Bart & Brett

Since when did the word ‘maverick’ come to denote ‘right-wing, reactionary old men’ – as in ‘Judge Scalia and John McCain are mavericks’?

Scalia's Thumb on the Scales

The best fake news program ever, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, alerted me to Lesley Stahl’s interview of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on 60 Minutes. I watched the first half of the interview and have not the stomach to watch the second half. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/24/60minutes/main4040290_page3.shtml

What I saw and heard has haunted me; my dreams have been pervaded with rebuttals, retorts and reproaches. I have been stricken with nausea brought on not only by Ms Stahl’s fawning, gushing school-girl act but the pompous arrogance of Justice Scalia and his school-boy debate team games of rhetoric.

I’ll leave the legalistic punditry to others to parse but I will posit that El Nino’s description of himself as a ‘Constitutional originalist’- someone who insists the US Constitution be viewed through the same myopic, racist, theocratic lens as was used by most of the Founding Fathers and the framers of the constitution - is just another word-game (of which Scales is quite fond as was shown in the interview).

Now, I’m all for the Founding Fathers. Please consider, however, that with few exceptions, they were all wealthy, educated, white male Protestants of western European decent. Not exactly what anyone would call a democratic cross-section of society, then or now. They were visionary, progressive, brave men but they were also men of their own times. Times have changed. Not many politicians and statesmen in modern America could own slaves, for instance.

Scalia is a firmly out-spoken opponent of what is called the ‘Living Constitution’ whereby the modern connotations of terms such as liberty, freedom, and cruel and unusual punishment are the accepted norm when reading the document. The term ‘originalist’ serves to obfuscate the fact that Scalia is a ‘literalist’ and a fundamentalist who claims to have the only correct interpretation of the fundamentals much like the Bible-belt preachers that insist the world was created in 7 days, 5 to 10,000 years ago.

It must be remembered that ‘Scales’ was appointed by Ronnie the Communicator at the height of the Iran-Contra era, a time when Nicaragua was the devil at our door, when selling drugs to buy arms for a private army was a ‘cool idea’, when Grenada and Panama loomed threateningly and Ronnie, Ollie, Bush the Elder, Schultz and Henry the K were hell-bent on destroying the ‘Evil Empire’ along with our economy. This context must be kept in mind so that the absurdities which ‘Scales’ so charmingly espouses might be clearly seen as balderdash in high resolution. That he is a fundamentalist and a reductionist should place him under the same heading as most other fundamentalists – a nutter to be carefully monitored. (To be quite honest, I have had my fill of fundamentalists. I can only hope that there is a growing number of people who feel the same.) It is a shame and a travesty that he is a senior member if the Supreme Court.

He offers arguments that are both specious and facetious while posturing as a playful wise-guy dismissive of his inferiors. He claims his own position of authority as support for his arguments; i.e. ‘I am Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, therefore, ipso facto, I am right.’ I can’t help but ask how this guy made it onto the Supreme Court or even on a high school debate team. My friends would pick him apart if he tried to pull any of his malarkey without the smoke and mirrors of his lofty position. Too bad Ms Stahl was so ga-ga over meeting him that she left her journalistic cred and her ‘Baloney Detection Kit’ in her other suit.

Here’s in an extended excerpt from Ms Stahl’s interview with Justice Scalia. El Nino’s own words during the interview reveal the flaws in his arguments regarding the 2000 election scandal and the current controversy regarding torture. The interview opens with an appearance by Justice Scalia at the Oxford University Union and a very cleverly worded question from an Oxford student regarding the 2000 US presidential election.

“Of all the cases that have come before him on the court, Bush v. Gore may have been the most controversial. It has been reported that he played a pivotal role in urging the other justices to end the Florida recount, thereby handing the 2000 election to George Bush. The subject came up at the Oxford Union.”

"Supposing yourself as a Supreme Court justice were granted the power to appoint the next president of the United States, who would you pick and why? And would he or she be better than your last choice?" a student asked Scalia.

"You wanna talk about Bush versus Gore. I perceive that," he replied. "I and my court owe no apology whatever for Bush versus Gore. We did the right thing. So there!"

“So there!”

