent congress do not within the two years renew the appropriation, or further appropriate monies for the use of the army, the army will be left to take care of itself. When an army shall once be raised for a number of years, it is not probable that it will find much difficulty in getting congress to pass laws for applying monies to its support. I see so many men in America fond of a standing army, and especially among those who probably will have a large share in administering the federal system; it is very evident to me, that we shall have a large standing army as soon as the monies to support them can be possibly found. An army is not a very agreeable place of employment for the young gentlemen of many families. A power to raise armies must be lodged some where; still this will not justify the lodging this power in a bare majority of so few men without any checks; or in the government in which the great body of the people, in the nature of things, will be only nominally represented. In the state governments the great body of the people, the yeomanry, &c. of the country, are represented: It is true they will chuse the members of congress, and may now and then chuse a man of their own way of thinking; but it is not impossible for forty, or thirty thousand people in this country, one time in ten to find a man who can possess similar feelings, views, and interests with themselves: Powers to lay and collect taxes and to raise armies are of the greatest moment; for carrying them into effect, laws need not be frequently made, and the yeomanry, &c. of the country ought substantially to have a check upon the passing of these laws; this check ought to be placed in the legislatures, or at least, in the few men the common people of the country, will, probably, have in congress, in the true sense of the word, "from among themselves." It is true, the yeomanry of the country possess the lands, the weight of property, possess arms, and are too strong a body of men to be openly offended — and, therefore, it is urged, they will take care of themselves, that men who shall govern will not dare pay any disrespect to their opinions. It is easily perceived, that if they have-not their proper negative upon passing laws in congress, or on the passage of laws relative to taxes and armies, they may in twenty or thirty years be by means imperceptible to them, totally deprived of that boasted weight and strength : This may be done in a great measure by congress, if disposed to do it, by modelling the militia, Should one fifth or one eighth part of the men capable of bearing arms, be made a select militia, as has been proposed, and those the young and ardent part of the community, possessed of but little or no property, and all the others put upon a plan that will render them of no importance, the former will answer all the purposes of an army, while the latter will be defenceless. The state must train the militia in such form and according to such systems and rules as congress shall prescribe: and the only actual influence the respective states will have respecting the militia will be in appointing the officers. I see no provision made for calling out the posse comitatus for executing the laws of the union, but provision is made for congress to call forth the militia for the execution of them — and the militia in general, or any select part of it, may be called out under military officers, instead of the sheriff to enforce an execution of federal laws, in the first instance, and thereby introduce an entire military execution of the laws. I know that powers to raise taxes, to regulate the military strength of the community on some uniform plan, to provide for its defence and internal order, and for duly executing the laws, must be lodged somewhere; but still we ought not so to lodge them, as evidently to give one order of men in the community, undue advantages over others; or commit the many to the mercy, prudence, and moderation of the few. And so far as it may be necessary to lodge any of the peculiar powers in the general government, a more safe exercise of them ought to be secured, by requiring the consent of two-thirds or three-fourths of congress thereto — until the federal representation can be increased, so that the democratic members in congress may stand some tolerable chance of a reasonable negative, in behalf of the numerous, important, and democratic part of the community.

Letters of a Federal Farmer by Richard Henry Lee; Letter III; October 10, 1787
Text transcribed from:
Ford, Paul Leicester. 1888. Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States: published during its discussion by the people, 1787-1788. Brooklyn, N.Y.: [s.l.]. pp 304-306.

As a bit of contexual relatedness to this week's TPM Cafe Book Club, I offer an exccerpt of a Thomas Jefferson letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, in which he compared class in England to America, speaks of slavery and a citizen army for The Nation's Defense.

