Campaigns Turn To Pakistan

Candidates stress fighting terrorism

McClatchy reports:

The presidential campaign erupted Friday into a full-blown debate over how best to stabilize Pakistan as candidates vied in the few days before Thursday's Iowa caucuses to show who was best prepared to lead the fight against terrorism.

In the wake of Thursday's assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, Republican and Democratic presidential candidates spent much of Friday laying out specific policies they'd follow now -- or, for Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and two former Republican governors, Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, trying to convince voters that they're qualified to play in that league.

The rivals with thicker foreign-policy resumes offered detailed blueprints of how they would deal with Pakistan. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former United Nations ambassador, struck first, telling a Des Moines audience that the United States should give Pakistan "not one penny more until [President Pervez] Musharraf is gone and the rule of law is restored."

Most Democratic candidates wouldn't go that far; New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton offered a multi-part plan to restore stability but stopped short of calling for Musharraf's ouster.

"I don't think the Pakistani government at this time under President Musharraf has any credibility at all," Clinton said as she visited Story City. "They have disbanded an independent judiciary. They have oppressed a free press."

She called for a "full, independent, international investigation."

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., urged putting new pressure on Musharraf to hold "fair elections as soon as possible," while Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., a senior Foreign Relations member, urged that Pakistan's elections be postponed.

The fight was not just over ideas -- it was over foreign policy pedigree, too.

Dodd took aim at Clinton, questioning her experience.

"It isn't enough to be sitting on the sidelines, watching your husband deal with these problems over the years," Dodd said. And he termed Richardson's call for Musharraf to resign "a dangerous idea."

GOP backs Musharraf

The Republican debate had a different tone. Most candidates were more willing to tolerate, and in some cases even praise, Musharraf, while they painted Democrats as unsteady and weak.

"I don't think it would be a good idea to call for him [Musharraf] to step down now," former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson told CNN on Friday. "I hope that we as candidates out here don't start lobbing these ideas that get plenty of attention but are not very sound. This is a serious matter. It's going to be with us for some time, and we need to be deliberate in our approach to it because we have several interests involved."

Arizona Sen. John McCain said, "You're going to hear a lot of criticism about Musharraf, that he hasn't done everything we wanted him to do, but he did agree to step down as head of the military, and he did get the elections."

Romney stressed his experience as a business executive -- saying he could put together "a great team" to help manage crises -- while Huckabee linked the assassination to illegal immigration, saying it highlighted the importance of securing the nation's borders by building a fence along the Mexican border.

Senate Tied In Knots By Filibusters

More accurately, the threat of filibusters by a (relatively) new rule change, the procedural filibuster. Adopted, ostensibly, to "save time," the procedural filibuster, in reality, serves the physical comfort of senators, by not requiring them to stand up in the chamber and speak for as long as sixty senators can't be found to end the debate and vote on the issue. It has other attractions for politicians, among which procedural filibusters enable incumbents to serve their own interests and not those of their constituents - it's a great bluff and cover mechanism by which politicians can avoid going on the record.

Last week, under increasing pressure from the left, Harry Reid finally required Republicans to carry out an actual filibuster of the Levin-Reed amendment to H.R. 1585, the DoD Authorization Act, which would have set a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq. Harry Reid ought to do everything he can to block Republican obstruction, including denying them procedural filibusters.

McClatchy reports:

This year Senate Republicans are threatening filibusters to block more legislation than ever before, a pattern that's rooted in — and could increase — the pettiness and dysfunction in Congress.

The trend has been evolving for 30 years. The reasons behind it are too complex to pin on one party. But it has been especially pronounced since the Democrats' razor-thin win in last year's election, giving them effectively a 51-49 Senate majority, and the Republicans' exile to the minority.

Seven months into the current two-year term, the Senate has held 42 "cloture" votes aimed at shutting off extended debate — filibusters, or sometimes only the threat of one — and moving to up-or-down votes on contested legislation. Under Senate rules that protect a minority's right to debate, these votes require a 60-vote supermajority in the 100-member Senate.

Democrats have trouble mustering 60 votes; they've fallen short 22 times so far this year. That's largely why they haven't been able to deliver on their campaign promises.

