Lefty's Favorite Crooks, and how they make the game dirty
The Justice Department announced that the case (of 7 felony counts related to ethics violations) against former Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) has been dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct. Stevens, who held his seat in the Senate for 40 years (elected in 1968), lost his election to then Anchorage Mayor (now proud Democratic Senator) Mark Begich.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) felt that if Stevens had not been charged in the Fall, Republicans would have held the seat, giving them 42 out of 100. As Al Franken (D-MN) is likely to be seated soon, giving Democrats 59 seats (1 shy of the mighty filibuster-buster), the greater question must be asked:
"In today's world, what is the nature of the relationship between criminal violations and political outcomes?"
The answer seems to be a muddled mess, as we have seen from both parties. Let's take a look at 2007-8. Democrats ejected the laughable Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-IL) who was replaced by Pat Quinn, also seated Obama replacement Roland Burris, despite clear pending culpability. After former Governor Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) resigned, David Paterson took his seat. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigns. We get Michael Mukasey. Sweet!
Even Karl Rove resigned recently! Look what that got us. Fox News=black hole of rejection and demogoguery (see Glenn Beck).
Now not all of these resignations/replacement were directly linked to criminal prosecution, but let's be real- THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN.
This entire debacle reminds me of Bill's old piece from November about why Alaskans elect and nearly re-elected obvious crooks. He made a great point about how people (including voters) care about the bottom line. Until we hold a referendum on the bottom line (and its intimacy with politics), we cannot expect the madness to stop. The point I'm getting at, after mild digression, is that without corruption and criminality, politics would look a whole hell of a lot different than it does.
Stevens Walks, My Bracket is doing well, and Henry is learning HTML
Stevens!
Above you will find my old op-ed about Ted Stevens. It's political analysis at its finest, and quite a literary feat as well. It is an excellent display of rhetorical skill, extensive knowledge, and proper use of syntax. Give it a read. As you all know, Ted Stevens, the ex-Senator of Alaska (I love saying that!) was indicted in 2008 on charges of taking bribes. The Justice Department today has dropped all charges.
It's been an odd couple of years. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is also having similar difficulty convicting impeached Governor Rod Blagojevich with criminal charges, and of course faced a lot of resistance investigating the Valerie Plame scandal, ultimately settling for charging White House underling Scooter Libby with perjury. As I see it, when defendents in a case are high-profile politicians, emotions and political divisions get involved in the process, which increases the likelihood of mistakes and prosecutorial misconduct. That's a working hypothesis, and I'll try some "investigative research" (google and Lexis) to try to come up with a concrete theory on this later this week. So look forward to that.
basketball
In other news, my NCAA bracket is doing much better than my friends' in our pool. This is largely due to the fact that I don't know anything about basketball, so I picked absolutely no upsets.
HTML
Henry told me he wants to work on getting some more "complicated HTML" to get the blog to start looking spiffier.
So Henry, if you take a look at this post you'll see that I accomplished the amazing feat of an image that's also a link with a title. Once you've wrapped your head around that, this next one will blow your mind!
Two weeks ago I wrote a blog article about Glenn Beck and the 912 Project. You can read the story here
Now check out this clip of Fox News contributor Shepard Smith completely tearing him down. He even does a solid parody of Glenn Beck's fake crying, and the camera that zooms into his eyes
If you read the Observer you are probably familiar with Charles Rice's column, in which routinely blasts Catholic Democrats for voting for pro-choice candidates and blasts Notre Dame for concerning itself more with "research" and "academics" over maintaining its Catholic identity.
I value debate as much as the next person, and I certainly see the value in presenting his point of view in a student publication like the Observer, and I read it regularly. Despite some of his more dubious assumptions, and horrendous quoting style, it is a well-written column, and I advise all students to not be intimidated by the length of his column and actually read it.
"Not all moral issues," said Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, "have the same weight as abortion ... There may be a diversity of opinion among Catholics about war and the death penalty, but not [on] abortion and euthanasia. A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation with evil... If he were to vote for a candidate because of the candidate's permissive stand on abortion ... When a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favor of abortion ... but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons."