‘I’m right and that’s all that needs to be said.’ A very fitting rebuttal for a Supreme Court Justice to make at one of the world’s most prestigious institutions of learning, don’t you think? Then, Ms Stahl’s interview begins.

"People say that that decision was not based on judicial philosophy but on politics," Stahl asks.

"I say nonsense," Scalia says.

Was it political?

"Gee, I really don’t wanna get into - I mean this is - get over it. It's so old by now. The principal issue in the case, whether the scheme that the Florida Supreme Court had put together violated the federal Constitution, that wasn't even close. The vote was seven to two," Scalia says.

Moreover, he says it was not the court that made this a judicial question.

"It was Al Gore who made it a judicial question. It was he who brought it into the Florida courts. We didn't go looking for trouble. It was he who said, 'I want this to be decided by the courts.' What are we supposed to say? 'Oh, not important enough,'" Scalia jokes.

Here, El Nino jokes to cover the simple, obvious truth while blaming the victim. What else is one expected to do when confronted with a matter of legality except to take the matter to court? It is as if Scalia would deride Al Gore’s right and the rights of the American people to a court hearing to insure that is justice done. (In this instance, injustice to our republic was done, IMHO.)

Scalia’s position is preposterous. To determine legal matters, to render judicial decisions, such matters are precisely what our courts are for. The courts were the only proper place for Gore to go to rectify such an important legal matter as the sanctity of votes and an honest, accurate count thereof. Does ‘Scales’ think Al should have just slunk away with so much riding on an accurate count? Whatever his answer, he places the onus of the infamous decision in Gore’s lap.

Now back to the interview:

"It ended up being a political decision" Stahl points out.

"Well you say that. I don't say that," Scalia replies.

"You don’t think it handed the election to George Bush?" Stahl asks.

"Well, how does that make it a political decision?" Scalia asks.

Duh!

"It decided the election," Stahl says.

"If that’s all you mean by it, yes," Scalia says.

"That’s all I mean by it," Stahl says.

"Oh, ok. I suppose it did. Although you should add to that that it would have come out the same way, no matter what," Scalia says.

‘No matter what?’

Does ‘Scales’ actually believe that there was no other outcome to consider in the 2000 election? Bush won and that was that; foregone conclusion at that point in the game? No bit of lingering uncertainty regarding the thousands of uncounted, mis-counted and ultimately discounted votes by the citizens of Florida who were in effect, dis-enfranchised in a presidential election?

How is it that this man made it through law school? Or even through a basic course in logic?

The interview now enters El Nino’s views on the matter of torture.

"I don't like torture," Scalia says. "Although defining it is going to be a nice trick.”

Well, Nino, one attempt was made in 1948, by the General Assembly of the United Nations following the horrific abuses of World War II in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Article 5 states: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." This ban on torture and other ill-treatment has subsequently been incorporated into the extensive network of international and regional human rights treaties. It is contained in Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by 153 countries, including the United States in 1992, and in the Convention against Torture or Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (the Convention against Torture), ratified by 136 countries, including the United States in 1994. It is also codified in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, and the American Convention on Human Rights.

(For information regarding laws defining and prohibiting torture please visit the Human Rights Watch web site. http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/11/TortureQandA.htm#What )

Evidently, these declarations, conventions, covenants, and codes are deficient in the view of Scales Scalia. Perhaps he prefers the views of Alberto Gonzalez and John Yoo as expressed in the infamous ‘Torture Memo’. http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4583256&page=1

“But who's in favor of it?” Scalia continues. “Nobody. And we have a law against torture. But if the - everything that is hateful and odious is not covered by some provision of the Constitution," he says.

"If someone's in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized by a law enforcement person, if you listen to the expression 'cruel and unusual punishment,' doesn't that apply?" Stahl asks.

"No, No," Scalia replies.

"Cruel and unusual punishment?" Stahl asks.

"To the contrary," Scalia says. "Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don't think so."

This beggars the imagination. Scalia tries to equate ‘punishment’ to ‘torture’ in the attempt, as a literalist, to undermine the implied Constitutional ban on torture. A quick look at a decent dictionary will reveal that punishment has the additional meaning of ‘rough handling or mistreatment’ as well as penalty for infraction. Torture is used as punishment and punishment, generally speaking, is a form of torture. (Punishment is never intended to be pleasant, after all.) Once again, Scalia’s attempted resort to tricks of rhetoric is feeble, hollow and even devoid of the lexical grounding necessary for such a cheap trick to pass logically.