By sinking a cloture vote this week, Republicans successfully blocked a Democratic bid to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by April, even though a 52-49 Senate majority voted to end debate.

This year Republicans also have blocked votes on immigration legislation, a no-confidence resolution for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and major legislation dealing with energy, labor rights and prescription drugs.

Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes — 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002, according to the Senate Historical Office.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., forced an all-night session on the Iraq war this week to draw attention to what Democrats called Republican obstruction.

"The minority party has decided we have to get to 60 votes on almost everything we vote on of substance," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. "That's not the way this place is supposed to work."

Even Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who's served in Congress since 1973, complained that "the Senate is spiraling into the ground to a degree that I have never seen before, and I've been here a long time. All modicum of courtesy is going out the window."

But many Republicans say the Senate's very design as a more deliberative body than the House of Representatives is meant to encourage supermajority deal-making. If Democrats worked harder to seek bipartisan deals, Republicans say, there wouldn't be so many cloture votes.

"You can't say that all we're going to do around here in the United States Senate is have us govern by 51 votes — otherwise we might as well be unicameral, because then we would have the Senate and the House exactly the same," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

To which Reid responds: "The problem we have is that we don't have many moderate Republicans. I don't know what we can do to create less cloture votes other than not file them, just walk away and say, 'We're not going to do anything.' That's the only alternative we have."

Some Republicans say that Reid forces cloture votes just so he complain that they're obstructing him.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., called the all-nighter on Iraq "meaningless, insulting" and "an indignity." "There is no doubt that there are not 67 votes present to override a veto. There is little doubt that there are not 60 votes present to bring the issue to a vote."

Republicans also say that Democrats are forgetting how routinely they threatened filibusters only a few years ago when they were the minority, especially to block many of President Bush's judicial nominees. Back then, Republicans were so mad that they considered trying to change Senate rules to eliminate filibusters — but didn't.

"The suggestion that it's somehow unusual in the Senate to have controversial matters decided by 60 votes is absurd on its face," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Although this year's Congress is taking it to a new level, the frequency of cloture votes has been climbing for decades — the result of more polarized politics in Congress and also evolving Senate rules and practices.

Associate Senate Historian Don Ritchie said that since the nation's start, dissident senators have prolonged debate to try to kill or modify legislation. The word "filibuster" — a translation of the Dutch word for "free-booter" or pirate — appears in the record of an 1840s Senate dispute about a patronage job.

From Reconstruction to 1964, the filibuster was largely a tool used by segregationists to fight civil rights legislation. Even so, filibusters were employed only rarely; there were only three during the 88th Congress, which passed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 after two months of filibustering.

Filibusters were infrequent partly because the Senate custom of civility prompted consideration of minority views — and partly because they were so hard to overcome that compromises were struck. In 1917 cloture rules for ending filibusters were put in place, but required a two-thirds vote — so high it was rarely tested.

Post-Watergate, in 1975, the bar was lowered to three-fifths, or 60 votes, and leaders began to try it more often.

By the early 1990s, tensions between then-Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine and Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas upped the ante, and the filibuster-cloture spiral has soared ever since as more partisan politics prevailed. The use of filibusters became "basically a tool of the minority party," Ritchie said.

The current Senate has two other complications: the 51-49 Democratic majority, which includes a pro-war independent and an absent Democrat recuperating from brain surgery, makes it harder to find 60 votes. And the presidency and Congress are controlled by opposing parties, which increases confrontation.

The Senate "has always been a cumbersome and frustrating and slow body because that's what the Constitution wanted," Ritchie said. The new majority's decisions are: "How often are you willing to lose on these issues? Would you rather campaign on the other side being obstructionists? What's a tolerable compromise? They're still working these things out."

Republican Senate leader McConnell said Friday in a news conference that when he became minority leader, "it was not my goal to see us do nothing. I mean, you can always use the next election as a rationale for not doing anything. But as you all know, we've had a regularly scheduled election every two years since 1788, so there's always an election right around the corner."

"A divided government has frequently done important things: Social Security in the Reagan period, when (Democrat) Tip O'Neill was speaker; welfare reform when Bill Clinton was in the White House when there was a Republican Congress. There's no particular reason why divided government can't do important things. We haven't yet, but it's not too late.

