Cheney: Katrina was "a distraction"

Don't you just hate it when your nation's citizens start inconveniently dying as a result of a natural disaster when you're trying to focus on killing the citizens of another country?

In an interview with U.S. News, Cheney said, "You do have to keep a sustained campaign going. There's no question about it. Last fall, obviously, there were a lot of other items on the agenda. We went through the whole exercise with Katrina and the hurricanes and disaster relief and so forth that was, I suppose, a bit of a distraction. But it is important to try to maintain public support for what we're doing out there."

Here's the Moneyshot Quote.

Arlen Specter thinks Bush should be impeached

He just won't come right out and say so. Of course, Arlen Specter also claims to be pro-choice, and has said he will vote for Scalito the Woman-Hater.

Here's what the senator from Pennsylvania said. I wonder if he really means it:

STEPHANOPOULOS: There was a lot of talk about that at the Alito hearings, and listening closely to you I certainly seem to take away that you believe the president does not have the right, does not have the inherent power under the Constitution to circumvent a constitutional law, and as far as you are concerned, the FISA law is constitutional, isn’t it?

SPECTER: Well, I started off by saying that he didn’t have the authority under the resolution authorizing the use of force. The president has to follow the Constitution. Where you have a law which is constitutional, like Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, there still may be collateral different powers in the president under wartime circumstances.

That’s a very knotty question that I’m not prepared to answer on a Sunday soundbite. But I do believe that it ought to be thoroughly examined. And when we were on the Patriot Act and found the disclosure of the surveillance, I immediately said the Judiciary Committee would hold hearings, and I talked to the attorney general, and we’re going to explore it in depth, George. You can count on that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, if the president did break the law or circumvent the law, what’s the remedy?

SPECTER: Well, the remedy could be a variety of things. A president — and I’m not suggesting remotely that there’s any basis, but you’re asking, really, theory, what’s the remedy? Impeachment is a remedy. After impeachment, you could have a criminal prosecution, but the principal remedy, George, under our society is to pay a political price.

To be clear, Specter did stammer a lot through that last bit.

"The President is not entitled to his nominee"

Bravo, georgia10:

The mantra that "a President is entitled to his nominee" will be repeated many times as Senators decide how to cast their votes. The premise stems from the notion that it is he who has a vested appointment power, and that the Senate should accord the President a high degree of deference when he makes he choice.

The question is this: Does this theory of entitlement prevail when the President has abused the trust of the American people?

Here is a president who has misled our nation into war, abrogated the laws duly enacted by Congress, and violated our constitutional and civil rights. He's drudged through scandal after scandal, but has yet to be held accountable. Where is Phase II of the pre-war intelligence investigation? Where is the outrage over the fact he nullified Congress' ban on torture? He violated his oath to protect the Constitution when he issued his royal edict to spy on us outside the law. Yet who will hold him responsible? A Republican Congress?

The president, exhibiting the theory of the unitary executive that Alito endorses, has snubbed the legislative and judicial branches of government and has declared himself above the law. And now, Senators will claim with straight face that he is entitled to his nominee?

The man is entitled to nothing from the Congress he has abused and misled. The man is entitled to nothing from the American people he has betrayed. It is us, the citizens of this country, who are entitled to the truth. And until we receive that truth, this nominee should not pass.

(standing and applauding)

Read all of it.

Update (1/15): This is strikingly blunt:

Mr. Bush, however, seems to see no limit to his imperial presidency. First, he issued a constitutionally ludicrous "signing statement" on the McCain bill. The message: Whatever Congress intended the law to say, he intended to ignore it on the pretext the commander in chief is above the law. That twisted reasoning is what led to the legalized torture policies, not to mention the domestic spying program.

Then Mr. Bush went after the judiciary, scrapping the Levin-Graham bargain. (...)

Both of the offensive theories at work here - that a president's intent in signing a bill trumps the intent of Congress in writing it, and that a president can claim power without restriction or supervision by the courts or Congress - are pet theories of Judge Samuel Alito, the man Mr. Bush chose to tilt the Supreme Court to the right.

The administration's behavior shows how high and immediate the stakes are in the Alito nomination, and how urgent it is for Congress to curtail Mr. Bush's expansion of power. Nothing in the national consensus to combat terrorism after 9/11 envisioned the unilateral rewriting of more than 200 years of tradition and law by one president embarked on an ideological crusade.

Samuel Alito as "Diamond Jim" Brady

Overcowded Texas prisons put us at greater risk

Scott at Grits (hey, he likes carbs, I prefer protein) has an excellent post up about the crisis of overcowded prisons in Texas, and why that is a bad thing particularly for our safety. Go read the piece; here's an excerpt:

From the time Texas revolted against Mexico in 1836 until Ronald Reagan became president, the number of Texas prison beds grew from zero to a little less than 30,000. In the next 25 years, that number increased five-fold to more than 150,000, and the majority of new inmates were non-violent offenders. Even that rate of increase, though, can't keep up with new prison entries stemming from the Legislature's penchant for passing so-called penalty "enhancements" that don't take into account financial costs. We are at a crisis point -- the status quo is untenable.

The best way out of this imbroglio would be to follow the advice of one of my past campaign clients, former House Corrections Committee Chairman Ray Allen (R-Grand Prairie - he's sadly retiring from the Lege this year), who is fond of saying Texas should imprison only people "who we're afraid of, not those we're only mad at."

Update (1/14): Scott adds to his discussion by linking and commenting on a post at Houston Strategies.

Bell and Gammage and choice

Quite the brouhaha has broken out over Chris Bell's release of an endorsement letter from prominent Texans who support a woman's unfettered right to choose. The campaign blog also has posted Bob Gammage's voting record, to which the letter refers.

Burnt Orange Report has had the most to say about it so far; there's a conversation going on here as well.

I've made my thoughts pretty clear already at both of those places, so no need to repeat them here. Suffice it to say that you'll be reading and hearing more about this today.

Maybe my contributions and linkage will finally convince Karl-T to add me to his blogroll.

Update (1/15): Gammage clarifies:

(Gammage) reaffirmed his support for abortion rights and raising the minimum wage, despite what the Bell campaign said were contradictions in Gammage's voting record while in Congress in the 1970s.

"I've cast a lot of votes ... over the 25 years I was in public service. I wish I could look back on that record of service and say, 'I never made a mistake,' " he told reporters.

Gammage, who last held office in 1995, also is a former state legislator and a former Texas Supreme Court justice.

He said he strongly supports a woman's right to an abortion and always has, despite several votes in 1977 and 1978 against federal funding of abortions. "The question as we saw it at the time was not whether a woman should have the right to choose but who should pay once that choice was made. Today, I wouldn't vote that way," he said.