Quick Dispatch From My Undisclosed Location
Still away on vacation, but I managed to find the time to read Jeffrey Rosen's interview with Jack Goldsmith in the New York Times Magazine. Very interesting read.
Quick takeaways:
1) the Rule of Law has had no greater enemy in modern American history than David Addington ("We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court,” Goldsmith recalls Addington telling him in February 2004.).
2) the Ashcroft hospital scene was every bit as bad as Comey described it ("I was sure at the end of it he [Ashcroft] was going to die")
3) everyone of significance in the Justice Department really was prepared to resign following the hospital showdown (“I was sure the government was going to melt down”).
4) Gonzales probably resigned when he did because he knew Goldsmith was about to tell his story.
5) Bush, as usual, had no real clue what he was authorizing (“I don’t know if President Bush understood how extreme some of the arguments were about executive power that some people in his administration were making,” Goldsmith told me. “It’s hard to know how he would know.”)
As usual, for solid analysis of this story, Marty Lederman and Glenn Greenwald are your best bets. I'll have a lot more to say about this once I return from my undisclosed location.
Quick takeaways:
1) the Rule of Law has had no greater enemy in modern American history than David Addington ("We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court,” Goldsmith recalls Addington telling him in February 2004.).
2) the Ashcroft hospital scene was every bit as bad as Comey described it ("I was sure at the end of it he [Ashcroft] was going to die")
3) everyone of significance in the Justice Department really was prepared to resign following the hospital showdown (“I was sure the government was going to melt down”).
4) Gonzales probably resigned when he did because he knew Goldsmith was about to tell his story.
5) Bush, as usual, had no real clue what he was authorizing (“I don’t know if President Bush understood how extreme some of the arguments were about executive power that some people in his administration were making,” Goldsmith told me. “It’s hard to know how he would know.”)
As usual, for solid analysis of this story, Marty Lederman and Glenn Greenwald are your best bets. I'll have a lot more to say about this once I return from my undisclosed location.
posted by A.L. at 12:53 PM
20 Comments:
Tomorrow is here. The game is over. The crisis has passed -- and the patient is dead. Whatever dream you had about what America is, it isn't that anymore. It's gone. And not just in some abstract sense, some metaphorical or mythological sense, but down in the nitty-gritty, in the concrete realities of institutional structures and legal frameworks, of policy and process, even down to the physical nature of the landscape and the way that people live.
The Republic you wanted -- and at one time might have had the power to take back -- is finished. You no longer have the power to keep it; it's not there. It was kidnapped in December 2000, raped by the primed and ready exploiters of 9/11, whored by the war pimps of the 2003 aggression, gut-knifed by the corrupters of the 2004 vote, and raped again by its "rescuers" after the 2006 election. Beaten, abused, diseased and abandoned, it finally died. We are living in its grave.
Post-Mortem America
.
a nice resonant piece of prose. I wonder that more, or should I say that virtually none, of our supposed leaders have dared tip his or her toe in this concept: namely, that if we must approach the question in terms of Ws and Ls, we have most definitely lost this war, by simple dint of the fact that we have betrayed, and continue to betray, almost all of our nation's noblest ideals. Would it really be a losing political gambit to say, "The terrorists are winning, so long as we continue to suspend habeas corpus, run guantanamo, etc etc. so long as we continue to act like the biggest dick in the sandbox"?
Call me an idealist, or a political naif, but I think that leader/candidate would get some pretty rousing applause. Admit that we've crapped our pants, forsaken our history, but risk offending no one but the most obvious culprits.
It's not hopeless.
Did you read the piece CO or are you knee jerking after reading only some of it? What, to your mind, is "not hopeless?" What is important about Floyd's essay, and I would like to get AL's opinion about this when he "gets back," is that it really lays out how, whether or not one believes it is hopeless, the fact is that our Republic, as we knew it, is dead and that we can not move on until we recognize that fact. Just like Glenn said... the fact of the matter is that all of those blatantly illegal activities are now legal by statute because of congresses complicity. They may be unconstitutional but in some cases, with some new laws, we the people will never have "standing" to argue that fact.
IMHO Floyd is absolutely correct in recognizing and stating that the Republic is dead. And attempting to work within "the system" to fix something that is now so broken and fundamentally ruined IS hopeless because the system itself is now the major problem. It is unassailable due to its corruption. It is no longer responsive to "we the people" in any real manner. That is what I took from Floyd's essay.
Why undisclosed?
Do you think your detractors will use that information to destroy your anonymity?
I have a few melancholy obwervations for my leftish colleagues here to ponder (melancholy for them, anyway). I want them to be forewarned about such matters, so that when my words prove true their grief will not unduly demoralize the nation's youth.
But first the good news: the next president will be a Democrat. The medium-good news: it will be Mrs. Clinton.
Now for the gloomy parts. First, early on Mrs. Clinton will have to decide what, if anything, to do about the detainess now at Guantanamo, and about future detainees. You will be dismayed to discover that her policies will not differ materially from those now in effect. The detainees will not be turned over to the criminal justice system; they will continue to be held; and their rights of review of the decisions of the Cambatant Status Review Tribunals will not be changed materially. Her policies ultimately will be much closer to those now in place than to, say, the Israeli model.
Second, Mrs. Clinton will have to decide what, if anything, to do about surveillance of transimissions emanating from sources outside the US and either directed to a recipient in the US or routed through the US to another overseas source. She will settle on something functionally indistinguishable from the practices now in place, although perhaps with a figleaf or two, which figleaves will not come close to fooling the bitterly disappointed Anonymous Liberal.
By the way, I believe that someone on this site inquired a while back as to whether Mrs. Clinton (or any other candidate) had been questioned on these subjects in any of the debates. So far as I am aware, she still has not been asked. When she is ultimately asked, the cognoscenti will know to ignore her responses altogether.
