Thank you again, Senator Dodd

Mr. President, I've spoken repeatedly about the rule of law. The rule of law isn't some abstract idea. It's here with us. It's what makes this body run, and it has for more than two centuries. It means that we hear each other out. We do it in the open. And, while the minority gets its voice, gets its right to strenuously object, the majority ultimately rules. Standing for the rule of law anywhere means standing for it everywhere, in our courts and in the United States Senate as well. The circumstances are different, of course, but the heart of the matter is the same. Last evening, I believe, the Republican party forfeited its claim to good faith on this issue. They've left to stake their case on fear, unfortunately...."

So what's next on FISA?

(Senate Democrats), under the leadership of Senator Harry Reid and with the help of Senator Jay Rockefeller (a good friend of the administration earlier in the debate on this bill), refused to let the minority ram through its substitute on Thursday and are finally forcing the Republicans to find 60 votes to kill the debate, prevent the amendments from being considered, and just move on. This Monday at 4:30 EST is do-or-die time -- our first goal must be to urge a 'no' vote on cloture so that meaningful amendments can be considered. It could be the first time in recent history that the Democrats -- who claim to want to protect the Constitution -- stand up to the administration and say no. No more warrantless wiretapping of Americans, no more give-aways to the industries that fill politicians' coffers, no more hiding the unlawful acts of this administration.

If that means the so-called Protect America Act sunsets, so be it. As House Leader Hoyer and Senate Intel Chairman Rockefeller have noted, all current surveillance orders can be extended into 2009 even if the current law expires. The intel community won't be forced to end its current warrantless wiretapping and Congress will have the time to do, well, anything else besides pass this horrible Senate bill, which is really the worst option out there. If no legislation is enacted before the sunset, the law simply reverts to the surveillance statutes in place as of last July -- with the significant addition that plans authorized over the last six months may continue even if they have been authorized without appropriate judicial oversight.

As posted here previously, I make a point of calling Democratic Senators -- particularly in adjoining states like Louisiana and Arkansas in this case -- and kindly asking them to represent me, and the millions of other Texas Democrats who have no US Senate representation:

More than ever it is crucial that you call your senator and urge a no vote on cloture – especially if your senator is one of the twelve - Bayh, Carper, Inouye, Johnson, Landrieu, McCaskill, Mikulski, Nelson (FL), Nelson (NE), Pryor, Salazar - who voted with the administration on Thursday. All we need is to knock a handful of them off the administration's bandwagon and we'll have an opportunity to get this right.

Watson: Hello, MOTO (certainly not MoFo)

(State Sen. Kirk Watson of Austin was kind enough to write a guest blog for the Texas Progressive Alliance as we continue to push our TexRoots 2008 slate of candidates.)

A few months back a certain progressive blogger took note of a piece I had published. This writer responded with an entry that was mostly complementary -- I'd guess we agree about 90 percent of the time. But then, after hitting a point I thought was pretty inarguable, the writer called me a "MOTO."

Most of you who read Texas' great progressive blogs probably know what a "MOTO" is. I, on the other hand, had to turn to my 18-year-old son (and pop culture crutch) Preston, who steered me to something called urbandictionary.com. There, I finally learned the truth:

I am, it seems, a "Master Of The Obvious".

It was kind of a frustrating revelation, partly because it's true. But if I've learned anything at all in my year as a state senator, it's that what's so obvious to me (and to acronym-wielding bloggers) seems downright foreign to so many others -- particularly the Republican leadership in the Texas Capitol.

Here are just a few MOTO moments from the past few months:

•It's wrong for a governor to use a 39-percent mandate to rig state agencies in ways that benefit corporate contributors, privatize public roads, and ignore the real health and educational needs of this state.

•It's wrong for a lieutenant governor to wage a partisan campaign to ram through a voter screening bill that targets Hispanics and the elderly. It's worse to force a very ill senator to set up a sick bed outside the Senate chamber simply to block such a terrible, discriminatory proposal.

•It's wrong for a speaker of the House to stand before a body of democratically elected officials who gave him his office, and then declare he has absolute power to ignore them.

•It's wrong for Supreme Court justices to stretch campaign finance laws, or to ignore law and precedent in rulings that protect political contributors, or to take advantage of a politicized criminal justice process.

•And it's very wrong for a high court judge to slam shut the doors of justice as early as possible, especially when it means sending a man to his death.

All pretty obvious, right? Well, not to the people who've run this state for all these years. And that's where we all have work to do.

We are right. We are anxious to do great things for Texas, to restore opportunity, and to create reasons to hope for a better future.