Fortunately for the charming El Nino, the formulation of logical discourse is not Ms Stahl’s forte. She continues moony-eyed.

"Well, I think if you are in custody, and you have a policeman who's taken you into custody…," Stahl says.

"And you say he's punishing you?" Scalia asks.

"Sure," Stahl replies.

"What's he punishing you for? You punish somebody…," Scalia says.

"Well because he assumes you, one, either committed a crime…or that you know something that he wants to know," Stahl says.

"It's the latter. And when he's hurting you in order to get information from you…you don’t say he's punishing you. What’s he punishing you for? He's trying to extract…," Scalia says.

"Because he thinks you are a terrorist and he's going to beat the ‘you-know-what’ out of you…," Stahl replies.

"Anyway, that’s my view," Scalia says. "And it happens to be correct."

What view? He only obstructed discourse in this segment of the interview. His bludgeon of choice is to laughingly pooh-pooh the half-hearted challenges offered by Ms Stahl. He gave no credible argument on either topic, the 2000 election debacle or the torture scandal highlighted by Abu Ghraib. Since he was stammering and painting himself into a corner on this one, he sought his last refuge and fell back on his status of authority.

What a major Dick!

If Scales is “one of the most prominent legal thinkers of his generation” , it’s easy to see why the Constitution has been gutted and why the US is in such deep doo-doo.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/24/60minutes/main4040290.shtml

http://users.tpg.com.au/users/tps-seti/baloney.html

Stop the War with Iran

Stop the War in Iran before it gets started.

Bush and his Boys are not about to let this one go. We won’t be any safer from terrorism – quite the opposite – but their compadres, the CEOs at Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater, Bechtel , Exxon-Mobile, etc, ad nauseam would be thrilled to death if the war widens to include Iran along with Afghanistan and Iraq.

CounterPunch.org is reporting President Bush has signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime. Bush’s secret directive covers actions from Lebanon to Afghanistan. Journalist Andrew Cockburn reports the directive is “unprecedented in its scope” and permits the assassination of targeted officials. http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew05022008.html

Of course, actions like this cost money. Not to worry. An outlay of $300 million has been approved with bipartisan support. Way to stand on your hind legs, Dems! So much for will of the people, you bunch of self-serving back-stabbing slackers.

Now, Hill the Pill is declaring she’ll unleash Armageddon on Iran if they attack Israel. Break out the testosterone suppositories! She’s gonna grow her some ‘nads!

'What’s wrong with saying that?', she asks in her campaign delirium.

“Why would I have any regrets? I’m asked a question about what I would do if Iran attacked our ally, a country that many of us have a great deal of, you know, connection with and feeling for, for all kinds of reasons.”

And stuff like that there…

Lord, Sister Hill, why are you buying into Cheney’s paranoid propaganda? Are you trying to get some wack-o swing votes from McCain supporters who think he’s ‘soft’ on terror? McCain has that area of Psycho-town nailed down with his 100 years in Iraq vision. Meanwhile, he’s getting spa treatments and taking meetings with Carl Rove clones while you and Obama dance the dance from ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’. Fire your advisors and stop shooting yourself and your party in the foot.

Let's all take a reality break!

As mentioned here a fortnight ago, Iran is in no position at all to attack Israel. They have no nuclear capability according to the current NIE report while Israel has hundreds of active nukes. That would hardly be stepping into a fair fight let alone provoking one. The old saw about bringing a knife to a gun-fight springs to mind.

Oh, and has anybody in the Clinton campaign or anyone else covering the ‘situation’ with Iran looked at a friggin’ map? Just how is Iran planning to attack Israel? (Sure, they’ve blustered about it. Look at all the trash talking coming from Washington and Jerusalem.) Let’s get practical: just how would the Iranians go about attacking Israel? March, unseen, 1200 kilometers across Iraq and Jordan to wage war against the second-best equipped army in the world?

That ain’t gonna happen.