"And I think clearly the way to accomplish things is in the political middle, and I would challenge our friends on the other side of the aisle to step up and take a chance on something big and important for our country."

Of course, Democrats say similar things — but then neither side often compromises.

Democrats Drop Iran War Authority Provision

The Associated Press reports:

Top House Democrats retreated Monday from an attempt to limit President Bush's authority for taking military action against Iran as the leadership concentrated on a looming confrontation with the White House over the Iraq war.

Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran.

Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy.

The developments occurred as Democrats pointed toward an initial test vote in the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday on the overall bill, which would require the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by Sept. 1, 2008, if not earlier. The measure provides nearly $100 billion to pay for fighting in two wars, and includes more money than the president requested for operations in Afghanistan and what Democrats called training and equipment shortages.

The White House has issued a veto threat against the bill, and Vice President Dick Cheney attacked its supporters in a speech, declaring they "are telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out."

House GOP Leader John Boehner of Ohio issued a statement that said Democrats shouldn't count on any help passing their legislation.

"Republicans will continue to stand united in this debate, and will oppose efforts by Democrats to undermine the ability of General Petraeus and our troops to achieve victory in the Global War on Terror," he said.

Top Democrats had a different perspective.

Pelosi issued a written statement that said the vice president's remarks prove that "the administration's answer to continuing violence in Iraq is more troops and more treasure from the American people."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a statement that America was less safe today because of the war. The president "must change course, and it's time for the Senate to demand he do it," he added.

The Iran-related proposal stemmed from a desire to make sure Bush did not launch an attack without going to Congress for approval, but drew opposition from numerous members of the rank and file in a series of closed-door sessions last week.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said in an interview there is widespread fear in Israel about Iran, which is believed to be seeking nuclear weapons and has expressed unremitting hostility about the Jewish state.

"It would take away perhaps the most important negotiating tool that the U.S. has when it comes to Iran," she said of the now-abandoned provision.

Widespread fear in...Israel? Representative Berkley seems confused about who voted for her and whom she represents: She isn't a member of the Knesset, but a member of the United States Congress.

Whatever delusions Shelley Berkley is suffering from, apparently she's not the only one:

"I didn't think it was a very wise idea to take things off the table if you're trying to get people to modify their behavior and normalize it in a civilized way," said Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York.

Several officials said there was widespread opposition to the proposal at a closed-door meeting last week of conservative and moderate Democrats, who said they feared tying the hands of the administration when dealing with an unpredictable and potentially hostile regime in Tehran.

Public opinion has swung the way of Democrats on the issue of the war. More than six in 10 Americans think the conflict was a mistake — the largest number yet found in AP-Ipsos polling.

But Democrats have struggled to find a compromise that can satisfy both liberals who oppose any funding for the military effort and conservatives who do not want to unduly restrict the commander in chief.

"This supplemental should be about supporting the troops and providing what they need," said Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., on Monday upon returning from a trip to Iraq. Boren said he plans to oppose any legislation setting a clear deadline for troops to leave.

In his speech, Cheney chided lawmakers who are pressing for tougher action on Iran to oppose the president on the Iraq War.

"It is simply not consistent for anyone to demand aggressive action against the menace posed by the Iranian regime while at the same time acquiescing in a retreat from Iraq that would leave our worst enemies dramatically emboldened and Israel's best friend, the United States, dangerously weakened," he said.

I think this story may just put the romance that the media has for reporting every few months that "Cheney is losing influence with Bush" to rest once and for all.

