Time to Unsheath The Daggers!

Metaphorically speaking....ofcourse.

What, Haven't you ever heard of a metafer? (H/T: Rabid Zell Miller)

Ex-Bush aide won't answer Senate queries

By LAURIE KELLMAN,

Associated Press Writer

Loyal even after leaving the White House, President Bush's former political director Sara M. Taylor obeyed his instructions and declined to answer most of Congress' questions Wednesday about her role in the firings of federal prosecutors.

But Democrats insisted that the decision to cooperate with their subpoena — or not — is hers.

"It is apparent that this White House is contemptuous of the Congress and feels that it does not have to explain itself to anybody," Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said as he opened the hearing. "I urge Ms. Taylor not to follow that contemptuous position and not to follow the White House down this path."

Taylor said she would answer only limited questions to comply with her former boss' directions, unless a court orders her to comply with the congressional subpoena instead.

"While I may be unable to answer certain questions today, I will answer those questions if the courts rule that this committee's need for the information outweighs the president's assertion of executive privilege," said Taylor, 32, who left her White House job two months ago.

"Thank you for your understanding," she added.

Democrats made clear they did not understand or agree, noting that she is a private citizen compelled by subpoena to testify, under threat of being held in contempt of Congress. Leahy asked Taylor repeatedly whether she had met with or talked to Bush about the replacement of U.S. attorneys. Taylor repeatedly refused to answer, citing Bush's instructions.

She got some backup from a GOP senator.

"I think your declining to answer the last series of questions by the chairman was correct under the direction from White House counsel," the committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said.

"Whether White House counsel is correct on the assertion of executive privilege is a matter which will be decided by the courts," Specter added. But, in the senator's view, "congressional oversight has the better of the argument."

Democrats insisted there were plenty of things about the firings that Taylor could discuss because they are not covered by Bush's executive privilege claim.

Taylor did reveal a few details: She said she did not recall ordering the addition or deletion of names to the list of prosecutors to be fired. And she disputed testimony by Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, that Taylor wanted to avoid submitting a new prosecutor, Tim Griffin, through Senate confirmation.

"I expected him to go through Senate confirmation," Taylor said under questioning by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

She refused to answer whether Bush was involved in deciding which prosecutors to fire.

Some lawmakers said by picking and choosing what questions to answer, she weakened Bush's executive privilege claim.

"This broad claim of privilege doesn't stand up," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Leahy took the unusual step of allowing Taylor's lawyer, Neil Eggleston, to sit next to her at the witness table. There, he advised her on which questions she should or should not answer under the president's directive.

Democrats said the same standard applied to a second former Bush aide, one-time White House counsel Harriet Miers. Miers, subpoenaed to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, said through her lawyer that she "cannot provide the documents and testimony that the committee seeks."

"Ms. Miers is thus subject to conflicting commands, with Congress demanding the production of information that the counsel to the president has informed her she is prohibited from disclosing," Miers' lawyer, George Manning, wrote to the House committee.

The two former aides are now private citizens, and some congressional officials have argued that it is not clear Bush's executive privilege claim covers them even though White House Counsel Fred Fielding told lawyers for Miers and Taylor that the president was directing them not to answer questions or provide any information about the firings.

A court fight could take years, dragging on even after Bush leaves office.

Wednesday's hearing is the latest round in the dispute over the administration's firing last winter of eight federal prosecutors. The congressional probe, now in its seventh month, has morphed into a broader standoff over what information the president may keep private and what details Congress is entitled to receive as part of its oversight of the executive branch.

Claims for executive privilege are based upon the separation of powers set forth in the Constitution. As a separate but equal branch of government, it is argued, the executive can resist efforts by the legislative and judicial branches to encroach on its authority. Presidents have argued against releasing some documents to Congress and against forcing administration officials to testify about private discussions, contending that such disclosures could damage the executive branch's ability to function independently and the president's ability to receive unfettered advice.

Taylor and Miers were among Bush's closest aides during the period when the firings were planned. Democrats want to know if the prosecutors were fired at the White House's direction. Bush has denied that there were improper political motives.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

They Thought They Were God's

They are going to find out they are anything but....

A BuzzFlash Editorial

In mythology, the Greek Gods dealt harshly with those who thought that they had the power of Gods. That’s what we learned in high school, isn’t it?

