January 2009 archive

HT to NL!

Via Huffpo, to clear the record….

Aide: Holder Has Made No Decisions On Prosecuting Bush Officials

An aide to Eric Holder rejected a report Wednesday suggesting that the Attorney General nominee had pledged not to prosecute members of the Bush administration officials who were complicit in illegal harsh interrogations or torture.

“Eric Holder has not made any commitments about who would or would not be prosecuted,” said the aide. “He explained his position to Senator Bond as he did in the public hearing and in responses to written questions.”

The statement came hours after the Washington Times quoted Senate Judiciary Committee member Kit Bond saying Holder had privately insisted that he would not conduct such prosecutions. That report caused a stir on the Hill, where Democrats were left wondering whether Holder had privately placated Republican concerns that he would investigate Bush administration officials involved in interrogations.

So…..Kit Bond is, completely unsurprisingly….a big, fat liar!

Isn’t it nice to have a responsive government again?

Is this true Mr. Holder? Did you just commit to not prosecuting War Crimes….or is Sen. Kit Bond(R) lying about you?

From the deeply un-credible Washington Times, H/t Raw Story…

Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, a Republican from Missouri and the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview with The Washington Times that he will support Eric H. Holder Jr.’s nomination for Attorney General because Mr. Holder assured him privately that Mr. Obama’s Justice Department will not prosecute former Bush officials involved in the interrogations program.

….

Sen. Bond also said that Mr. Holder told him in a private meeting Tuesday that he will not strip the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the National Security Agency after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks of retroactive legal immunity from civil lawsuits–removing another potential sticking point among GOP senators.

In the interview Wednesday, Mr. Bond said, “I made it clear that trying to prosecute political leaders would generate a political firestorm the Obama administration doesn’t need.”

He added, “I was concerned about previous statements he made and others had made. He gave me assurances that he would not take those steps that would cause major disruptions in our intelligence system or cause political warfare. We don’t need that kind of political warfare. He gave me assurances he is looking forward.”

Is this true Mr. Holder? Did you just sell the American Justice system down the river in a backroom deal? Or is Kit Bond a liar? You owe the American people an answer. You owe us the transparency President Obama has promised.

Did you cave to Republican demands? Or are you letting Kit Bond play you and besmirch your reputation as an honest man? We need a statement.

You have stated that waterboarding is torture. Torture is a crime. Your job is to prosecute crimes, not make backroom deals to ignore them. If you did NOT make this deal, you need to shoot Kit Bonds’ lies down publicly, IF you want the American people to trust you. And IF you want the American people to trust the Department of Justice, and the American Justice System again. I would like to believe you Mr. Holder, but this is ALL too plausible, given the politics involved. Please take a few minutes out of your day to reassure us.

If you want to ask Mr. Holder this question, you can e-mail him at [email protected]. Please include a link to the WaTimes story, if you do mail him.

You can ask Sen. Bond if he is lying here.

Via Raw Story:

UN official: Enough evidence to prosecute Rumsfeld for war crimes

David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster

Monday, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak told CNN’s Rick Sanchez that the US has an “obligation” to investigate whether Bush administration officials ordered torture, adding that he believes that there is already enough evidence to prosecute former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

“We have clear evidence,” he said. “In our report that we sent to the United Nations, we made it clear that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld clearly authorized torture methods and he was told at that time by Alberto Mora, the legal council of the Navy, ‘Mr. Secretary, what you are actual ordering here amounts to torture.’ So, there we have the clear evidence that Mr. Rumsfeld knew what he was doing but, nevertheless, he ordered torture.”

And in either a delightful dig at Nancy ….or a delicious coincidence…

Asked during an interview with Germany’s ZDF television on Jan. 20, Nowak said: “I think the evidence is on the table.”

..  the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats went down into the hollow hills to rest with his ancestors.

Can anyone read those last two ineffable lines from his most famous poem without getting a cold chill? I’ve never been able to. Hell, I’m reading them right this second and they’re totally freaking me out.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

….

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

from Ari Melber at Politico this morning, January 28, 2009, 4:31 AM EST

After running a campaign with Bush-like discipline in press relations, President Barack Obama promised a “new standard of openness” on his first day in office. His administration is rolling out regulations to ensure a more transparent government. His aides have been addressing citizens online, bypassing reporters to reach the public directly. All this makes the Washington press corps, already struggling with low approval ratings and low profits, potentially less relevant.  

If Obama’s administration operates anything like his campaign, it will both sideline and compete with the media as a news source.

The transition team provided a great range of video, official documents, e-mail bulletins and other content for interested citizens. Then, last week, Obama’s aides clearly entered the White House with disintermediation on their minds. Scrapping the traditional wire photo shoot of the new president at his desk, Obama’s aides simply published their own.

Ditto for Round Two of the swearing-in, which was largely closed to the press. “The same day that the president is talking about transparency, we were not let in,” reporter Ed Henry declared on CNN.

Several news agencies, to their credit, refused to circulate those government photos. As one AP official explained, their duty is to document news about the administration – not regurgitate “visual press releases” produced by the administration.

It is great, of course, for the White House to release photos or documents or any other material. Obama’s openness is a welcome change from his predecessor, who went all the way to the Supreme Court to hide the RSVP list for a single policy meeting. And transparency is intrinsically good, since in a democracy, very little government activity is legitimately secret.

Transparency reform and government information, however, are no substitutes for journalistic access and original reporting.

In fact, the administration’s new openness might even function as little more than another unfiltered route to disseminate its view. If the information is offered to supplant independent reporting – as in the photo disputes – and only flows in one direction, then the government simply amplifies its already sizable megaphone. A louder government with less journalism does not enrich our democratic process.