In 1996 there were 300 earmakrs attached to the Federal Budget...By 2006 there were 12,000. there are now - get this - 32,684 earmark requests up for approval in the House of Representatives.That is just in the House. The Senate adds thousands more every year.
Recently, a Hindu was asked to give the opening prayer at a session of the US Senate. It was a first for this religion, which surprised me. It didn’t go well. “Christian” extremists continually disrupted his prayer and made a mockery of what should have been a solemn occasion. Now, a coalition of Hindu groups is asking that presidential candidates as well as the Senate as a body denounce the actions of those who perpetrated this act of intolerance. I would imagine that the Senate will do so and certainly Democratic presidential candidates will follow suit. What I’ll find interesting is whether any Republican candidates will heed this call and who those “rugged individualists” might be. I’m going to try to follow this and if I can track down any further information, I’ll report back.
If you are interested in a first-rate history of the illegal surveillance program of the Bush Administration, Spencer Ackerman and Paul Kiel of TPMMuckracker put together a wonderful piece yesterday. It details not only the history of the scandal and what is known of the program, but outlines how the Administration has gone about covering its tracks… and how the wheels of the Bush train may finally be coming off those tracks. It is compelling reading and knowledge of this issue is essential to a greater understanding of the larger question of unconstitutional actions surrounding the Bush presidency.
A bill has been introduced in Congress to help shore up our voting system here in the
prevent the use of paperless electronic voting machines and will require audits to check the accuracy of the vote counts for federal elections. The bill includes security provisions that ban Internet connections for voting machines, as well as for systems that tabulate the votes on election night. It also makes the paper ballot the official record in audits and recounts, and requires election officials to post a notice explaining to voters the need to verify their vote.
Josh Marshall over at TPM tells the tale of one specific moment in the Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hearing on the 24th of July before the Senate Judiciary Committee that sums up the Bush Administration in a nutshell. He tells the story in the greater context of the question of impeachment, not of Gonzales, but of the president under whom he serves. Impeachment, however, is not our concern this day.
As regular readers of this site know, I've always been against the movement to impeach President Bush. I take this position not because he hasn't done plenty to merit it. My reasons are practical. … Find me seventeen Republican senators who are going to convict President Bush in a senate trial.
On balance, this is still my position. But in recent days, for the first time I think, I've seen new facts that make me wonder whether the calculus has changed. Or to put it another way, to question whether my position is still justifiable in the face of what's happening in front of our eyes.
Most of those facts I'm referring to stem from the on-going Gonzales controversy (farce?) and the various running battles over executive privilege. In fact, the exchange I noted yesterday between Gonzales and Sen. Schumer (D-NY) stands out in my mind.
This was the exchange in which Gonzales simply refused to answer one of Sen. Schumer's questions -- didn't say he didn't remember, didn't invoke a privilege, just said, No. Not going to discuss that with you. Move on to the next question.
It's not that this one incident is a matter of such consequence in and of itself -- though I would say it's pretty consequential. But it captures pretty fully and in one small nugget the terrain the White House is now dragging us on to.
As I explained in that post, testifying before Congress is like testifying in a court of law. The questions aren't voluntary. You have to answer every one. You can invoke a privilege and the court's will decide whether the argument has merit. But no one can simply decline to answer a question. And yet this is exactly what Gonzales did.
The difference between invoking a flimsy claim of privilege and simply refusing to answer has little immediate practical difference, but it's constitutional implications are profound.
Though other events in recent months and years have had graver consequences in themselves, I'm not sure I've seen a more open, casual or brazen display of the attitude that the body of rules which our whole system is built on just don't apply to this White House.
Without going into all the specifics, I think we are now moving into a situation where the White House, on various fronts, is openly ignoring the constitution, acting as though not just the law but the constitution itself, which is the fundamental law from which all the statutes gain their force and legitimacy, doesn't apply to them.
If that is allowed to continue, the defiance will congeal into precedent. And the whole structure of our system of government will be permanently changed.
Whether because of prudence and pragmatism or mere intellectual inertia, I still have the same opinion on the big question: impeachment. But I think we're moving on to dangerous ground right now, more so than some of us realize. And I'm less sure now under these circumstances that operating by rules of 'normal politics' is justifiable or acquits us of our duty to our country.
I am heart-sick. My wife and I have had to put our cat Ezri to sleep. Her health had been failing for some time and finally, after a long medical battle, it was the right thing to do.
Ezri was a short-hair calico. She came into my life weighing over nine pounds and departed yesterday weighing only just over three. She had the odd habit of sitting facing a wall rather than the open room. She viewed the ceiling fan in our bedroom as an enemy and guarded us fiercely against it. She had the cutest paws, with more fuzz between her pads than any other cat I've encountered. She often slept below my wife's feet on our bed and I'd often wake up in the morning with her on my chest. Not one to be a Clark Kent, she would stretch herself out while laying down, paws and head out front, tail extended to the rear. We called it her "Superman Kitty" pose. She would sit for hours near a window with two bird feeders installed just for her as "cat porn." It also put her in the afternoon sun, which was a sure bonus. She loved drinking the water from our cans of tuna and preferred any source of water to her normal water dish. Indeed, she would go so far as to perch herself on the pail that we keep in our bathtub to catch for our flowers the water as it warmed. She'd be bottom-up with her head eight or ten inches down into that thing, keeping her balance God only knows how and not wanting to miss a drop. She was the scourge of moths in our home and a steadfast lap warmer during my geek-fest video game marathons. She was named for a Star Trek character. She was beautiful inside and out.
