Another uplifting thing from today…
Palace Revolt is an article in Newsweek that restores some faith in our system. It’s about the lawyers in the Justice Department who fought the good fight to uphold our system of justice when the issues like Torture, N.S.A. Unwarranted Domestic Surveillance, C.I.A, leaks, Presidential Power were being dealt with behind closed doors. There were American heros there with names like Jack Goldsmithh and James Comey who stood up to the forces of darkness like John Yoo and David Addington. All of these people are conservative Republicans.
Goldsmith is gone now, a professor at Harvard. Comey has gone into private practice. Comey was the one who confronted John Ashcroft about recusing himself in the C.I.A. leak case; he’s the one who appointed Gerald Fitzgerald to prosecute the case; he’s the one that wouldn’t sign off on the N.S.A. Spying. Goldsmith pushed back on the torture issue.
It’s a compelling, well researched and well written article. It reminds one of other stories, Bush and Cheney bullying the Justice Department to get what they wanted, rather than looking to the Department as a resource on legal matters, just like they bullied the Intelligence Agency about the Niger Forgeries or the Aluminum Tubes rather than looking to the expertise of our Intelligence community.
What’s uplifting is that there were people in the Justice Department that fought back. They’re gone now. Our government doesn’t pay people enough to put up with that kind of crap. Bush, Cheney, and Rove as a team are so monotonous. They do not see anyone else as resources, just obstacles. When they set their mind on something, they just start hammering, using whatever method they can muster, until they get it. They interpret any dissent as something to overcome, rather than a potential source of higher wisdom. So they bull their ideas through. And they have some very, very bad ideas.
One of the ironies of this Administration is that their push for power is not matched with any talent. They are basically incompetent, except in the area of turning their incompetent ideas into policy – a dangerous combination. Read the story in Newsweek, if only to see that there were some mighty fine people trying to resist the tyranny of BushCo…
I meant to get ot this one…but you’ve done great job. 🙂
If the President has to spy on every person in America to catch even one Terrorist, it is weel worth it to me. The argument will always be, what is private is private, but if you aren’t doing anything illegal, you shouldn’t have to worry.
The reality is he COULD spy on every American to catch one terrorist. And I would have to be kind of crazy to argue against catching the bad guys. But based on the trail of deceit and crime this administration has been involved with, the most valid explanation is that they are opnly spying on political enemies and doing some corporate espionage. Otherwise they would have already submitted all of these requests to the FISA courts. So why would they do this. To make money. Imagine the insider trader information you could get by spying on select individuals. Imagine the extortion you could wield on people who do NOT contribute to campaigns if you could expose their intellectual capital and secrets to their competitors that DO contribute. That doesn’t sound half as crazy as spying on every single American.