By Robert Parry
consortiumnews.com

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims that a key positive feature of the new wiretap “compromise” is that the bill reaffirms that the President must follow the law, even though the same bill virtually assures that no one will be held accountable for George W. Bush’s violation of the earlier spying law.

In other words, in the guise of rejecting Bush’s theories of an all-powerful presidency that is above the law, the Democratic leadership cleared the way for the President and his collaborators to evade punishment for defying the law.

So, why should anyone assume that the new legislative edict demanding that the President obey the law will get any more respect than the old one, which established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 as the “exclusive” means for authorizing electronic spying?

It wasn’t that Bush and his team didn’t understand the old law’s language; they simply believed they could violate the law without consequence, under the radical theory that at a time of war – even one as vaguely defined as the “war on terror” – the President’s powers trump all laws as well as the constitutional rights of citizens.

Essentially, Bush was betting that even if his warrantless wiretap program was disclosed – as it was in December 2005 – that he could trust his Republican congressional allies to protect him and could count on most Democrats not to have the guts to challenge him.

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By Robert Parry
consortiumnews.com

There are two ways of looking at the landmark 5-4 Supreme Court decision recognizing the habeas corpus rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba: As a stirring victory for individual liberty over collective fear – or as a reminder that the one more right-wing justice could make George W. Bush’s imperial presidency “constitutional.”

At the heart of the June 12 decision was the majority’s recognition that President Bush and his political allies have been playing games with the Constitution by turning Guantanamo into a legal black hole for the indefinite imprisonment (or kangaroo-court trials) of people Bush deems “unlawful enemy combatants.”

By the narrowest majority, the Supreme Court rejected Bush’s legal loophole, declaring that the U.S. government cannot evade the constitutional tradition of judicial oversight simply by citing an indefinite “war on terror” and by placing detainees off-shore at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

“The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court’s majority.

The majority also saw the Guantanamo loophole as a device used by the President and the Republican-controlled Congress of 2005-06 to evade the authority of civilian courts as well as the habeas corpus obligation for the Executive to justify a person’s detention.

“The writ of habeas corpus is itself an indispensable mechanism for monitoring the separation of powers,” the majority ruled, adding that it “must not be subject to manipulation by those whose power it is designed to restrain.”

In a concurring opinion, Justice David Souter also noted the duration of many Guantanamo imprisonments, “some of the prisoners represented here today having been locked up for six years,” he wrote.

However, four right-wing justices – Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito – saw nothing wrong in creating this modern-day Devil’s Island outside the reach of traditional justice for the duration of the indefinite “war on terror.”

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain also has vowed to appoint more justices in the mold of Bush’s selections, Roberts and Alito. If another Roberts or Alito replaces one of the five more moderate justices, the new right-wing majority would be in position to reverse the latest ruling.

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Actor John Cusack donated his time to make a TV ad reminding voters how McCain is just like Bush on all the important issues.

by Eric Boehlert
Media Matters

“Some Bush defenders, including former press secretary Ari Fleischer, [suggested] that McClellan may have had a ghostwriter or undergone heavy-handed editing.” Washington Post, May 30

“McCellan’s publisher, Peter Osnos, denies that a ghostwriter worked over McClellan’s draft.” Slate, May 28

Now that Scott McClellan has come clean in his book about the real nature of the Bush White House, I’ll confess my own secret: Scott McClellan was a ghostwriter for my 2006 book, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush.

No, really.

But let’s be honest, prior to McClellan’s new turncoat book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, where the formerly loyal aide confirms so many liberal critiques of the White House, as well as chastises the complacent media for rolling over for Bush, how many people would have even believed my unlikely tale of collaboration? Talk about a possible career-killer for McClellan.

And trust me, he understood the risk of colluding with a liberal media critic, especially while he was on the White House clock. I remember back when he was secretly helping me with the book, I’d say, Mac (that’s what I called him), are you crazy? What would Republicans say if they found out you were being disloyal to Bush, as well as aiding to puncture the long-running myth about the “liberal media”? I warned him that party elders like Bob Dole would open a can of whupass on him if they found out.