Or would Tehran, just go ahead and toss all caution and sense of self-preservation aside and simply attack Israel with air-strikes – just to start a pissing contest? Right. No matter what the state of Iran’s air force, the US and Israel have them trumped, hands down. Especially when the Israelis have the capability to launch nuclear devices from their specially equipped, American supplied fighters.

Not a single Iranian plane would even be allowed to approach Iraq air-space unchallenged. How in hell would Iranian planes make it across Iraq to Israel? Even the attempt, even the feint of an attempt at such an insane self-destructive act of aggression would mean a shit-storm descending on Tehran.

And does anybody out there really think that given the chance, the Israeli leadership would think twice about letting a couple of tactical nukes find a worthy target or two for the sake of future deterrence? Not that the presence of 300 more nukes just like those aren’t deterrent enough.

I, for one, am inclined to think that Iran would rather err on the side of caution than seek the destruction of its republic and the death of a substantial number of its people.

Call me crazy.

Stop the War in Iran before it gets started.

A Matter of Perspective - or Lack of It.

“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.
In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

President Bush, speaking on May 1, 2003 on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner that read “Mission Accomplished.”

Today is the fifth anniversary of President Bush’s wishful declaration of victory in Iraq. (Since ol’ Dubya - crafty rascal that he is under the guidance of Guru Rove – never actually said ‘mission accomplished’ (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) he’s got some wiggle room to spare on this one. Heh-heh.)

From the point of view, however, of those labeled ‘Neo-Cons’ (with the accent on ‘con’ as in ‘con-job’) the mission had been a total success. Not militarily, of course.

Financially.

They and their morally bankrupt cohorts had accomplished their mission of being joined at the bank account to the empire-sized pork barrel of endless war and the super-sized mag-lev gravy train to undreamed of profits.

Simultaneously.

Just like Rummy and Wolfie had prophesied; a slam dunk and a cake-walk.

Straight to the bank.

How long are the American people going to subsidize war profiteering? How much will the American people end up shelling into the coffers of Bechtel, Halliburton, et al and from thence into the deep-pockets of associates of the administration?

The Gaping Intelligence Gap

In what passes for modern political ‘discourse’ in America, the lexicon of English is being grossly perverted in a most Orwellian way. Words such as ‘elite’, ‘liberate’ and ‘liberal’ have acquired very negative connotations and others such as ‘democracy’ and phrases such as ‘free market’ and 'moral authority', are used to convey meanings antonymous to their traditional definitions.

Take the word ‘intelligence’.

Please.

The way that it is bandied about in military reports and commentary regarding the illegal war in Iraq, (e.g. ‘insufficient intelligence’, ‘lack of credible intelligence’, ‘intelligence gap’, ‘intelligence gathering’) one might swear that the term no longer denotes the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge or the faculty of thought and reason or (laughingly) superior powers of mind. Otherwise, one might then wonder why smarter people aren’t in charge of these “fragile and reversible” operations if ‘lack of intelligence’ plays such a key factor in the situation in (fill in the blank).

Processing such conventional misuse of the English lexicon to fit such extremely narrow political context contributes to cognitive dissonance and the rising uncontrollable urge to throttle someone.

Our Creepy Veep on the Warpath in Bizarr-o World

It’s time for another visit to Bizarr-o World, my friends. Break out the thorazine, open a fresh party pack of chocolate-covered Prozac and enjoy the fun as America’s zaniest bunch of psychopaths try for the trifecta of World Political Disasters.

Dan Froomkin wrote an article entitled ‘Cheney on the Warpath Again?’ for the Friday, April 11, 2008 on-line edition of the Washington Post. (Imagine that; the press may actually be getting savvy to the fact that Cheney, Bush, and the gang are role-playing ‘Armegeddon’.) In the article, Froomkin quotes our curmudgeonly VP telling Sean ‘the Bean’ Hammity that Iran was filled with nasty apocalyptic zealots who might have a nuclear bomb sometime soon. (Hmm, this rings a bell.) Of course, the only appropriate action hinted at by our creepy Veep is - wait for it - showing them who’s the boss in Bizarr-o World. He started off by sowing his black magic seeds of ‘FEAR!’.