We were reminded of that when we re-read the infamous quotation of an unnamed – as always – "senior Bush aide" who boasted to author Ron Suskind:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Suskind calls this a revelatory moment about the Bush Administration – and indeed it was.

The quotation encompasses a hubris that is pre-Age of Enlightenment. More than that, it is an assumption of God-like powers by Cheney, Bush, Rove, (Rumsfeld while he was Secretary of Defense) and their underlings.

It is not that Bush believes that he is listening to the directives of God, as he has claimed. It is rather that he – and especially Cheney – believe that they have God-like powers.

No reality intrudes into the decision of a deity, because a deity creates reality, as revealed by the quotation that Suskind recalls.

Outing a CIA agent and threatening America’s national security, an endless series of failures in Iraq, hundreds of thousands killed, illegal wiretapping, shredding the Constitution, torturing people – and so many more actions (known and unknown) have defied the founding laws of America and basic standards of civilization. So many failures have been revealed in the broad daylight of reality, so many lies, so many broken promises, so much "collateral damage," so much failure based on empirical evidence.

None of this matters to the "Masters of the Universe," who in their own minds don’t follow the will of a specific God (the father of Christ, in their case), but who believe that they have a seat at the table of the Gods, that they walk among them.

Such is the horrifying dilemma that we face in the United States, that we are ruled by those, who have assumed that they have the power of Gods.

Reality is of no concern to them. They, like the Gods, claim to create reality.

In the Old Testament, the world was created out of chaos. And so the quotation above, cited by Suskind (in a 2004 New York Times article), refers back to the ability of God to create reality from unformed matter, only in this case the Bush/Cheney/Rove trio – and their support staff of Neo-Cons – believe that they are a God-force on earth.

In ancient mythology, those who tried to usurp the power of the Gods were smote, destroyed for their hubris.

Today, in this glorious nation, our recourse for dealing with those who believe themselves deities above the rule of law, and scornful of the Age of Enlightenment that produced our Constitution, is called impeachment.

Suskind began his 2004 article, written prior to that year’s presidential election, with this quotation from a Reagan Republican critical of Bush:

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that "if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3." The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.

"Just in the past few months," Bartlett said, "I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do." Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican, who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: "This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded; they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .

"This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts," Bartlett went on to say. "He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence." Bartlett paused, then said, "But you can't run the world on faith."

Yes, it is possible that Bush is just the Christian fundamentalist mirror side of Osama bin Laden. No action is to be regretted because all actions are divinely sanctioned, for both of them.

But more likely, in the last few months, as the evidence of illegal behavior and justification for endless war has unfolded, it has become clearer that Bush and Cheney are not under the perception that they are carrying out a divine decree. Although Cheney never even used the pretense of acting on behalf of another God, he has always simply acted as if he were a God. Instead, they are divine directors themselves at the moment of recreating the world.

At the same time, Bush has been virtually disinterested in actually pursuing bin Laden, who is the person that got Bush on his war obsession in the first place.

America is a nation that was created to welcome people of all faiths, but not people who assume the power of Gods. America is the product of the post-Enlightenment age, an evolutionary advancement from the religious status quo of the Middle Ages, in which faith defined the social and political order.

We are free to worship – or not worship – whatever God we please.

But, under the rule of law, we are accountable to the three branches of government, the Constitution, and the judicial system created back during the American Revolution.

It was a Revolution indeed, not a devolution to a distant past that rejected rational thinking.

We elect a President and Vice President in the United States, not men who assume that they have the power of Gods.

It is time for the Democratic run Congress to bring this government back to earth and, once again, make it a nation "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

What Bush Learned From Hitler and the Nazis

Bush learned how to slaughter civilians. In Iraq, US troops, commanded by Herr Bush slaughter some 10,000 Iraqi civilians per month. Bush, in an absurd neocon spin, will most certainly claim that that is proof that his war crime is "winding down". The US slaughter rate in Iraq had been as high as 30,000 Iraqis per month, 1,000 per day.

My source is Michael Schwartz, writing for After Downing Street. Welcome to the Fourth Reich.

From the Third Reich, Bush learned how to exploit "terrorism" to consolidate his dictatorship. Bush is on the Hitler end of the political spectrum opposing the very principles of our founding. Everything Bush knows he got by way of his Grandfather's old trading partner --Adolf Hitler, whose notorious Lesson Number One he summed up himself in one sentence.

Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death.

--Adolf Hitler

Bush learned how to rule ruthlessly though he is hated by the people. Hitler never got more than 37 percent of the vote in several elections called over a short period of time ending with the act of terrorism that Hitler would exploit to consolidate his dictatorship. That act was the Reichstag Fire, Hitler's 911. It's hard to imagine that anyone would dare go back to the well given the press "Reichstag" gets. Nevertheless, the tactic, having proved successful for Nazis would be tried again. No one every accused Bush of being imaginative. His gang would simply repeat a tired, old Nazi tactic and expect the people to go along. And, for the most part, the people did precisely that.

On February 27, 1937, Hitler was having dinner with Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels when the phone rang to inform the future Fuhrer: "The Reichstag is on fire!" At the scene, Hitler and Goebbels, found Hermann Goring, later Hitler’s air minister, shouting "at the top of his lungs", blaming communists for an act of terrorism.

How Hitler became a dictator is recounted in many sources but William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is still among the very best.

From Goring's Reichstag President's Palace an underground passage, built to carry the central heating system, ran to the Reichstag building. Through this tunnel Karl Ernst, a former hotel bellhop who had become the Berlin S.A. leader, led a small detachment of storm troopers on the night of February 27 to the Reichstag, where they quickly scattered gasoline and self-igniting chemicals and then made their way quickly back to the palace the way they had come. At the same time a half-witted Dutch Communist with a passion for arson, Marinus van der Lubbe, had made his way into the huge, darkened and to him unfamiliar building and set some small fires of his own. This feeble-minded pyromaniac was a godsend to the Nazis. He had been picked up by the S.A. a few days before after having been overheard in a bar boasting that he had attempted to set fire to several public buildings and that he was going to try the Reichstag next.

The coincidence that the Nazis had found a demented Communist arsonist who was out to do exactly what they themselves had determined to do seems incredible but is nevertheless supported by the evidence. The idea for the fire almost certainly originated at the top with Goebbels and Goring. Hans Gisevius, an official in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior at the time, testified at Nuremberg that 'it was Goebbels who first thought of setting the Reichstag on fire' and Rudolph Diels, the Gestapo chief, added in an affidavit that 'Goring knew exactly how the fire was to be started' and had ordered him 'to prepare, prior to the fire, a list of people who were to be arrested immediately after it.' General Franz Halder, Chief of the German General Staff during the early part of World War II, recalled at Nuremberg how on one occasion Goring had boasted of his deed.

At a luncheon on the birthday of the Fuehrer in 1942 the conversation turned to the topic of the Reichstag building and its artistic value. I heard with my own ears when Goring interrupted the conversation and shouted: "The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!" With that he slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand.

The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich (Touchstone Edition, 1990, p. 192-)

Hitler ordered a round up of the usual suspects, in other words, the opposition, consisting largely of communists whom the Nazis could, with but a shred of credibility, blame for an act of bloody terrorism.

Nazis knew what GOPPERS know now --that frightened and anxious people will willingly surrender the blessings of liberty. From Hitler's experience, Bush learned how to use a "Patriot Act" to crack down on dissent.

Hitler wasted no time. The very next day, he was in President Hindenburg's office urging the aging statesman to issue a patriot act, a decree entitled, “For the Protection of the People and the State.” Justified as a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,” the decree suspended the constitutional guarantees pertaining to civil liberties:

Patriot Act vs, German Enabling Act:

The Decrees of 1933

(a) The February 28 Decree. One of the most repressive acts of the new Nazi government, this one allowed for the suspension of civil liberties ....The president was persuaded that the state was in danger and, hence, that the emergency measures embodied in the decree were necessary. Even though under Art. 48 of the constitution, the decree would have been withdrawn once the so-called emergency had passed, any hope of this happening was prevented by the establishment of Hitler's dictatorship following the Enabling Act (see below). It was in fact never withdrawn and remained until the end as an instrument of Nazi terror against ordinary citizens who ran foul of the regime.
ARTICLE 1. In virtue of paragraph 2, article 48,* of the German Constitution, the following is decreed as a defensive measure against communist acts of violence , endangering the state:

Sections 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Thus, restrictions on personal liberty [114], on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press [118], on the right of assembly and the right of association [124], and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications [117], and warrants for house-searches [115], orders for confiscation as well as restrictions on property [153], are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.
*Article 48 of the German Constitution of August 11, 1919: If public safety and order in Germany are materially disturbed or endangered, the President may take the necessary measures to restore public safety and order, and, if necessary, to intervene with the help of the armed forces. To this end he may temporarily suspend, in whole or in part, the fundamental rights established in Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 ...........