But we can't just know that. We can't just talk to ourselves.

We can't assume it's obvious.

We must make it apparent to anyone who cares about this state and where it's headed, and we must remind them of the most obvious statement of all: Texans cannot trust the Republican leadership.

I'm talking about the political bosses, bullies, ideologues and figureheads that control the agenda, bury the opposition, and block any bill that runs counter to their dogma.

I'm talking about the folks who are more interested in taking irresponsible pledges than in solving Texas' challenges, who will deny the most verifiable fact if it doesn't conform to their ideology, and who will embrace every budget trick they can think of before they level with Texans about what people are worth to them.

I'm talking about the select group that's denied children health care at any cost, that's allowed our colleges and universities to become overcrowded, underfunded and inadequate, that's watched our highways deteriorate while forcing Texans to choose between crushing traffic and private toll roads, and that's denied and deferred environmental problems, leaving our children to fix them.

Here's what's most obvious: only the Democratic Party will bring about the positive changes that Texans need and demand.

That means we have to do all we can this year -- we must make it obvious -- that the people of Texas must challenge the so-called absolute power of the Republican leadership. Once we make MOTOs out of everyone, Texas will elect strong Democrats in 2008.

Dear Senator Corn-fed

I'm writing today to urge you in the strongest possible terms NOT to pass any wiretapping legislation that violates our rights as expressed in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, OR that gives blanket retroactive immunity to the telecom companies who helped the Bush Administration commit violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

You swore an oath upon taking your seat in the U.S. Senate to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution. The Fourth Amendment guarantees our right to be free from searches of our persons, papers and effects without a warrant based upon probable cause. But the legislation from the Senate Intelligence Committee would allow "blanket warrants" for wiretapping -- blatantly contravening the Fourth Amendment's requirement for a warrant to "particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The rule of law is also at stake here. It's quite clear that some telecoms, such as AT&T, helped the Bush Administration repeatedly violate the law of the land at the time (FISA). But at least one company, Quest, quite properly refused to do so. To grant the lawbreakers immunity after the fact would undermine the concept of equal justice for all and codify a Nixonian attitude towards the law -- "If the President does it, it must be legal."

So I ask to you take a strong stand against ANY legislation that grants retroactive immunity OR does not preserve our rights to privacy as guaranteed in the Fourth Amendment.

I also respectfully ask that you reply to my message as soon as possible with your views on this topic.

Corndog has never once responded to any message sent to him in the past six years, so I am not holding my breath this time. But if he does, I'll post it here.

Clinton and Obama must join the fight against telecom immunity

A letter from my good friends* Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher:

Dear Friend,

John Edwards should challenge his rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to go back to Washington, DC and fight against retroactive immunity for the telecoms.

The Republicans are not going to let Harry Reid punt and extend the Protect America Act for another 18 months so it looks like the FISA bill is going to come back up again on Monday. Chris Dodd's objection to Unanimous Consent still stands, so they will pick up in the middle of the Motion to Proceed debate.

Without the help of the presidential candidates, we are doomed to lose this fight. And all their calls for change will ring hollow if they allow George Bush to railroad this bill through a supine Democratic-controlled Senate because of their absence.

You can email Senator Edwards directly at john@johnedwards.com.

Cheers,

Jane Hamsher & Glenn Greenwald

When last we were on the topic of retroactive immunity, Chris Dodd was still a presidential candidate. Clinton and Obama missed the vote because they were off campaigning.

I really don't want to see my future president failing to lead on an issue so critical again.

*They're not really my good friends, but maybe some day ...

MoDo, again

Mostly I have held the opinion that Maureen Dowd was somewhat obsessed, perhaps even a little depraved, regarding her unrelenting criticism of the Clintons. But here she is, simply and sadly, dead on target:

If Bill Clinton has to trash his legacy to protect his legacy, so be it. If he has to put a dagger through the heart of hope to give Hillary hope, so be it.

If he has to preside in this state as the former first black president stopping the would-be first black president, so be it.

The Clintons — or “the 2-headed monster,” as the The New York Post dubbed the tag team that clawed out wins in New Hampshire and Nevada — always go where they need to go, no matter the collateral damage. Even if the damage is to themselves and their party.

Bill’s transition from elder statesman, leader of his party and bipartisan ambassador to ward heeler and hatchet man has been seamless — and seamy.

This is believed to be the Clintons' strength: in boxing parlance, their counterpunch. Their steel jaw.

It appears to me as '90s style guttersniping. Slime your opponent before (you think) he can. Rovian politics without the Rove.