"Bush, as usual, had no real clue what he was authorizing"
It's good to be reassured of how much the clown President is clueless about executive power. And that statement by Goldsmith clearly tells you that President Cheney runs the oval office and Bush is just propped up and blowup doll to appear Prezildent like.
SPBiloxi, we used to hear the same sort of stuff about Ronaldus Maximus: he really had no clue; he was an amiable dunce; Don Regan and Mike Deaver were actually running the show, and blah blah blah.
Now what we hear is, "On the morning of the day he died, he was the greatest man alive." He has joined Washington and Lincoln as the Americans about whom that can be said.
As you'll learn as you mature, all of the important decisions of the Bush presidency have been made by one George W. Bush. And in a decade no one will know who Goldsmith was.
Think big picture, my son...
AS,
has anyone ever told you you sound a little bit like Seth from all the Jane Roberts SETH BOOKS?
Are you?
John Adams liked to call Washington "Old Muttonhead". I think Reagan fit the name much better than Washington ever did.
I haven't heard of Seth, but I feel sorry for him already.
If you read David McCulloch's biography of John Adams, you will learn the depth of Adams's worhipful respect for Washington.
Great Scott--I inadvertently chaged my name there.
I think anonymous superstar better fits you, so that's how I'll refer to you.
ASS,
When your predictions have proven pathetically wrong, my prediction is that you'll simply slink away, change your name to something else and keep delivering bilge.
Meanwhile, I, for one, decline to place any faith in your predictions.
Mrs. Clinton is not even in my top three choices, but, if she's the candidate on the Democratic Party ticket, she'll get my vote. Whatever else she is, she isn't a weak, shallow, twit, or an alzheimer's patient. I expect her, like any of the Democrats running, to be firmly in charge of the government bureaucracy and hold it within the rule of law.
This post has been removed by the author.
"As you'll learn as you mature, all of the important decisions of the Bush presidency have been made by one George W. Bush. And in a decade no one will know who Goldsmith was. Think big picture, my son..."
Anon superstar:
George W. Bush never ran this country at all. Dick Cheney is the one who has been running the White House for the past six years. You need to read on John Dean, former WH lawyer to Nixon, on Findlaw.com because Dean lays out about Dick Cheney as the co-President. And since Bush ran down 3 businesses to the ground in Texas and his daddy had to bail him out, Poppy Bush made sure that his son got the Presidency with a smart corporate executive like Dick Cheney to run the White House and this country like a corporate business. The money trail is the answer to why this country is financially in trouble.
And all important decisions in the WH are being run through to Dick not George.
Dear Mr. SPBiloxi:
First, I do not look to convicted felons like John Dean as authorities for anything whatsoever, and I pity those who are reduced to doing so.
Second, suppose that God Himself came down tomorrow and said, "yes, Dick Cheney has been making all the important decisions." What, exactly, would you conclude from that? What difference would it make?
Suppose further that the same God came down and told you that Woodrow Wilson's wife made all the important decisions in the latter months of his presidency? Would that be an important revelation to you? What would it tell you? Suppose it were further revealed that, before Mrs. Wilson stepped in, all important decisions had been made by Colonel House for several years? Please tell us exactly how that would alter your view of history, or of the Wilson presidency. Would it even be important to you? If so, why?
And what if it were revealed to you that Abraham Lincoln made the decision to promote General Grant on the basis of the flip of a coin, or on his reading of the entrails of mice? What would be the import of such a revelation?
Suppose you were to learn that major decisions in the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt were in fact made by Eleanor? Tell us how that would alter your view of FDR, or his presidency, or American history.
Suppose, yet again, that the selfsame God informed you that I, Anonymous Superstar, defer all of my important decisions to the estimable Zeus, or Anonymous Queer--what, exactly, would that mean?
And to you, Mr. C2H50H, are we supposed to care who your choices are? Perfect knowledge of your choices will not at all affect my correct prediction that Mrs. Clinton will be the president.
Rule of law? Perhaps. After all, the present treatment of the detainees at Guantanamo is perfectly within the rule of every single applicable US and international law, and her administration will reach no different conclusion. It will, as I have stated, apply some cosmetic band-aids that will effect no substantive change whatsoever.
And surveillance will continue under Mrs. Clinton as it has, thank God, under the twice-elected Mr. Bush. Whether that surveillance is "under the rule of law" will be debated until long after the technology has rendered the debate moot, and in any event will be determined by a series of 2-1 and 5-4 court decisions.
Mr. Bush's presidency, by contrast with that of his predecessor, has been scrupulously lawful. No Webb Hubbels, no Henry Cisneroses, no Hazel O'Learys, no Johnny Chungs, no mysterious Mr. Hsus--none of them.
Swallow your medicine, son.
Let us deliver thanks for effective surveillance:
"War On Terror: U.S. interceptions of suspicious communications between Pakistan and Germany prevented car bombings that could have killed hundreds of Americans. Yet some are still worried about terrorists' privacy.
"Yet another dazzling victory for law enforcement and intelligence officers over Islamists, thanks to aggressive surveillance tools: The Los Angeles Times reported that last week's arrest by German police of three suspected Muslim terrorist plotters based in Stuttgart and Saarland, near the French border, was due to U.S. intelligence detecting e-mails between publicly accessible computers in Germany and contacts in Pakistan last year."
Goodness gracious! Let us hope and pray that FISA was not arguably violated! Heaven forbid!
OK, I give up. All you stupes who used to show up at this site have been so overwhelmed by rapier-like wit and unassailable reason that you have simply quit. So I'll go elsewhere, placing a notch on my smoking pistola to represent this once-proud blog.
Arrivederci.
...is he gone?
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home