Today's Charles Rice column is especially important to read. Not only does it lay out a case for a peaceful, quiet, non-disruptive "protest" in the form of a prayer rally far away from the Joyce Center (at the Grotto), at a completely different time, something I completely support, but it also finally proved my long-term suspicions about Charles Rice.
I was suspicious as to how he could possibly defend his refusal to accept any proportionate reasons within the Democratic platform to vote for a Democratic candidate. Certainly, a given candidate's position on war, social justice, welfare, health care, and global climate change and the environment could outweigh a stance on abortion?
No, Charles Rice refuses to entertain that any given Democrat's standpoint on any of these issues could at all match up to the 1.3 million abortions every year, while he still continues to operate off of the fallacious premise that banning abortion will have any impact on the number of abortions and that there can be no acceptable approach to reducing abortions other than overturning Roe v. Wade.
I don't have a problem with Charles Rice coming to the conclusions that he does. I just want people to understand that his understanding of how a Catholic should vote is not free of context. Which is why this quote in his latest piece is so important.
Apart from the "life" issues, our leaders were reckless to commit Notre Dame to Obama in the face of mounting and well-grounded opposition to other Obama policies, including his fiscal deficits and such a stunning expansion of executive power and of federal control over private entities and states that it amounts to a constitutional coup. Unmentioned in the background are the pending lawsuits - not yet decided on the merits by the Supreme Court - that raise serious questions as to Obama's eligibility for the office.
Did you catch that? Finally, we can get an idea of Charles Rice really believes, outside of his interpretation of the catechism. After describing Obama's pro-choice actions as president so far he decided to digress into a tirade worthy of the conspiracy-theory wing of the Republican Party, completely devoid of any Catholic justification.
So next time that Charles Rice, or anyone else, tries to tell you that you have to vote his way because of your religion, remember that the way he applies his religious views is deeply impacted by his political philosophy. He is a political conservative, and like the rest of Americans, he applies his religious beliefs to his political beliefs as an afterthought. You should not let anyone bully you into voting against what you think is right, based on someone else's interpretation of Catholicism (or whatever other religion you subscribe to, for that matter)
Many in the Notre Dame community (and those who think they are in it… *cough* Cardinal Newman Society *cough*) have been debating the validity of the President of the United States attending this year’s commencement because of his views on abortion. I think that debate has received quite enough attention by now, but what about the many other values we as Catholics and Americans hold dear? Where is the outrage about the way we treat our fellow human beings—you know, the one’s who have already been born? I’m specifically referring to the endorsement of torture as official United States policy under the Bush administration.
For decades Americans have prided themselves on being an example of a moral, just and civilized society that adheres to the rule of law. At the end of the second World War the U.S. participated in the prosecution of Nazis and Japanese war criminals who engaged in tactics that were clearly defined as torture, but what our last administration would refer to as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The previous administration defends the use of these “techniques” (which I will from here on refer to by the appropriate word, TORTURE) as being essential to the security of the country. Former Vice President Dick “Go Fuck Yourself” Cheney even went on CNN last week to continue these claims and even go on to suggest that President Obama has made the country less safe by refusing to continue these practices and by ordering the closing of Guantanamo Bay.
Well, on the front page of Sunday’s Washington Post, staff writers Peter Finn and Jody Warrick poured a nice tall glass of Shut The Fuck Up for the former VP and sadistic torture loving Republicans everywhere. The article debunks the idea that torture has produced effective results or prevented any attacks after 9/11, specifically addressing the complete ineffectiveness of the interrogation of the Bush administration’s oft touted poster-child for the necessity of torture, Abu Zubaida. This article does not merely report that torturing Abu Zubaida produced no new results, but that it produced false intelligence (something one would think the last administration would be a bit more careful about).
"We spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms” one former intelligence official said.
So while Dick and his fellow sadists were getting their rocks off by shocking the rocks off of prisoners at Guantanamo, Abu Grahib, and various other CIA “black sites,” America was rendered less safe—wasting precious time and resources scouring the planet in wild goose chases to track down leads that Zubaida made up so that he would stop being tortured.