Patriot Act:

Section 218 which amends the "probable cause" requirement before conducting secret searches or surveillance to obtain evidence of a crime;

Sections 215, 218, 358, and 508 which permit law enforcement authorities to have broad access to sensitive mental health, library, business, financial, and educational records despite the existence of previously adopted state and federal laws which were intended to strengthen the protection of these types of records;

Sections 411 and 412 which give the Secretary of State broad powers to designate domestic groups as "terrorist organizations" and the Attorney General power to subject immigrants to indefinite detention or deportation even if no crime has been committed; and
Sections 507 and 508 which impose a mandate on state and local public universities who must collect information on students that may be of interest to the Attorney General.

Bush learned how to suspend civil liberties after a terrorist attack. It must be noted that Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio is the only candidate for President calling for a repeal of the Patriot Act. Does that tell you what it tells me? Does it mean the Democrats are not up to the challenge of restoring American democracy? The question now is one of some urgency: is it too late to save our nation? Is it too late to stop Bush? Are Americans screwed?

Hitler planned to establish a "permanent" majority of elected Nazis in the Reichstag which would become a rubber stamp, passing whatever laws he desired while making it all perfectly legal. Bush's lesson: make legal all the crimes you want and plan to commit. Hire Alberto Gonzales to be the "enabler". Karl Rove, more recently, spoke of creating a "permanent Republican majority".

Two weeks after the Reichstag fire, Hitler requested the Reichstag to temporarily delegate its powers to him so that he could adequately deal with the crisis. Hitler denounced his opposition, shouting at them "Germany will be free, but not through you!” Hitler won the vote 441 to 84. It gave him a two-thirds majority needed to suspend the constitution. On March 23, 1933, the “Enabling Act”--a patriot act -- made Hitler dictator of Germany. It is not recorded whether he said, as did Bush much later: this would be a whole lot easier if this was a dictatorship ...just as long as I'm the dictator!

Just as Hitler cut a deal with Thyssen, Krupp, I.G. Farben et al, the DUMB-umvirate of Cheney/Bush/Rumsfeld carved up the map of the Middle East with big oil and Halliburton. Just as the Middle East is rich in oil, Poland was rich in coal from which synthetic fuels (to drive the Panzers) could be produced.

Bush used Hitler's play book. And, as it was then, it's all about energy. The esteemed historian John Keegan has written that Hitler might have won WWII if he had kept Rommel supplied. Rather than invading Russia, Hitler could have ordered Rommel to seize the oil fields of the Middle East. It would have all been over. Save for the "insurgency" that would have opposed Rommel.

Bush also learned from his grandfather that there is big money -- a killing in fact --in the industrial murder business. Our own Treasury Department is the source for the following information about how US corporations, primarily US Steel, for whom Prescott Bush was banker, helped Hitler arm and wage war on the world while carrying out mass murder throughout Europe. US steel produced the following percentages of war munitions for Hitler and his Nazi war lords: Pig iron 50.8%; Pipe & tubes 45.5%; Universal plate 41.4%; Galvanized sheet 38.5%; Heavy plate 36%; Explosives 35%; Wire 22.1%.

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

--
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

For more: visit the Existentialist Cowboy, http://www.existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com



(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free

BushCo is a freakin' disgrace to this country and to humanity, in general

Watching America:

"IN the 'you must be joking!' domain of international affairs, The New York Times reports [] that 'long running' efforts by the United States to repatriate prisoners held at Guantanamo have been 'stymied' because the returnees might not be treated humanely by their own governments! These are detainees, who have been held without trial and subjected to who knows what horrors for years (if Abu Ghraib is anything to go by) and are now (presumably) being released for lack of evidence against them. The U.S. State Department's human rights bureau is apparently insisting that any transfer deal include clear assurances that prisoners will not be tortured and will be treated in accordance with international humanitarian law, and that those pledges can be verified. The Times has one unidentified Middle East diplomat quoted as saying: 'It's kind of ironic that the U.S. government is placing conditions on other countries that it would not follow itself at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.' "