IF ERIC HOLDER HAS SOLD OUT, Cut A Deal To Not Prosecute Bush Officials The Obama Administration Has Just Suffered A Mortal Credibility Wound…The Wound Of Betrayal.
"The action I am taking is no more than a radical measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice. I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. Let them dare, then, to bring me before a court of law and let the enquiry take place in broad daylight!"
- Emile Zola, J'accuse! (1898) –
The Republicans have already made it clear that their agenda is to protect the Asses of The Bush Administration and to wreck the Obama Administration, and quite frankly: “The Hell with the average American”; they can all live on the streets and eat cat and dog food!
I am researching this now and it better damn well not be true. I don’t trust the right wing Washington Times but I will be following up on this when I go into DC tomorrow!
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After the 2006 midterm election, the Republican Party showed such a dramatic inability to engage in self-reflection - and self-correction - that in 2008, they ushered in a beating without precedent at all levels of government. Now, as the GOP prepares to oppose President Obama's economic stimulus plan, to oppose a president with overwhelming approval ratings and a mandate for change, to oppose a piece of legislation with broad support from a desperate public, it is becoming ever more clear that, from the perspective of the Republican leadership, a hole worth digging is a hole worth digging deep.
Since Election Day, the post-mortem analysis of the Republican Party, by the Republican Party, has been exceptionally superficial. Most GOP officials and conservative opinion makers argued that the party was led astray because of an abandonment of conservative principles. Republicans failed and a liberal Democrat was elected, Republicans concluded, because Republicans weren't Republican enough. It's with that brand of logic that they've begun moving forward.
Having presided over an economic crisis not seen since Hoover, their squabbles with pork and excessive spending in the economic stimulus plan will be perceived as ranging from blindingly disingenuous to outright hypocritical. When the public lost the benefit of a government it could trust, the Republican party lost the benefit of the doubt.
What the party has yet to fully accept is that there are long-term consequences to losing credibility. Long after public opinion had cratered around Republican ideas and officials, long after the scandals, and the crises, no matter the facts, no matter the consequences, the leaders of the Republican Party defended their debunked philosophies and tainted colleagues.
Now, injured and wayward, the Republican leadership has geared up for a fight it cannot win, against a president who, both in mandate and in institutional advantage, enjoys unmatched power. That they cannot see the strategic error they are engaging in, that they are unable to regroup and reformulate, self-assess and readjust, is perhaps the answer to the most dumb-founding of questions. How could the Republicans, who only four years ago spoke of a permanent majority, have allowed themselves to become almost entirely irrelevant?
They have only one playbook, and it doesn't apply.
You don't win a post-partisan argument by being partisan. You win it by being right. If the Republican Party hopes to survive, they need to get on board, the sooner the better. They should stand with President Obama, support his policies and his mission, take credit for some of his accomplishments, and hope, hope, that he one day makes a mistake. Unless and until that happens, the public will continue to treat them like the obstacle they've become - unreasonable and irrational, unqualified and ill-equipped for government.
GOP's Successful Media Message: This Stimulus Needs to be More Ineffective!
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/28/exclusive-holder-assures-gop-torture-prosecution/
28 January 2009
http://40yrs.blogspot.com/2009/01/eric-holder-just-became-war-criminal.html
Eric Holder Just Became a War Criminal, Will Barack Obama Follow? [With Update: Senate Dems Deny]
Update: Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee have just denied that Holder said any such thing. I'd like to see Holder deny this too.
If this report in the Washington Times is accurate, Eric Holder just agreed not to prosecute people who engaged in torture:
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.
Mr. Holder's promise apparently was key to moving his nomination forward. Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 17-2 to favorably recommend Holder for the post. He is likely to be confirmed by the Senate soon.
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.
When the United States ratified the Convention against Torture in 1994, it created an obligation to affirmatively act to prevent torture, and to prosecute torturers and co-conspirators through, "effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction," including taking steps to "ensure that all acts of torture are offenses under its criminal law".
If the report is true, and note that it's the Washington Times quoting Kit Bond, so the possibility that the reporter or the Senator is lying is most assuredly non-zero, so, Holder could have said something as innocuous as, "There is such a thing as prosecutorial discretion," and Kit Bond could have related this as, "there will be no prosecutions."
Certainly, the Republicans have in the past fabricated promises in the hope that they would become accepted as the status quo.....It's called poisoning the well.
That being said, if what Mr. Bond related is a true description of the discussions, then Eric Holder has entered into an illegal conspiracy to coverup torture, which is, under the convention against, a violation of the Convention against Torture in and of itself.
The pertinent sections of the convention are below (all emphasis mine, and but I'm an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit!*):
Article 2
- Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
- No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
- An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.