The population of England is composed of three descriptions of persons (for those of minor note are too inconsiderable to affect a general estimate). These are, 1. The aristocracy, comprehending the nobility, the wealthy commoners, the high grades of priesthood, and the officers of government. 2. The laboring class. 3. The eleemosynary class, or paupers, who are about one-fifth of the whole. The aristocracy, which have the laws and government in their hands, have so managed them as to reduce the third description below the means of supporting life, even by labor; and to force the second, whether employed in agriculture or the arts, to the maximum of labor which the construction of the human body can endure, and to the minimum of food, and of the meanest kind, which will preserve it in life, and in strength sufficient to perform its functions. To obtain food enough, and clothing, not only their whole strength must be unremittingly exerted, but the utmost dexterity also which they can acquire; and those of great dexterity only can keep their ground, while those of less must sink into the class of paupers. Nor is it manual dexterity alone, but the acutest resources of the mind also which are impressed into this struggle for life; and such as have means a little above the rest, as the master-workmen, for instance, must strengthen themselves by acquiring as much of the philosophy of their trade as will enable them to compete with their rivals, and keep themselves above ground. Hence the industry and manual dexterity of their journeymen and day-laborers, and the science of their master-workmen, keep them in the foremost ranks of competition with those of other nations; and the less dexterous individuals, falling into the eleemosynary ranks, furnish materials for armies and navies to defend their country, exercise piracy on the ocean, and carry conflagration, plunder and devastation, on the shores of all those who endeavor to withstand their aggressions. A society thus constituted possesses certainly the means of defence. But what does it defend? The pauperism of the lowest class, the abject oppression of the laboring, and the luxury, the riot, the domination and the vicious happiness of the aristocracy. In their hands, the paupers are used as tools to maintain their own wretchedness, and to keep down the laboring portion by shooting them whenever the desperation produced by the cravings of their stomachs drives them into riots. Such is the happiness of scientific England; now let us see the American side of the medal.

And, first, we have no paupers, the old and crippled among us, who possess nothing and have no families to take care of them, being too few to merit notice as a separate section of society, or to affect a general estimate. The great mass of our population is of laborers; our rich, who can live without labor, either manual or professional, being few, and of moderate wealth. Most of the laboring class possess property, cultivate their own lands, have families, and from the demand for their labor are enabled to exact from the rich and the competent such prices as enable them to be fed abundantly, clothed above mere decency, to labor moderately and raise their families. They are not driven to the ultimate resources of dexterity and skill, because their wares will sell although not quite so nice as those of England. The wealthy, on the other hand, and those at their ease, know nothing of what the Europeans call luxury. They have only somewhat more of the comforts and decencies of life than those who furnish them. Can any condition of society be more desirable than this? Nor in the class of laborers do I mean to withhold from the comparison that portion whose color has condemned them, in certain parts of our Union, to a subjection to the will of others. Even these are better fed in these States, warmer clothed, and labor less than the journeymen or day-laborers of England. They have the comfort, too, of numerous families, in the midst of whom they live without want, or fear of it; a solace which few of the laborers of England possess. They are subject, it is true, to bodily coercion; but are not the hundreds of thousands of British soldiers and seamen subject to the same, without seeing, at the end of their career, when age and accident shall have rendered them unequal to labor, the certainty, which the other has, that he will never want? And has not the British seaman, as much as the African, been reduced to this bondage by force, in flagrant violation of his own consent, and of his natural right in his own person? and with the laborers of England generally, does not the moral coercion of want subject their will as despotically to that of their employer, as the physical constraint does the soldier, the seaman, or the slave? But do not mistake me. I am not advocating slavery. I am not justifying the wrongs we have committed on a foreign people, by the example of another nation committing equal wrongs on their own subjects. On the contrary, there is nothing I would not sacrifice to a practicable plan of abolishing every vestige of this moral and political depravity. But I am at present comparing the condition and degree of suffering to which oppression has reduced the man of one color, with the condition and degree of suffering to which oppression has reduced the man of another color; equally condemning both. Now let us compute by numbers the sum of happiness of the two countries. In England, happiness is the lot of the aristocracy only; and the proportion they bear to the laborers and paupers, you know better than I do. Were I to guess that they are four in every hundred, then the happiness of the nation would be to its misery as one in twenty-five. In the United States it is as eight millions to zero, or as all to none. But it is said they possess the means of defence, and that we do not. How so? Are we not men? Yes; but our men are so happy at home that they will not hire themselves to be shot at for a shilling a day. Hence we can have no standing armies for defence, because we have no paupers to furnish the materials. The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended themselves. The Greeks by. their laws, and the, Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so.

