Change of pLace

This blog is moving to The Panhopticon. Please adjust yourself accordingly.

Priceless

Radar has an amazing and amusing feature, "America's Dumbest Congressmen." It's a real doozy.

Powell

The Washington Post had to go and break my heart. Here's what happened after GWB instructed his Chief of Staff to fire Colin Powell:

The president himself made no contact with Powell after Card's call. For two days, the only person at the State Department Powell told about it was his deputy and friend of decades, Richard Armitage. Powell dropped off his resignation letter, as instructed, after typing it himself on his home computer. (The White House later pointed out a typo and sent it back to be redone.) Loath to reveal either surprise or insult, he used the letter to claim the decision to leave as his own.

That's just sad!

Bush is in trouble

So we all know the Bushies want a way out of their own impending war crimes tribunals... exceptions made for them out of harms way from their violations of the Geneva Conventions (via the War Crimes Act of 1996) and the Fifth Amendment. Well tough fucking luck! And I quote...

Article I of our very own Constitution includes, "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."

The annotated Article VI also includes, "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."

I await impeachment and imprisonment for war crimes! (As if the Republicans in the Senate will ever let this happen.)

Kingstitutional republic

More tales from the Star Chamber. This from a press release by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility:

The Bush administration has declared itself immune from whistleblower protections for federal workers under the Clean Water Act, according to legal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As a result of an opinion issued by a unit within the Office of the Attorney General, federal workers will have little protection from official retaliation for reporting water pollution enforcement breakdowns, manipulations of science or cleanup failures.

Citing an "unpublished opinion of the [Attorney General's] Office of Legal Counsel," the Secretary of Labor's Administrative Review Board has ruled federal employees may no longer pursue whistleblower claims under the Clean Water Act. The opinion invoked the ancient doctrine of sovereign immunity which is based on the old English legal maxim that "The King Can Do No Wrong." It is an absolute defense to any legal action unless the "sovereign" consents to be sued.

The opinion and the ruling reverse nearly two decades of precedent. Approximately 170,000 federal employees working within environmental agencies are affected by the loss of whistleblower rights.

"The Bush administration is engineering the stealth repeal of whistleblower protections," stated PEER General Counsel Richard Condit, who had won several of the earlier cases applying environmental whistleblower protections to federal specialists. "The use of an unpublished opinion to change official interpretations is a giant step backward to the days of the secret Star Chamber." PEER ultimately obtained a copy of the opinion under the Freedom of Information Act.

Hiatus

Rather than leave empty time (which the Internet sees as the eventual textual stench of decay) let me say that my access to computers is greatly reduced and I will be on a hiatus until the end of my massage program. I graduate in mid-November. Wish me luck!

Happiness is a warm Uzi

It's called "Bring Me The Head of Charlie Brown."

Sanity rules

The recent federal court ruling striking down the illegal warrantless wiretapping program has some lovely language in the opinion. Oh so lovely. The following choice of quotes is totally reproduced from TPM Muckraker.

From page 23-24 of Judge Taylor's opinion:

...it is important to note that if the court were to deny standing based on the unsubstantiated minor distinctions drawn by Defendants, the President's actions in warrantless wiretapping, in contravention of FISA, Title II, and the First and Fourth amendments, would be immunized from judicial scrutiny. It was never the intent of the Framers to give the President such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The three separate branches of government were developed as a check and balance for one another. It is within the court's duty to ensure that power is never condensed into a single branch of government.

From Page 33:

The President of the United States, a creature of the same Constitution which gave us these Amendments, has undisputedly violated the Fourth [Amendment] in failing to procure judicial orders as required by FISA, and accordingly has violated the First Amendment Rights of these Plaintiffs as well.

And last but not least, my favorite, from page 40:

The Government appears to argue here that, pursuant to the penumbra of Constitutional language in Article II, and particularly because the President is designated Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, he has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, itself.

We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no power not created by the Constitution. So all "inherent power" must derive from that Constitution.