Article 4
- Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act byany person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.
- Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.
Article 5
- Each State Party shall take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over the offences referred to in article 4 in the following cases:
- When the offences are committed in any territory under its jurisdiction or on board a ship or aircraft registered in that State;
- When the alleged offender is a national of that State;
- When the victim is a national of that State if that State considers it appropriate.
- Each State Party shall likewise take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over such offences in cases where the alleged offender is present in any territory under its jurisdiction and it does not extradite him pursuant to article 8 to any of the States mentioned in paragraph I of this article.
- This Convention does not exclude any criminal jurisdiction exercised in accordance with internal law.
Article 7
- The State Party in the territory under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is found shall in the cases contemplated in article 5, if it does not extradite him, submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution.
- These authorities shall take their decision in the same manner as in the case of any ordinary offence of a serious nature under the law of that State. In the cases referred to in article 5, paragraph 2, the standards of evidence required for prosecution and conviction shall in no way be less stringent than those which apply in the cases referred to in article 5, paragraph 1.
- Any person regarding whom proceedings are brought in connection with any of the offences referred to in article 4 shall be guaranteed fair treatment at all stages of the proceedings.
Eric Holder Just Became a War Criminal, Will Barack Obama Follow? [With Update: Senate Dems Deny]
Deal or No Deal: Holder Shoots Down Sen. Bond's Torture Case Claim
Sen. Kit Bond told theWashTimes that Eric Holder assured him the DOJ would not pursue torture prosecutions. But Dem senators on the Judiciary Committee -- and a Holder aide -- say that's flatly untrue.
Bond: Holder 'Gave Me Assurances'
Holder's Promises On Prosecution
Atlantic Online - 4 hours ago
An aide to Eric Holder vociferously denies that the AG nominee offered private assurances to Republican senators about whether the Obama administration ...
Senate Panel Backs Holder For Attorney General
NPR - 10 hours ago
NPR.org, January 28, 2009 · The Senate Judiciary Committee voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to recommend confirmation of Eric Holder as attorney general, ...
The Story Is Circulating…Verification Needed!
Bond Says He Will Support Holder’s Confirmation
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003020174
The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee said he would support President Obama’s nominee for attorney general after receiving assurances he had no interest in prosecuting anyone who waterboarded terrorism suspects.
The nominee, Eric H. Holder Jr., drew fire from Republicans after declaring at his Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing Jan. 15 that waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, was “torture.” Members of the GOP, including Senate Intelligence Committee Vice ChairmanChristopher S. Bond of Missouri, said Holder’s statement raised questions about whether he would prosecute those who used the interrogation technique, which Bush administration officials have acknowledged happened on at least three occasions.
Bond spoke with Holder on Jan. 27 in their second of two recent meetings and said Wednesday he would set aside his concerns. Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted, 17-2, Wednesday to confirm Holder, who was a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration.
“He’s promised he would be looking forward, not looking back for political prosecutions that would stifle our intelligence community or start a political war if he goes after people in the previous administration who acted on the basis of advice from the legal counsel and orders of the president,” Bond said.
An aide to Holder said the nominee “has not made any commitments about who would or would not be prosecuted. He explained his position to Sen. Bond as he did in the public hearing and in his responses to written questions.”
In answers to questions for the record submitted by members of the committee, Holder wrote: “Prosecutorial and investigative judgments must depend on the facts, and no one is above the law. But where it is clear that a government agent has acted in ‘reasonable and good-faith reliance on Justice Department legal opinions’ authoritatively permitting his conduct, I would find it difficult to justify commencing a full-blown criminal investigation, let alone a prosecution.”
Obama has said his intention also is to “look forward, as opposed to looking backwards,” but he has also maintained that “no one is above the law.”
Bond said he and Holder also discussed whether prosecutions would even be possible.
“I think he understands how difficult it would be, when these people were operating under the opinions of the Department of Justice,” Bond said. “I think that makes a case unwinnable.”
To undertake such a prosecution “would totally cripple the CIA,” Bond said. “It would tell every CIA person, the very competent people at the CIA and the [National Security Agency], that henceforward anything they did under one administration . . . could subject them to criminal penalties in the next. We would have a very, very chastened, locked-down intelligence community that would not lean forward as they have to and as they have been doing so very well.”
During his confirmation hearing before the Judiciary Committee, Holder said that although the new administration “will follow the evidence, the facts, the law, and let that take us where it should,” the administration does not want to “criminalize policy differences that might exist between the outgoing administration and the administration that is about to take over.”
Bond said he and Holder also discussed the nominee’s views on whether to continue the Bush administration’s legal strategy in a court process that would grant retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies accused of assisting the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program.