Cheney's got 'em (our Democratic representatives in Congress) right where he wants 'em. And unless we replace the dead wood Democrats in the 2008 elections (along with Republicans) we're going to be in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Iran (and probably Syria, too, before long) for years and years and years to come.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES - A little firewall problem, YouTube tells me. I'm working on it now, and hope to have it fixed shortly. In the meantime, this is a transcript of the video, Chris Matthews interview with Tina Roberts, activist and mother of a U.S. soldier about to return to Iraq for a third tour of duty:

MATTHEWS: Tempers flared during an argument between House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey of Wisconsin and a woman whose son is a Marine. It was all caught on videotape. Here‘s an excerpt of what happened outside the congressman‘s Capitol Hill office.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DAVID OBEY (D-WI), APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN:

(INAUDIBLE) understand (INAUDIBLE) difference between defunding the troops and ending the war. I hate the war. I voted against it to start with. I was the first guy in Congress to call for Rumsfeld‘s resignation. But we don‘t have the votes to defund the war, and we shouldn‘t because that also means defunding everything (INAUDIBLE) guys who are victims of the war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: Well, Tina Richards of Grassroots America is the woman in that videotape, as you can see, and she‘s right here with us this evening. Thank you for coming on. You‘ve earned your spurs. You took on David Obey, chairman of the Appropriations Committee. What did you make of his response to your concern about ending the war?

TINA RICHARDS, GRASSROOTS AMERICA: Well, one thing that I found is that there‘s a lot of frustration on Capitol Hill about how to end the war in Iraq. The one thing that I‘ve heard that really concerns me, though, since I‘ve started from January 29, when I found out my son was being recalled by the Marine mobilization unit to be possibly redeployed for his third tour in Iraq, was that the staffers and aides—when I hear them talking, I listen in to what they‘re saying and I overhear them. They seem to be more concerned about what is going to guarantee a presidential election and an expanse of their majority than they are about the lives that are being lost every day over in Iraq.

MATTHEWS: How do you figure that out? I mean, that‘s a legitimate concern, obviously, that they‘re playing politics. But how can you tell? There‘s Obey. He said—I watched that tape two or three times (INAUDIBLE) out there and he said he voted against the resolution for war back in 2002. He said he‘s trying to pass a supplemental appropriation with language in it which cuts off this war next year sometime. What do you make of his position? Do you think he‘s not telling the truth or what?

RICHARDS: No. There are some really sincere people on that Hill. That I do not doubt. John Murtha—I met with him for over an hour. He is the most sincere man. We really disagree on how we‘re going to get out of Iraq, but he is absolutely very sincere. Lynn Woolsey (ph), Jan Schakowsky (ph) -- I could name...

MATTHEWS: What‘s your position on...

RICHARDS: ... John Conyers...

MATTHEWS: ... how we should get out?

RICHARDS: Well, truly, when it goes back, that the power of the purse is what Congress has. That is the one thing that they do have, is to stop the funding for the war. I was listening to hearings...

MATTHEWS: That means cutting off the money, period.

RICHARDS: That means cutting off the money, which the generals have testified on the Hill, which—I‘ve been personally at those hearings where they said that they would have to reduce forward combat operations.

It does not mean that our troops and our—will not have their armor or not have their bullets or not have their food. It means that they‘ll have to cease forward combat operations, which means that it will then start to we can start the withdrawal. And there‘s...

MATTHEWS: If you had a son in the field right now, would you want to hear that Congress had cut off some of the funding for the war?

RICHARDS: My son...

MATTHEWS: While he‘s in the field.

RICHARDS: My son may be in the field...

MATTHEWS: No, but if he‘s in that field, would you have the same point of view.

RICHARDS: Yes. Absolutely. My son—March 24, he has to report in, and he may very well be over there when this goes through. Yes, absolutely, I am saying that. We have to stop funding this war. I keep hearing politicians saying that they‘re against the war, that they originally voted against it, yet year after year, they will continue to fund this war, to...

MATTHEWS: You know why, though. Tell me why. Why do you think?

RICHARDS: I think a lot...

MATTHEWS: You‘re smart. You‘re lobbying this issue. Why do you think a guy like Obey—he said it to you. I heard him say that. I watched the tape two or three times. He said, We can‘t cut off the funding because if we cut off the funding, we will be accused of cutting off armor and equipment for the soldiers fighting in the field.

RICHARDS: Exactly. And then he says that we can‘t get the votes. Yet you have the leadership of the Democratic Party, you have Nancy Pelosi, you have Steny Hoyer, you have Chris Van Holland (ph) all saying that, We can‘t get the votes, and then they use the Republican talking points as to what is happening if they do stop the funding. And it makes no sense. If they...