Quothe the Cheney:

"But Ahmadinejad is I think a very dangerous man. On the one hand, he has repeatedly stated that he wants to destroy Israel. … mutual assured destruction in the Soviet-U.S. relationship in the Cold War meant deterrence, but mutual assured destruction with Ahmadinejad is an incentive.”

So, let me get this straight, Dicky-doodle: the president of Iran is even crazier than you are. Is that what you’re saying?

Cuz, he doesn’t have any nuclear weapons. He doesn’t have any fissile material. And he hasn’t even had a weapons program for 5 years according to the latest report by the National Intelligence Estimate. The NIE reported "with high confidence" that Iran did have a nuclear weapons program until 2003, but that this was discovered and Iran stopped it. (Naughty Billies!) It also assessed that the earliest date by which Iran could make a nuclear weapon would be late 2009 but that this is "very unlikely" given that Iran appears "less determined" to develop nuclear weapons than US intelligence had previously thought. In other words, no nukes and nearly a zero level chance of producing one.

On the other hand, Mr C, at last count - I suspect counting them over and over is how you fall asleep in the wee hours - how many nuclear devices are there currently in the DOD inventory, cringing from your clammy touch? An estimated 5,736 active stockpile warheads scattered round the US (and elsewhere) – give or take. That’s what I’d call a very active nuclear weapons program. It’s been going on since the ’Manhattan Project’ without abatement for over 60 years.

Oh, and not to mention – and in polite, elitist intellectual company one simply doesn’t, you know – courtesy of the super sense of fair play and the hyper-sensitivity to anti-Semitism that are the hallmarks of US foreign policy - the state of Israel is the 5^th largest nuclear power in the world. It has between 200 and 300 nuclear warheads just waiting for the ‘okay’ from Washington should an Arab or Iranian dare look cross-eyed at them.

And you think that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and all of his advisors are crazy enough to try to build a nuclear bomb and use it to destroy the Zionist State precisely, explicitly, because they, the Iranians, would then be annihilated by US and Israeli retaliation, destroying 6,000 years of history, culture and tradition and subjecting the Iranian population of over 70 million to a nuclear holocaust? Even when we’re talking about apocalyptic zealots – and that’s talking way crazy – nuking Israel and assuring self-induced annihilation is straight out looney-tunes. We’re well past thorazine party favors, booby. That’s more of your Bizarr-o world up-is-down, black-is-white, thinking at work there.

What is beyond question is that Vee-Pee Dick (in the role of Iago) leads a faction of officials in the Pentagon, State Department and elsewhere, who argue that before Dubya hands over the keys to 1600 (none too soon), the US should kick some more boo-tay there in oil-rich Asia, destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, punish them for not keeping the Shah in power and thwarting U.S. aims in Iraq.

(Which are what again? Oh, yeah, the ‘democracy’ thing.)

Froomkin added that some observers suspect Cheney of encouraging Israel to attack Iran as a proxy while he was there spreading sunshine and love from an Israeli check-point two weeks ago and accusing Hamas of trying to scuttle ‘peace talks’. (Those words must curdle in the man’s mouth.)

And Twisted Dick thinks Ahmadinejad is a very dangerous man? Oh, yeah…

So, if this Mahmoud joker is actually planning to pull a nuclear weapon out of his burnoose and use it on Israel, he must be without a doubt, top-to-bottom, upside-downside, backwards and forwards a whole lot crazier than you are, Sour-Puss Dick.

And if you think we are stupid enough to fall for that ol’ WMDs gag again, you ought to try re-doubling your dose of Prozac and start thinking how you’re going to spend your yard time in Leavenworth, Dicky-boy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/04/11/BL2008041102216_pf.html

BBC News, Tuesday, 8 April 2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4031603.stm

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Wpngall.html

Petition to Begin Impeachment Proceedings

A Constitutional

Here’s a little, selective stroll through the Articles and Amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America. (Yes, we still have one.) These are pretty straight-forward and easy to understand. There’s very little here that‘s in ‘lawyer-ese’.

Article II. Section 4. The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

AMENDMENT IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

AMENDMENT V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

AMENDMENT VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

AMENDMENT XIV (ratified July 9, 1868)

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are Citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Which ones, in your opinion, have been violated by the George W. Bush administrations and how many would be applicable to Article II, section 4, impeachment of the President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States of America?