Holder previously had said he would support prior Bush administration certifications, barring “changed circumstances.”
“I believe he will not take it on,” Bond said, referring to a challenge to Bush’s strategy. “That would certainly go against the assurances I’ve received.”
Some lawmakers, including Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee led by ChairmanJohn Conyers Jr. of Michigan, have called on the Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation into the Bush administration’s treatment of detainees and warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens in contact with people overseas linked to terrorists.
“While I understand there is a powerful desire to simply move on and focus on the many large issues facing us, we simply cannot sweep these matters under the rug of history without addressing them head on,” Conyers wrote in a foreword to a lengthy majority report issued by committee staff Jan. 13.
Zandar Versus The Stupid: Holder Cuts A Deal
By Zandar
A week ago, Eric Holder proclaimed loudly that "waterboarding is torture" and the GOP promptly held up his Senate Judiciary committee confirmation vote. Until today. The committee just passed Holder this morning on a 17-2 vote. ...
Zandar Versus The Stupid - http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/
WHAT A CROCK!!!!
Gingrey Begs Limbaugh For Forgiveness, Expresses ‘Very Sincere ...
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved Eric Holder's nomination, 17 to 2 ... ) called Limbaugh personally this afternoon to express his regrets -- on the air -- for subtly criticizing him yesterday. Alex Koppelman | Salon War Room ...
Blogrunner > Economy - http://www.blogrunner.com/snapshot/topics/economy/
CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive ...
Judiciary Committee endorses Holder for attorney general. Posted: 11:13 AM ET. The committee'sDemocratic members unanimously supported Eric Holder. WASHINGTON (CNN) — The SenateJudiciary Committee voted Wednesday to send the nomination of Attorney ..... To Texans: Cornyn is an embarassment to his constituents and our country asking obviously "stupid" questions of the nominee. Elect a "competent" senator and send him to Washington or don't send anyone at all! ...
CNN Political Ticker - http://politicalticker.blogs.
The Democratic Party
As I posted on the other thread, our unemployment rate is now 15.7% (or there about - it's over 15%). What does 15.7% unemployment look like? I was shopping the other day and I noticed that people were buying soups, meat bones. ..... Rove has been newly subpoenaed by Congressman John Conyers to appear before the Judiciary Committee to testify regarding the DOJ's US Attorneys scandal. Rove ignored earlier subpoenas with impunity when Bush was still president. ...
Democratic National Committee: Blog - http://www.democrats.org/blog.html
Change Has Come To The Arizona Democratic Party - Progressive ...
His passionate oration was drowned out by the cheers and standing ovation of hundreds of state committee delegates, reminiscent of Dennis Kucinich's “Wake up America” speech at the Denver National Convention. ... the Phoenix area out of communication and out of the loop during the 2008elections. Many Democratic candidates were completely ignored by the party, including twocongressional candidates and all the down-ticket Democrats in red districts. ...
Progressive Democrats of America:... - http://pdamerica.org/
FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right: Just Five Red States Left?
Still, for things like gubernatorial elections and elections to the Congress, the Democrats' upside is very high, particularly if the party is smart enough to tolerate and accommodate a diversity of opinions within its umbrella. If party affiliation stays close ... I would even go so far as to say that the majority of Americans, if presented with his positions and no description of who said it, would find DennisKucinich's platform to be fairly mainstream. ...
FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right - http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
With the war in Gaza over, Israel is gearing up for an internal ...
Forward - New York,NY,USA
But there is a deep schism between Livni and Mofaz, her opponent in the Kadima primary, which many believe would limit Mofaz’s influence in a Livni-led ...
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Jobless, short on hope and options, grimly press on in desolate ...
Minneapolis Star Tribune - Minneapolis,MN,USA
Wanless used to be a warehouse manager, making $40 grand a year. He had that job for a decade until the company was "restructured" and he was out. ...
The Scorecard: 2008 Congressional campaign news and analysis ...
Now he's back to using the far right rhetoric of Limbaugh and Hannity, talking about George Soros,Moveon.org, and so on. He is a real gumby, what a grifter. Listen to this guy for ten minutes and you want to take a ...
Scorecard's Blogs - http://www.politico.com/blogs/
The Selling of the President, Liberal Style
New York Times Blogs - New York,NY,USA
“It’s nice,” said Ilyse Hogue, the communications director of MoveOn.org. “President Obama campaigned on a very progressive platform and we will do .
TPMDC | Talking Points Memo | GOP's Successful Media Message: This ...
"If we cut the corporate tax rate they'll want to hire more people." It's all top down and it doesn't work. They are too stupid and ideologically rigid to understand that the game has changed. We need to stimulate demand. ...
TPMDC - http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/
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