Verbosities

Chairman Leahy issued subpoenas to the Department of Justice, the Office of the White House, the Office of the Vice President and the National Security Council for documents relating to the Committee’s inquiry into the warrantless electronic surveillance program. […]

“Over the past 18 months, this Committee has made no fewer than nine formal requests to the Department of Justice and to the White House, seeking information and documents about the authorization of and legal justification for this program,” Chairman Leahy wrote in letters accompanying the subpoenas to Bush Administration officials. “All requests have been rebuffed. Our attempts to obtain information through testimony of Administration witnesses have been met with a consistent pattern of evasion and misdirection.”

Yesterday, ThinkProgress noted Cheney’s claim in 2001 that a congressional probe into his energy task force “would unconstitutionally interfere with the functioning of the executive branch.” Today, a White House video emerged showing Cheney acknowledging:

It’s really a function of the last 50 years or so that the vice president’s become an important part of the executive branch.

Cars have not been permitted to move on the streets of Fallujah for nearly a month now. A ban was also enforced on bicycles, but residents were later granted permission to use them.

"Thank God and President Bush for this great favour," said Ala'a, a 34-year-old schoolteacher. "We are the only city in the liberated world with the blessing now of having bicycles moving freely in the streets."

Recently, I've spent a lot of time thinking whether the flip-flopping charges that abound in '08 race will eventually stick. The best answer I can come up with right now is "No."

[snip]

It's easy to turn a blind eye if someone's flip-flopping in my direction, but that's not it. Rather, it's that at some point, you've gotta dance with the ones that brung ya. Said another way, the positions Romney et al. are taking now, in the most important campaign of their lives, are the ones they're stuck with -- whether they like it or not. After his public conversion and being pilloried as a flip-flopper, do you seriously think that Romney can walk back his pro-life position without destroying himself?

[snip]

...(D)oes authenticity still matter? Yes, it does. But at some point, your basic positioning on issues has to matter too. And primary voters have a right to evaluate that.

We need to start thinking of this imperfect field not as a problem, but as an opportunity. Conservatives, these guys need you. They can't take a single vote for granted. You should be forcing them to take positions that are more to your liking, because they won't be able to live them down after running (and hopefully winning) on them.

Patrick Ruffini, the Bush campaign's webmaster, passes this item along:

Appearing on ABC's Good Morning America today, John Kerry offered yet another explanation for his trademark line "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it": it was late at night, and he was tired:

"It was a very inarticulate way of saying something and I had one of those moments late in the evening when I was tired in the primaries and didn't say something clearly. But it reflects the truth of the position, which is, I thought, to have the wealthiest people in America share the burden of paying for that war. It was a protest. Sometimes you have to stand up and be counted."

Just one problem: Kerry made the statement at noon. Maybe his watch was set on Paris time.

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The Bush administration’s top telecommunications official reportedly tried to “shout down” Net Neutrality and open access supporters after they called him out for spinning America’s Internet market as a wonderland of competition and consumer choice.

John Kneuer, assistant secretary of commerce and head of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), “quickly lost his temper and began shouting” after an audience of technology experts pressed him to explain how the U.S. had fallen so far behind other developed countries in providing Internet access to citizens.

According to The Register on Friday, Kneuer claimed that free market competition was the reason for the Internet’s “great success,” dismissing the history of Net Neutrality protections that have fostered new innovations and public participation online.

Real Free Markets vs. Telco Control

Kneuer, who previously served as a top phone company lobbyist for Washington law firm Piper Rudnick, told the audience that the “free market” (by which he means the current duopoly of large phone and cable companies) should be unencumbered by consumer protections and basic Internet freedoms.

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Among those who plan to vote in the Democratic primaries, 29 percent are enthusiastic about Clinton and 26 percent about Obama.

Forty-five percent of younger Americans aren’t enthusiastic about any candidate.

If you need a reason to buy Greenwald’s book, think about how fun it will be to see him on regular panels with Fred Kagan, Michelle Malkin and Anne Coulter. He drives them fucking crazy. James Carville and Paul Begala are pale substitutes for the kind of entertainment that a natural archivist like Greenwald can bring when he mixes with people who think they can make shit up and get away with it.

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On Friday, Perino refused to say whether Cheney is a member of the executive branch. Today, she returned with an answer: like “every vice president,” Cheney has “legislative and executive functions.” Does that mean he is a member of the executive branch? “Look, I’m not a legal scholar,” Perino said, again calling it an “interesting constitutional question.”

Also, Perino rejected a call today from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales recuse himself from the Justice Department’s internal debates over whether Cheney is violating the executive order. “No, I don’t think that’s necessary,” said Perino.

A Florida appeals court has upheld a lower court decision that denies requests for an independent source code audit of voting machines used by Florida's 13th district, which suffered election irregularities in a highly controversial congressional race. The appeals court has chosen to support a lower court decision which asserts that forcing voting machine maker Election Systems and Software (ES&S) to provide source code access to independent security auditors would amount to "gutting the protections afforded those who own trade secrets."

"Fred is a concept, not a candidate," says [GOP pollster Frank Luntz]. "He is a vessel for what people want to believe in."

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Hillary Clinton is likely to win the presidency in part because she is largely immune from attack for her past scandals. Put simply, people are tired of hearing about all the terrible and sleazy things she’s done in her life.

[snip]

Hillary has more skeletons in her closet than any other candidate on either side of the aisle. But unlike the scary unknown skeletons in the other candidates’ closets, Hillary’s skeletons are familiar, like old friends.

[snip]

Hillary understands this. Newsweek reported recently about opposition research into Hillary’s past, and noted:

If Clinton is worried about the new dirt-digging efforts, she isn’t showing it. When two much-anticipated biographies dropped into bookstores last week, her campaign dismissed them as “old news” and “cash for rehash.”

That will be her consistent response throughout the campaign — and it will likely work. Every candidate would love to be able to dismiss their political baggage with an airy wave of the hand, and a statement about the need to “move on” to the “real issues” facing the country. But this strategy is likely to prove particularly effective for Hillary, because people are just sick of hearing about these scandals.

That’s why Hillary is going to win. She’s the only candidate whose dirt is all old news.

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Also rejected is respondents’ argument that Executive Branch expenditures in support of religion are no different from legislative extractions. Flast itself rejected this equivalence. 392 U. S., at 102. Because almost all Executive Branch activity is ultimately funded by some congressional appropriation, extending the Flast exception to purely executive expenditures would effectively subject every federal action— be it a conference, proclamation, or speech —to Establishment Clause challenge by any taxpayer in federal court. Respondents ’proposed rule would also raise serious separation-of-powers concerns, enlisting the federal courts to superintend, at the behest of any federal taxpayer, the speeches, statements, and myriad daily activities of the President, his staff, and other Executive Branch officials.

A taxpayer’s purely psychological disapproval that his funds are being spent in an allegedly unlawful manner is never sufficiently concrete and particularized to support Article III standing. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 573–574. Although overruling precedents is a serious undertaking, stare decisis should not prevent the Court from doing so here. Flast was inconsistent with the cases that came before it and undervalued the separation-of-powers function of standing. Its lack of a logical theoretical underpinning has rendered the Court’s taxpayer-standing doctrine so incomprehensible that appellate judges do not know what to make of it. The case has engendered no reliance interests. Few cases less warrant stare decisis effect. It is past time to overturn Flast.

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PBS Tells Producer Not To Hire Conservatives

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Perhaps most alarmingly, 41% of Americans answered 'Yes' to the question "Do you think Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001?"





That total is actually up 5 points since September 2004.

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