MATTHEWS: Well, they‘re saying two things. They‘re saying they don‘t have the 218 to pass the majority, and then they‘re saying, But if we do pass the majority, they‘ll kill us politically by saying, They‘ve cut off reinforcements to our troops in the field. You know that‘s what they‘re going to say.

RICHARDS: You know what? Yes. And I understand that the Republican talking points are exactly that. And the point is, is that our sons and daughters are dying over there every day. By the tens of thousands they‘re coming back, and they‘re not getting their treatment. The VA has been horrible towards the treatment of my son. You saw Walter Reed recently...

MATTHEWS: Obey said that they put an extra billion in, in this appropriation, the supplemental, to make sure the medical treatment of people like your son is better. He says you have to fund this military in order to get better treatment for the wounded. What do you make of that?

RICHARDS: Well, the point is, is that they said that—the generals have testified that they‘ll have to reduce their forward combat operations, and that‘s what‘s going to change if they don‘t do the supplemental. The extra money is something that they can appropriate through this next coming budget or appropriate from somewhere else, but I just don‘t see that as an alternative to justify...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: How do you think...

RICHARDS: ... justify maybe treating a few soldiers better, but at the same time, they‘re going to have three soldiers a day dying over in Iraq.

MATTHEWS: How do we—how do you achieve your goal of ending this war in Iraq? How do you do it?

RICHARDS: There is the Lee amendment that asked for the fully funded withdrawal of the troops, which Obey had responded as a dismissal, not even to consider it, that I didn‘t know what I was talking about, without even looking...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: ... Barbara Lee of Oakland and Berkeley, yes.

RICHARDS: Yes. And he didn‘t even want to discuss that. And that was partly why I‘ve been on the Hill every single day...

MATTHEWS: But how many votes...

RICHARDS: ... trying to lobby Congress.

MATTHEWS: ... do you think Barbara Lee‘s proposal would do, where it says, We‘ll spend enough money to bring the troops home but not to keep them there? How many votes do you think that would get in the Congress?

RICHARDS: I think that if Nancy Pelosi...

MATTHEWS: Fifty?

RICHARDS: ... and Steny Hoyer and the Democrat leadership stopped exerting pressure to hush everybody that is coming out against it and started to support it, I think that they would have the votes to pass it.

MATTHEWS: But they don‘t think so.

RICHARDS: Because they‘re not trying. They‘re using the Republican talking points. As long as they‘re using the Republican talking points...

MATTHEWS: Are you saying that they‘re really for the war?

RICHARDS: I‘m saying that they‘re trying to do what‘s politically savvy and not what‘s best for our troops.

MATTHEWS: How do you think they can actually get the 218 votes that are necessary to pass a majority and cut off the money?

RICHARDS: Well, I think...

MATTHEWS: They say they can‘t find those votes. I heard Obey yelling at you. He got overwrought there. You got him excited.

RICHARDS: I was hearing that, and then...

MATTHEWS: And he was saying, We just—I don‘t have a magic wand. He opened up his coat like this, he says, I don‘t have a magic wand in here. Where‘s my 218 votes? Could you help him do it? Would you have—do you have enough power in your group, or anybody in the anti-war forces, to get 218 Democrats to end this war?

MATTHEWS: I‘m just one person. I‘m a mother.

MATTHEWS: I know. You got...

RICHARDS: And I spoke with Reverend Nearwood (ph) the other day, and he said the power of a mother‘s love can bring down nations.

MATTHEWS: But can it get 218 votes in the House of Representatives?

RICHARDS: I think if Nancy Pelosi would actually start listening to the people and to the public—I mean, the nation has been against this war. The nation did not vote for a new direction, the nation voted for us to get out of Iraq. And they need to catch up with what the American public wants, which is to get us out of Iraq, to get our soldiers out of the middle of a civil war. There is no “winning” something when you‘re in a civil war, in an occupation.

We won the war. We won the war back in the very first few months of the war. It‘s time to take our sons and daughters out of Iraq and return them home. And if they start working together, instead of using their leadership powers to hush everybody and to quiet the anti-war and started working with us and figuring out a way, they would have the votes.

MATTHEWS: Good luck.

RICHARDS: Thank you very much.

