President Bush on Constitutional Guarantees

Check out this speech by President Bush on the official Whitehouse Web Site.

Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

More straight faced balderdash from the Liar-In-Chief.

Al Gore Speech on Martin Luther King Day

Here is a highlight from the full text of Al Gore's speech today courtesy of The Huffington Post.

One of the other ways the Administration has tried to control the flow of information is by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. As President Eisenhower said, “Any who act as if freedom’s defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America.”

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: “Men feared witches and burnt women.”

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment’s notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march—when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

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Kickback Mountain

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Posted by Cory Anderson

4 Reasons To Be Glad Bush is Still President

From the LA Weekly, here is the post from Ezra Klein and Joshua Bearman:

I know, it still smarts. At 3 p.m. EST on November 2, 2004, we thought Bush was on the ropes, as did Karen Hughes, who sat the bewildered boy king down to explain they were losing. But by midnight, the awful truth came into focus: the fucker just squeaked by again — or didn’t, depending on what you think happened in Ohio. But with his second term imploding almost immediately, maybe it’s better Bush stayed around long enough for the curtain to drop on his act. Here’s a roundup of reasons to take comfort that Kerry’s not in the White House today.

Iraq. The deteriorating situation in Iraq is the inevitable outcome of a poorly conceived, incompetently executed and predictably doomed flight of foreign policy fancy. We all saw how Kerry blew a fuse — and the campaign — when forced to take a position on the war. Imagine how a President Kerry, inheriting Bush’s disaster, would have been paralyzed with the Hobson’s choice left by his predecessor. To be a “tough Democrat,” he might have disastrously committed more troops. Any withdrawal would be tarred by the right as treason and cause even more damage to the party on that old bugaboo, defense. Staying the course would be more of the same, a steady erosion of credibility on all sides. The fact is that there’s no good solution to Bush’s disaster, and that’s why it should stay his and his alone. Bush built the SS Fuck Up single-handedly, so he can sit in the bridge, snap a crisp salute and go down with it all by himself.

Bushonomics. Another bed that Bush made. This president has spent more than any other in history while slashing taxes for all his clubhouse buddies — and their buddies and their buddies’ buddies. Between massive tax cuts, two costly wars, hurricane and 9/11 relief, the usual mess of pork and a huge new entitlement program for pharmaceutical companies called the prescription drug plan, Bush triumphantly undid one of the biggest legislative successes of conservatism: Clinton’s balanced budget. In Bush’s five short years in office, total national debt grew by 40 percent — from $5.7 trillion to $8.1 trillion — and some economists now seriously worry about the country’s solvency. Soon, someone will either have to 1) raise taxes, 2) cut programs or 3) preside over the recession that will result from foreign governments refusing to bankroll our debt. He’s the Accountability President; let him bask in all the blame. Better that than we get burned picking up the pieces.

Scandals. Another silver lining in the dark clouds over Washington is that it might be a swiftly breaking storm. It’s taken less than five years for the Republican Idea to reveal itself as a grotesque falsehood. Now we’ve got great seats as a whole host of first-term crimes hatch into second-term scandals. The Plame Game, Jack Abramoff’s web of Republican intrigue, Bill Frist’s financial indiscretions, domestic spying, the cronyism exposed by Brownie’s heck of a job during Katrina — these were ineptitudes and overreaches of Nixonian dimension that, for the sake of the country, need vigorous public exposure. Had Bush simply escaped, his malfeasances would have vanished into the past. Now they’ll emerge, in all their glorious criminality, and the country will really get to see Dorian Gray’s portrait. If we’re lucky, another three years will be just enough time for the Republicans to sabotage their own chances at their “permanent majority.” As they might say down in Texas, give a guy enough rope...

Schadenfreude. It might be bad form to gloat, but watching Bush fail is at least civic-minded gloating. The parade of poor policies that was Bush’s first term was the result of a broken legislative process that wrote poor laws to please narrow constituencies. It’s an approach to government that must be discredited, so watching the Bush presidency fall apart is more than just satisfying; it’s important. Because Bush’s bad faith, G-d willing, may force the country to confront its blind trust in bad leaders, and prompt Congress to reassert its oversight role as it did after Nixon’s meltdown in the ’70s. Good governance matters, and we can’t let the reckless and corrupt simply leave their messes.

More Year In Review From Tom Tomorrow

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And today...Jack Abramoff pleads guilty to conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion.

Annus Horribilis

Sydney Blumenthal reviews George Bush's accomplishments in 2005 over at Salon and The Guardian.

In his second inaugural address, George Bush four times summoned the image of fire - 'a day of fire', 'we have lit a fire', 'fire in the minds of men', and 'untamed fire'. Over the course of the first year of his second term, all four of the ancient Greek elements have wreaked havoc: the fire of war, the air and water of Hurricane Katrina, the earth ravaged by whirlwinds raging from Iraq to Florida, from Louisiana to Washington. Through obsession or obliviousness, rigidity or laziness, Bush got himself singed, tossed about, engulfed, and nearly buried.

He began the year proclaiming 'a turning point' in Iraq. In every crisis he faced, he assumed that everything would turn his way, as it always had in the past. He ended the year declaring 'victory' within reach.

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Since the election of the Shia slate that will hold power for four years, dedicated to an Islamic state allied with Iran, the president and his advisers have fallen eerily silent. As his annus horribilis draws to a close, Bush appears to have expended the turning points. Welcome to victory.