Ineffectiveness aside, the fact that the U.S. embraced torture as official policy was a moral travesty. It will likely take at least a decade, if not longer, to regain our respect in the international community, and our nation’s reputation will be permanently stained. The torture that has taken place by the U.S. government over the last eight years is also an obvious violation of the doctrine of Just War Theory as held by the Catholic Church. I’m not a big fan of Just War Theory. The evolution of this mode of thinking as developed by Augustine and Aquinas became the basis for international law regarding war, and as such I think it serves a purpose. Though as a doctrine of Christianity I think it is a perversion of the original purpose of the religion, a way of rationalizing the use of violence by a “legitimate authority” that suddenly became beneficial when Christians stopped being fed to lions and instead became members of the mainstream religion of the Roman Empire. While I don’t think this way of thinking should be accepted by the Church, I do think that as the basis of secular international law of war is concerned, it is a way to minimize the effects of the sins of politicians on the masses.
The use of torture contradicts one of the key principles of the conduct of war (jus in bello) as per Just War Theory. This principle—that all legal rights of enemy soldiers and civilians must be honored—has been violated in numerous ways throughout the conduct of the Iraq War. So of all the things for Catholics to be in an uproar about lately, one might think this would be somewhere at the top of the list.
Aside from being ineffective, immoral and contradictory to Church doctrine, torture also has the problem of being illegal. As Just War principles became indoctrinated into international law over the years, they became the standard by which nations were expected the abide by, and the criminality of torture is clearly outlined in the Geneva Conventions and other internationally recognized documents and treaties as well. It was also recognized as illegal per U.S. law before the Bush administration hired itself some Orwellian wordsmiths to tinker with Pentagon policies and issue legal memos redefining torture and various techniques that fall under that description, so they could be considered legal. Of course, just because you say the sky isn’t blue doesn’t make it so. Many civil rights activists are urging the Obama administration to investigate and prosecute the policymakers who knowingly broke the law in issuing orders to torture. Law professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University has been one of the most outspoken advocates for this.
But it looks like the U.S. may get beaten to the punch. A human rights lawyer in Spain has brought a complaint against six former high-ranking Bush administration officials: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Undersecretary for Defense Douglas Feith, VP Cheney’s COS David Addington, Justice Department officials John Yoo and James Bybee, and Pentagon Lawyer William Haynes. The most interesting part of this article from the Washington Post is this:
Spanish law gives its courts jurisdiction beyond national borders in cases of torture or war crimes, based on a doctrine known as universal justice
Imagine for a moment, the ramification of if the Spanish court issues an indictment. These high-profile individuals would be subject to arrest and trial before an international tribunal should they ever again set foot outside the country! Frankly, I think this needs to be done. However, the Obama administration would be wise to take the lead on this.
President Obama has signaled that while he condemns the use of torture he would like his administration to “look forward.” Well, look forward a few years to when Spain isn’t the only country pressing for indictments of Bush administration officials for the crimes they committed. The United States would be put in the incredibly awkward position of openly preventing the arrest of indicted war criminals. Even if the Obama administration was to cooperate with the International Criminal Court, that would be a very dangerous political move. I can see the FOX “News” reels now: “Obama cedes U.S. sovereignty to Europe! Everyone quick, head to your local gun store!” It would actually be less politically risky in my opinion, for President Obama to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate all allegations of torture by top Bush administration officials and prosecute them domestically. This will not be an easy task, but it will be far easier than cooperating with the ICC, or turning a completely blind eye and looking like the U.S. only cares about international law when other nations break it.
All Americans should be disgusted and embarrassed by the behavior of this small group of neo-cons who knowingly broke the law and dragged the good name of our country through the mud. The President should order the investigation of these crimes sooner rather than later. Both legally and morally, it is the right thing to do.
The Justice Department announced that the case (of 7 felony counts related to ethics violations) against former Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) has been dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct. Stevens, who held his seat in the Senate for 40 years (elected in 1968), lost his election to then Anchorage Mayor (now proud Democratic Senator) Mark Begich.
