Sunday, January 15, 2006

Confirming Alito FAST - Alito will let Bush get away with murdering Women and Children

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President George W. Bush at the Kentucky International Convention Center in Louisville, Kentucky, January 11, 2006. Bush on Saturday called for a prompt Senate vote on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, playing down Democratic concerns that he could tilt the high court too far to the right. Bush, in his weekly radio address, emphasized Alito's judicial experience, saying the judge approached the law in a 'thoughtful, fair, and open-minded way' and would not impose his personal views. REUTERS/Larry Downing    

 Filibuster Bush, Impeach Alito
    By Paul Rogat Loeb
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Sunday 15 January 2006

    In the wake of the Alito hearings, mainline pundits are calling his nomination a done deal. Alito didn't spew obscenities or green bile. He didn't admit that he'd reverse Roe v. Wade or vow to proclaim George Bush Lord Emperor. Rehearsed and coached by committee member Lindsay Graham (and by some of the same lawyers who justified Bush's NSA wiretaps), he instead spoke deferentially and humbly about respecting legal precedent and separation of powers, while Republican committee members made him out to be a mix of Solomon and Mother Teresa. Much like Clarence Thomas during his hearings, Alito dodged the tough questions with evasions and platitudes, suffered convenient memory lapses on areas he couldn't dodge, and justified controversial past stands by saying he was just trying to be a team player. We know little more about him than before - except about his capacity to dissemble.

    Meanwhile, in a galaxy far away, former Congresswoman Liz Holtzman, who sat on Nixon's impeachment committee, just wrote that Bush's defiance of the law through illegal wiretapping, lying about the reasons for going to war, and condoning of violation of US law about detainee abuse constitute grounds for impeachment. Holtzman said impeachment should never be undertaken lightly. She found "voting for [Nixon's] impeachment to be one of the most sobering and unpleasant tasks I ever had to undertake." But she said it was necessary in Nixon's case, and merited in Bush's aswell. A Zogby poll taken last November, just before the wiretap scandal broke, found that 53 percent of those questioned favored impeachment of President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq.

    If there's a chance to stop Alito, much less reclaim our democracy, we need to bring these realities together. The filibuster just might be the vehicle to do that, as Senators could spell out the links between runaway executive power and a nominee who has consistently ruled and spoken in favor of the unaccountable expansion of that power. Suppose the Democratic Senators actually used a filibuster to talk about the Alito nomination in its broadest context. They wouldn't read the phone book. They wouldn't get lost in an endless maze of legal rhetoric about stare decisis. They could talk about how they'd have readily accepted a more moderate nominee, much as Clinton nominated Steven Breyer and Ruth Ginzberg in part because Orrin Hatch said he'd accept them as preferable to other proposed justices. They'd use the filibuster to educate as well as impede.

    However they label their actions, suppose the Democrats started debating the nomination, and didn't stop, in the process addressing the real roots of why Alito would be so destructive. They could read from articles and books about this administration's abuse of presidential power. They could talk about whether we really want government officials to be able to strip us of our rights at will, listen in on our phone and email conversations without a court order, and infiltrate the citizen groups through which we gather peacefully to express our beliefs. They could talk about the choices women were forced to make when abortion was illegal, what it's like to be discriminated against, then told you don't meet an impossible burden of proof, and whether police should be able to shoot unarmed 15-year-olds who flee after stealing $10. They could talk about the Sago mine disaster, and the fruits of a politics where unions are busted and regulations gutted at every turn. They could tell the stories that bring seemingly abstract issues of jurisdiction and constitutional interpretation to life, and make clear their real-world consequences.

    In the process they could remind America that this president, with this track record of lies, deceptions, and favors for the most destructive private interests, deserves no presumption of deference. And thatwhen he nominates someone, like Alito, who will only further his abuses of power, Senators have a moral responsibility to oppose him however they can. The wink-and-nod games of the hearings were designed to obscure Alito's record and frame him as genial and reasonable. If the Democrats accept this, or even quietly vote against him without further protest, they further the lie that this is an ordinary nomination in an ordinary time. If they filibuster and stand firm, there's a chance that the now politically weakened Republicans will back down and not risk putting themselves on the line for destroying nearly 200 years of Senate tradition for the naked goal of increasing their power. But Democrats have to take the risk of standing strong, and we as ordinary citizens have to do all we can to convince them to do so.

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U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito smiles as he gathers with supporters following his final day of testimony at the Senate judiciary confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill in Washington January 12, 2006. Alito completed his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday after frustrated Democrats took a final crack at getting more definitive answers from the 55-year-old conservative. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

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A Pakistani tribesman stands amid the debris of his collapsed house in Damadola after an alleged US airstrike at the Bajur tribal zone near the Afghan border. Pakistani officials said that Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was likely not killed in a US air strike, as Islamabad protested to Washington the deaths of 18 villagers in the attack.(AFP/Tariq Mahmood)

Pakistanis Condemn Purported CIA Attack - Yahoo! News

We are breading so much hate for our children in their future. Will they forgive us for the world we have created for them? We need to teach them better sothey don't ruin their children's future like we have taken away their's.....it's the only way to world peace. 

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Torture may be OK with them but it's not with me!

Enjoy your freedom while you have it.

The Imperial Presidency at Work
    The New York Times | Editorial

    Sunday 15 January 2006

    You would think that Senators Carl Levin and John McCain would have learned by now that you cannot deal in good faith with a White House that does not act in good faith. Yet both men struck bargains intended to restore the rule of law to American prison camps. And President Bush tossed them aside at the first opportunity.

    Mr. Bush made a grand show of inviting Mr. McCain into the Oval Office last month to announce his support for a bill to require humane treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and other prisons run by the American military and intelligence agencies. He seemed to have managed to get Vice President Dick Cheney to stop trying to kill the proposed Congressional ban on torture of prisoners.

    The White House also endorsed a bargain between Mr. Levin and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, which tempered somewhat a noxious proposal by Mr. Graham to deny a court hearing to anyone the president declares to be an "unlawful enemy combatant." The bargain with Mr. Levin removed language that stripped away cases already before the courts, which would have been an egregious usurpation of power by one branch of government, and it made clear that those cases should remain in the courts.

    Mr. Bush, however, seems to see no limit to his imperial presidency. First, he issued a constitutionally ludicrous "signing statement" on the McCain bill. The message: Whatever Congress intended the law to say, he intended to ignore it on the pretext the commander in chief is above the law. That twisted reasoning is what led to the legalized torture policies, not to mention the domestic spying program.

    Then Mr. Bush went after the judiciary, scrapping the Levin-Graham bargain. The solicitor general informed the Supreme Court last week that it no longer had jurisdiction over detainee cases. It said the court should drop an existing case in which a Yemeni national is challenging the military tribunals invented by Mr. Bush's morally challenged lawyers after 9/11. The administration is seeking to eliminate all other lawsuits filed by some of the approximately 500 men at Gitmo, the vast majority of whom have not been shown to pose any threat.

    Both of the offensive theories at work here - that a president's intent in signing a bill trumps the intent of Congress in writing it, and that a president can claim power without restriction or supervision by the courts or Congress - are pet theories of Judge Samuel Alito, the man Mr. Bush chose to tilt the Supreme Court to the right.

    The administration's behavior shows how high and immediate the stakes are in the Alito nomination, and how urgent it is for Congress to curtail Mr. Bush's expansion of power. Nothing in the national consensus to combat terrorism after 9/11 envisioned the unilateral rewriting of more than 200 years of tradition and law by one president embarked on an ideological crusade.

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