When he was asked yesterday if he would feel bad standing in the way of the first black president, he said no. “I’m not standing in his way,” he said. “I think Hillary would be a better president” who’s “ready to do the job on the first day.” He added: “No one has a right to be president, including Hillary. Keep in mind, in the last two primaries, we ran as an underdog.” He rewrote the facts, saying that “no one thought she could win” in New Hampshire, even though she originally had had a substantial lead.

He said of Obama: “I hope I get a chance to vote for him some day.” And that day, of course, would be after Hillary’s eight years; it’s her turn now because Bill owes her. “I think it would be just as much a change, and some people think more, to have the first woman president as to have the first African-American president,” he said.

Bad Bill had been roughing up Obama so much that Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina suggested that he might want to “chill.” On a conference call with reporters yesterday, the former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a national co-chairman of the Obama campaign, tut-tutted that the “incredible distortions” of the political beast were “not keeping with the image of a former president.”

Jonathan Alter reported in Newsweek that Senator Edward Kennedy and Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois congressman and former Clinton aide, have heatedly told Bill “that he needs to change his tone and stop attacking Senator Barack Obama.”

There is the anecdotal evidence that portends doom in the general election: in the face of Democratic leaders, even elders asking -- perhaps demanding -- that he cool it, the former president keeps his foot on the gas. That defiance could ultimately result in a blowback that destroys not just his wife, but the party he purports to lead. It's still just fun-and-games to him, though:

At the Greenville event, Bill brought up Obama’s joking reference to him in the debate, about how Obama would have to see whether Bill was a good dancer before deciding whether he was the first black president.

Bill, naturally, turned it into a competition. “I would be willing to engage in a dancing competition with him, even though he’s much younger and thinner than I am,” he said. “If I’m going to get in one of these brother contests,” he added, “at least I should be entitled to an age allowance.”

He said, “I kind of like seeing Barack and Hillary fighting.”

“How great is this?” he said. “Neither of them has to be a little wind-up doll who’s supposed to behave in a certain way. They’re real people, flesh and blood people. They have differences.”

And if he has anything to say about it, and he will, they’ll be fighting till the last dog dies.

These are truly uncharted political waters we're entering now. It's just a shame -- rather nauseating, in fact -- that this sea is taking on the appearance of a septic tank.

They lied. No one could have predicted that.

I'll just bold the vital statistics:

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism. White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said he could not comment on the study because he had not seen it.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

"The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

"Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.

In January of 2002 I went into private practice. Earlier the previous fall, in the wake of September 11's tragic events, my co-workers and I had discussed the fact they America intended to go after Iraq as retribution. I thought at the time that was a positively ridiculous proposition, but as history kept unfolding it became clear to me that was exactly what my government intended to do: start an unprovoked war on a completely distinct, uninvolved third party based on a web of deception so thorough that even members of the so-called liberal media (Judith Miller, anyone?) were complicit.

In the discussion fora I was participating in at the time, I remember not only the dismay of trying to speak out against the massive , foolish rush to war and the intoxicated patriotic fervor everywhere I looked ("God Bless America", anyone?), but also the steadfast refusal to consider that the course we were on might be misguided. I remember being accused of treason many times simply for speaking out.

As more developments came to light, we learned -- eventually -- that the Bush administration took the word of an Iraqi ("Curveball") over the advice of a former United States ambassador, and then went out of their way to discredit him by revealing his wife to be a undercover CIA agent.

And then there were the (occasional) unintended consequences: the torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, the detention without charge of suspected prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay, the no-bid contracts of Halliburton, the loss of life of our brave soldiers who went to war without proper body armor or vehicular plating, the travesty of the poor treatment of our battle-wounded within the veterans' so-called health care system ...

What did I leave out?

Oh, yeah: the refusal of a Democratic Congressional majority elected to do something about it not doing anything about it.

These sad developments compelled many Americans to make the second-most ultimate sacrifice: max out their credit cards, then take out home equity loans to pay them off, then run them up again, all the while keeping their eyes peeled for any distraction from reality, such as American Idol or Dancing With the Stars. It forced mortgage lending companies to bend the rules in order to keep the stock market up and the rest of the economy humming, and it also forced the Bush Administration to cut the taxes for the wealthiest Americans so that they could prop up America's best restaurants and luxury auto dealers.

Everyone has to make sacrifices during a time of war, after all.

But geez, things are still kind of, you know, turning bad a little. So the Fed cuts the funds rate again so that the markets don't drop quite as much and Bush says he'll send us a check for 300 bucks and the surge is working, so hey, maybe we gon' be awright after all.

Ya think?