MATTHEWS: I think you‘re going to need it, though. Thank you very much, Tina Richards, fighting very much against this war in Iraq.

If Democrats can't do it, can't get legislation through Congress to end the war in Iraq now when they have a certain majority, they won't do it later when they have either won the White House in 2008 and more seats in Congress, or they haven't won the White House and more seats.

In the case of the former, if they aren't taking the chance now, why would they after having failed to deliver on the mandate they got from the 2006 elections (to end the Iraq war)? And if it's the latter (if they lose control over Congress and fail to take the White House), they won't get the opportunity to end the war - Republicans will control business on the floor of both houses, they'll keep the war going and clamp down further on any dissent and opposition to their money-making (for them, the Halliburton class) cash-cow.

This is the time to shut this war operation down, turn our attention to Afghanistan and push a sane foreign policy that treats all people equitably and distributes the wealth.

Democrats, Distracted Again, By The Firing of U.S. Attorneys

Begging for dollars (Washington Monthly's annual subscription drive is on) Kevin Drum writes:

THE PURGE....Why did the Justice Department fire a bunch of U.S. Attorneys recently? Because they were too zealous in prosecuting Republican politicians? Maybe. Because the Bush administration wanted to reward one of Karl Rove's ex-aides? Definitely. Because they were insufficiently gung-ho about indicting Democrats before last year's midterm elections? That's what one of them said today:

David Iglesias said two members of Congress separately called in mid October to inquire about the timing of an ongoing probe of a kickback scheme and appeared eager for an indictment to be issued on the eve of the elections in order to benefit the Republicans. He refused to name the members of Congress because he said he feared retaliation.

....Iglesias, who received a positive performance review before he was fired, said he suspected he was forced out because of his refusal to be pressured to hand down an indictment in the ongoing probe.

"I believe that because I didn't play ball, so to speak, I was asked to resign," said Iglesias, who officially stepped down Wednesday.

This scandal started out slowly, but it's really been picking up steam as time goes by. Expect hearings soon.

We'd better hope not.

With all that there is to investigate about this administration, to waste time and the public's goodwill holding hearings on the firing of U.S. attorneys makes Democrats no better than Republicans; it's political, and to Americans who are expecting Democrats to be serious protectors of the Constitution and the nation, it's insulting.

Of course the firing of those U.S. attorneys was politically motivated. But it wasn't illegal.

U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. They can be fired at any time and for any reason. And no, Republicans shouldn't be bad-mouthing the performances of these attorneys. They don't need to. They don't need to justify the firing. The fact that they are reaffirms for me that they hope Democrats do take a swing at them; it's good for wasting more time and space in the media instead of working on issues of relevance to Americans. Until Joe Lieberman crosses the aisle and joins the Republican Caucus, Bush's playbook for his last two years in office is more delay, stonewall and obfiscate.

I know this because the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. This is what Bush does when he's playing defense.

Bush has hired Fred Fielding to replace Harriet Miers and word has it that Fielding is there to frustrate all attempts to access paper from the Executive branch. And elsewhere, loyalists (like Gonzales) will ignite logs and roll them into Democrats (see Spartacus). The firing of U.S. attorneys is one such burning, rolling log - something perfectly legal. Political, sure, but so what?

For Chuck Schumer or any Democrat to take a swing at it tells me that Schumer is just another hack politician, worse than the Republicans because he's useless at taking them out and working on behalf of the American people.

It is two years until the next election and all we got out of Democrats from the last election in November 06 was 100 hours (less than two weeks of work in January), of the House passing bills that are unlikely to ever get signed into law. The House is already back on a 3-day work week, the Senate has held all the hearings they're going to have on Iraq and nobody is bringing the troops out. We're in full Presidential election mode two years out. How insane is that?

I hold both Hillary and Obama responsible.

They had no right hijacking the process this early, by not letting the Democratic House and Senate victories remain above the fold after the midterm elections. With their newfound majorities, Senate and House business should have superceded all Washington political news for at least a couple of months. But Obama started this even before the midterm elections. He wasn't even running for re-election, but there he was, everywhere in the media, sucking all of the oxygen out of the elections. Neither Hillary nor Obama are the answer. And I don't see anyone who is on the horizon.