Thomas Jefferson,
Letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, September 10, 1814

Jefferson, Thomas, Andrew Adgate Lipscomb, and Albert Ellery Bergh. 1903. The writings of Thomas Jefferson. Washington, D.C.: Issued under the auspices of the Thomas Jefferson memorial Association of the United States.
Volume XIV. pp 180-185

Quin Hillyer, a senior editor of The American Spectator, authored a blog post at The American Spectator, October 23, 2008, titled, "Why Justice Sees No Evil", in which he claims that, "the election is being stolen from under our noses", but don't bother going to the American spectator link, because Hillyer didn't bother to offer any clear reasons why he is paranoid, and instead, with a shameless plug, linked to another post at his private blog.

Quin Hillyer, "Justice Takes a Barack Seat", Southern Appeal blog, October 23, 2008

No real need to give Hillyer any page views over there either. He claims that the DOJ is stealing the election for Obama, and for evidence links to a recent Open Secrets' report. Hillyer's premise rests entirely upon the fact that Department of Justice employees strongly prefer Obama to McCain in their campaign contributions this year, and his paranoia finds deep dark intent in the DOJ's unwillingness to interfere with Ohio's voter validation process before the election. Yet the Open Secrets' report paints an much different picture for the reasons that Justice employees prefer Obama:

"People who work in government believe in government, and they want a president who can inspire people to believe in government again," said David Osborne, a senior partner at Public Strategies Group, a consulting firm for government executives. "When they look at these two (candidates), they come to the conclusion that it's Obama."

Obviously, not all civil servants and public officials have decided to earmark up to $4,600 of their paychecks for Obama. While the Democrat has collected more from employees at the Department of Justice than any other executive branch agency, Department of Defense employees are McCain's biggest supporters among federal agencies.

Defense spending and policy may be high on the list of issues that DOD employees will have in mind when they vote on Nov. 4, and for DOJ employees, one consideration might be headlines about their department from earlier this year, when it came to light that multiple U.S. Attorneys were dismissed for what now appear to be partisan reasons. A Justice Department report released last month concluded that the White House may have meddled in the firing of least three of the nine prosecutors who were let go.

This may be part of the reason DOJ employees have turned away from Republicans and given Obama nearly three times more than they've given to McCain this cycle ($268,600 compared to $97,400), according to Kareem Crayton, a professor of law and political science at the University of Southern California. Obama's haul from Justice employees over the summer equaled what McCain has brought in from the department over 20 months of the election cycle.

"There is probably an effect linked to what many people in the department and around Washington describe as a malaise within the department," Crayton said. "The ongoing series of controversies--including the U.S. Attorney issue, the torture question, overly political hiring in the department itself, and even the questionable enforcement decisions on statutes like the Voting Rights Act--have been quite disheartening, and perhaps frustrating, for people who view the Bush administration's role in the operation of the agency as heavy-handed."

Lindsay Renick Mayer, "Justice, Defense Department Employees At Odds Over Next Leader", Open Secrets, October 23, 2008

Press Briefing by White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, October 21, 2008

Q Dana, has the President reached a decision on whether or not he'll close Guantanamo Bay? There's a report today that he's decided he will not.

Ms. Perino: I read that report, and I honestly think, if you went back and you read my briefing from July 3rd, you could have written the same story. I don't see anything that's new in that story.

What the President has said is that he wants to be able to get into a position where we could close Guantanamo eventually. But it's very complex, it's complicated, it is difficult. There are four basic issues that we're dealing with right now. One of them is moving forward on military commissions. That process is slow, but it is moving forward. Another one is returning home or to a third country many of the detainees. We had as many as 600 detainees at one point; we are now down to about 270. So we're continuing to work on that problem. Third, we're in habeas litigation when it comes to the Boumediene decision and then the recent decision from Judge Urbina on the Uigher case. Just last night, the appeals court agreed with us and stayed that decision. So we have that litigation going on. And General Mukasey, backed by the President, supports legislation that Congress needs to pass. And one of the bills that we could support has been introduced by Senators Graham, Lieberman, and McCain.