A leader is going to have to emerge, naturally, who is able to effect a plan for the Al Qaeda problem. Not just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the whole of the region, solving our energy and economic problems in a way that doesn't require war and one in which all Democrats (at the least, and including some Republicans) can rally around.

If Hillary and Obama, and any others in the race, got out of the coffee klatches in Iowa and New Hampshire, and went back to work in Washington, started doing their jobs and working towards this, I'd be interested. The nation is waiting for someone with the vision and the presence to bring Americans through what are going to be very rough times, and together with people all around the world.

But it begins with us. Americans need to reclaim the democracy, and it's going to have to come at the local level, at the grassroots, with citizens pulling together and drafting new candidates for all seats in both houses of Congress.

Canada Scraps Anti-Terror Laws

Reuter's reports:

Canada's Parliament scrapped two contentious anti-terror measures on Tuesday, angering the minority Conservative government, which accuses opposition legislators of being soft on terror.

The House of Commons voted 159-124 not to renew the provisions -- which expire on March 1 -- on the grounds that they had never been used.

One provision allows police to arrest people suspected of planning an imminent terrorist attack and hold them for three days without charge. The other provides for investigative hearings in which a judge can compel witnesses to testify about alleged terrorist activities.

The measures were introduced by the then-Liberal government after the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide attacks on the United States. In a bid to allay fears over human rights, Ottawa agreed the provisions would expire after five years.

The Conservative government controls just 125 of the 308 seats in the House and did not have the votes to extend the measures.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose Conservatives won power in January 2006 on a platform that promised to crack down on crime, says the Liberals of Stephane Dion are soft on terror and cannot be trusted to keep Canadians safe.

"It is time the leader of the Liberal Party acted like Canadians should trust his judgment on national security issues," he told Parliament on Tuesday.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said Canada was sending the wrong message to allies and potential terrorists. "You say you're backing off. That, frankly, is not a message that I want going out there," Day told CTV television a few minutes before the vote.

The Liberals will be the main threat to the Conservatives in elections that some political observers expect this year.

Dion rejects the charges, saying Harper is using fears of terrorism and crime in a bid to win votes.

"Soft on terrorism? That's awful. It will not stop me from finding the best solutions. I will not be intimidated by these bullying strategies," he told Reuters on Monday.

"I know very well how important it is to protect Canadians against terrorism ... I came to the conclusion with my caucus that the two provisions we are speaking about are not helpful and represent a risk to individual rights."

Some government officials suggested a compromise on Monday whereby the measures would be extended by six months to give a special parliamentary committee time to review the matter further. Dion said the offer had been made far too late.

The vote was the second time in a week that elements of Canada's anti-terror legislation had been eliminated.

Last Friday, the Supreme Court struck down a law that allowed foreign suspects to be detained indefinitely without trial on the basis of secret evidence.

"Now we see that a nation can regain its senses after calm reflection and begin to rein back such excesses," the New York Times said in its main editorial on Tuesday, calling on the administration of President George W. Bush to take similar steps in the United States.

Is Canada now a nation of sitting ducks, ripe for a "terror attack" to change their minds? Or is Canada well-positioned and in the driver's seat for a lucrative deal with the U.S. in exchange for resurrecting these anti-terror laws?

I can't imagine any scenario whereby the Bush-Cheney administration will tolerate our closest neighbors bailing out on their war on terror. Because if Canada can hold human and civil rights paramount, could a Democratically-controlled U.S. Congress be far behind in overturning the Patriot Act and last year's Torture Bill (Military Commissions Act of 2006)?

We can only hope.

The Clinton Administration's Top Yenta Has Something to Say About Libby & Cheney

At Salon.com, Sidney Blumenthal writes, "How Libby became Cheney's bitch pawn."


Ok, try as I might to hide it, I'm not a big Sidney Blumenthal fan. It may be why I find his contribution to the Libby trial gabfest so deliciously ironic:

"The vice president knew the intelligence for the Iraq war was cooked. So he launched his aide to smear the man who took the information public."

Isn't that exactly what Sidney did to the women in boss Bill Clinton's life? Characterizing them as "bimbos," "trailer park trash," and "crazed stalkers" for key members of the media? To hear Sidney tell it, poor Bill was an innocent victim of "Girls Gone Wild."

But that was then, this is now, and while what Sidney Blumenthal has to say about the Cheney-Libby-Wilson-Plame affair has merit, I can't help but wonder where Sidney has been all these years. Come to think of it, where have all of the Democrats been?

Sidney isn't saying anything new or that hasn't been known and written about (by me and many others) since the story first broke over three years ago. But even more importantly than where have Sidney and Democrats been, where are the Democrats now?

Yes, Bush and Cheney pulled a scam on the American people that escaped the notice of the Republican-controlled Congress. But there is more than enough blame to go around for failing to smell the fishy intelligence that Cheney and Bush based taking the nation to war.

The intelligence was cooked, but where were our Democrats in exposing that fact?

Yes, Bush and Cheney made getting to the facts difficult and confusing, but not impossible. The same classified intelligence that Bush saw was made available to all members of Congress, according to Bob Woodward in "State of Denial." Very few members of Congress took advantage of that opportunity, according to Woodward, and actually went to the secured room where the intelligence was available. I'd like to know which ones did and which ones didn't. I'd like to know why they didn't and why they haven't been confronted in their home districts with that revelation.

I also find it impossible to believe that Hillary Clinton wasn't aware of the facts before she voted yes to authorize Bush to use military force in Iraq. As a former president, her husband gets daily classified intelligence briefings. Would Bill Clinton have let his wife cast the most important vote of her short Senate life without the benefit of that intelligence and his counsel?

I didn't get to see any classified information, yet what I did see (news in alternative media, UN weapons' inspectors' interviews, reports, broadcasting from international news organizations, etc.) led me to distrust the Bush-Cheney basis for a preemptive war. I was hardly alone in that distrust. While mainstream media in the U.S. was beating the drums for war, hiring retired generals, preparing martial art and music, alternative media provided forums for those who had been in positions to know the truth of Saddam Hussein's WMD capabilities.

Those who have followed alternative media are about three years ahead of where mainstream media is today. We knew that once Bush started the war, WMD wouldn't be found and a civil war was inevitable. We knew that as the war got out of control, all calls for reevaluating U.S. involvement in Iraq would be met with "Maybe we shouldn't have gone in, but we're there now." We knew that Bush wouldn't be pulling American troops out of Iraq, that he never had any intention of leaving Iraq as a sovereign nation (as evidenced by the U.S. dictating to the Iraqis the terms of their constitution and the building of permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq), and that his plan is to expand the war to Iran and Syria.

Why weren't Democrats asking questions?

Democrats have failed the American people almost as badly as Bush-Cheney and the GOP have. As the minority party, their power was in asking questions that would have framed Bush's true intentions for all to see. Democrats should have been asking the questions that the media weren't.

And now, on the eve of yet another "war of choice," the majority party Democrats have fallen silent again.

There seems to be a casual 'gentlemen's agreement' around this upcoming non-binding resolution. Senate Republicans (I've taken to calling them 'Reluctantcans') don't really want to be bothered with this headache, and are approaching it as something of an ultimatum to Bush: Bush's 'surge' would be his last chance to make good in Iraq. But Republicans are stuck on how much time they will give him, and therein lies the slippery slope: "Another 3-months 6-months 18-months, oh what the hell, we'll be in another campaign season soon enough and nobody wants to talk about bringing troops home in a campaign season....Bush will be gone in two years, let's just let it ride and the next president will figure it out."

Republicans are living in a dream world and hoping for a miracle that is never going to happen. Each day that they delay acting like clear-thinking non-partisan adults, bringing the troops home, is another day closer to Bush's certain escalation and expansion of the war to Iran, Syria and beyond. Bush has been planning this war with Iran for years, another fact from Woodward's book.

If a non-binding resolution is the best we can hope for from any of our Senators and Congressmen and -women, to keep Bush-Cheney from escalating and expanding this war throughout the region, we had better start looking now for new candidates in both parties for 2008.

Paula Poundstone is Back . . . .

. . . . And she's better than ever.



Welcome back, Paula.

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