So there are four issues. And I'm sure that this President and the next President will come in and realize how complicated this issue is, and that we are working very diligently to try to do everything right. And it's not as easy as just snapping your fingers and closing Guantanamo Bay -- unless you don't care. Because 7 percent of the people who have been returned from Gitmo have returned to the battlefield. Many of them have been picked up again. One of them couldn't be picked up again because he was a suicide bomber who killed nearly 40 people in Mosul.

So we are working on it. But it's very difficult. It's slow work. But it's slow work because we are being very diligent in making sure that we do everything that we can to make sure that potential terrorists aren't in a position to be able to hurt innocent people again.

Q So this isn't a decision you expect the President will take or something that will happen before he leaves office?

Ms. Perino: There's nothing -- the President has made a decision to work to try to close Guantanamo Bay. That has not changed.

[. . .]

Q What has the President done to try and close Gitmo?

Ms. Perino: I just talked about how 600 members -- we used to have 600 detainees; we now have 272. We're moving forward to try to ask Congress to put forward the legislation. We are dealing with the habeas litigation, and we're moving forward on military commissions.

Q All those seem to be efforts -- the habeas litigation and the commissions are efforts to justify Gitmo, to defend Gitmo. But what's he doing to try and close it? There's no evidence of an attempt to find an alternative to Gitmo --

Ms. Perino: I disagree, Wendell, when you have --

Q -- considering holding these people, for example, in Afghanistan, where many were picked up.

Ms. Perino: I think you need to go back to the fact that there were, at one point, upwards of 600 detainees at Gitmo. We now are down to about 272. And that's because we've been able to return a lot of them back to their home countries, or to a third country, where we get the assurances that we seek.

That's the main thing that we were trying to do. And we've cut it down by two-thirds, and we've got a ways to go. We have also some very dangerous people there. Remember, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in Guantanamo Bay. So it's not as easy as just snapping your fingers and figuring out where else to put them.

There are also immigration laws. One of the big concerns that we have with the Judge Urbina decision from two weeks ago is that it created a whole third -- a whole other category of immigration without consulting Congress. So for example, in our country we have legal aliens who are here with documentation. They might have a work visa or a green card or they might be applying for citizenship.

Then you have aliens who are not here legally, also called undocumented. What Judge Urbina did was create a whole third category that would say you can legally be here in the United States without any background checks, and without any documentation, and just be released into the United States. And that's why I believe that the courts have agreed with us that that decision should be stayed.

These are issues that are complex. We are working towards them. But you can't -- if you care about innocent people, and the President does, you can't just snap your fingers and let these detainees back out into the world without some sort of assurance that they're not going to be able to hurt innocent people again.

Q The problem you're having with the detainees are those that you don't have evidence enough to convict. Those are the ones that have been released, and some of those have come back, which argues against them being picked up in the first place.

Ms. Perino: I don't think you can say that about all 272 detainees. When it comes to the Uighers, we have been working very hard to find a place for them to be. We want them to be safe, and we want them to be free. But in order to do that, we have to find a place where they can be safe. And that has been a challenge.

Q Why were they picked up then?

Ms. Perino: They were picked up at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. So that doesn't mean that they're an enemy against the United States.

Q And yet there's not enough evidence to bring them to trial.

Ms. Perino: But that's 17 Uighers; we're talking about 17 out of 272 people that we're currently talking about. If this was easy, Wendell, we would have solved it a long time ago. But we have picked up very dangerous people who have been -- who have received weapons training or other -- or they've been picked up in other places around the world. The military commission's process provides a huge amount of justice -- justice that these people never would have received in their own country. But it's a slow process; we admit that. But we're doing it diligently and we're trying to do it right.

We're Americans; supposed to be better than the rest. Justice cannot be rated, using as a standard of referent, the acts of an authoritarian state.