But McClellan was committed to my project and insisted on helping me craft my critique of how the press adopted a flagrant double standard when covering the Bush administration. He was especially angry about the media’s lapdog performance during the run-up to the Iraq war.

That’s why I wasn’t surprised by the revelations in his new book last week. In fact, they sounded a little bit too much like Lapdogs, if you know what I mean. (But Mac and I are buds, so it’s all good.)

This passage from his new book certainly had a Lapdogs ring to it:

And through it all, the media would serve as complicit enablers. Their primary focus would be on covering the campaign to sell the war, rather than aggressively questioning the rationale for war or pursuing the truth behind it. … [T]he media would neglect their watchdog role, focusing less on truth and accuracy and more on whether the campaign was succeeding. [Page 125]

So did this blast:

If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. … In this case, the “liberal media” didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served. [Pages 156-157]

And, man, did the press act shocked last week, or what? Tim Russert on NBC was stunned that McClellan was using “MoveOn.org” language to describe the Bush White House, and the Politico’s Mike Allen likened it to rhetoric used by the “left-wing haters.” (C’mon, Mike, don’t be a hater hata.)

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by Christopher Kuttruff
t r u t h o u t | Report

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced 35 articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush late on Monday during a speech on the House floor.

Kucinich, a former contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, pointed to “high crimes and misdemeanors” committed by the Bush administration, including misrepresenting intelligence in the lead-up to the war, violating domestic and international laws against torture, illegally spying on American citizens, obstructing justice and governmental oversight, and dozens of other violations.

The impeachment resolution came four days after a June 5 Senate Select Intelligence Committee report that vigorously challenged statements made by the Bush administration regarding military intelligence in the runup to the invasion of Iraq. Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee John D. Rockefeller said in a press release, “Before taking the country to war, this Administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence.”

“It is my belief that the Bush Administration was fixated on Iraq, and used the 9/11 attacks by al Qa’ida as justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein,” Rockefeller noted.

While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and other members of the Democratic leadership maintain that such a resolution is “off the table,” Kucinich, along with a group of his colleagues, has consistently pressed for a more urgent and direct response to the often unilateral and controversial actions of the Bush administration.

Despite the unlikeliness of impeachment gaining much traction in Congress, advocates of such a resolution continue to demand greater accountability of the executive branch.

As Kucinich began to issue his remarks, shuffling and talking could be heard in the background of the House chamber. Responding to the disarray, Kucinich objected to the Speaker, “The House is not in order.” After several strikes of Pelosi’s gavel, Kucinich started reading his articles into the record.

“In violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of president …” Kucinich stated, “George W. Bush … both personally and through his subordinates … illegally spent public dollars on a secret propaganda campaign to manufacture a false cause for war against Iraq.”

Kucinich started his speech by referencing a variety of news and intelligence reports regarding White House communications, specifically the White House Iraq Group, which was composed of senior officials (then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Karl Rove, then-Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes, former chief of staff Andrew Card, then-chief of staff to the Vice President I. Lewis Libby, then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan and others) who “produced white papers detailing so-called intelligence of Iraq’s nuclear threat that later proved to be false.” These papers included later-debunked claims that Iraq sought uranium and specialized centrifuges for enrichment.

These claims, which were central to the administration’s rationale for preemptive action against Iraq, were used, according to Kucinich, to “market an invasion of Iraq to the American people.”

Kucinich also noted that the White House Iraq Group papers “were written at same time and by the same people as speeches and talking points prepared for President Bush and for some of his top officials.”

Congressman Kucinich went on to challenge the administration’s policies toward Iran, as well as its conduct regarding military interrogations.

The resolution comes days after a sharply written letter by 56 Congress members requesting that Attorney General Michael Mukasey investigate potential crimes committed by the Bush administration during the course of its interrogation program. The letter, signed by House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, Barney Frank, Jan Schakowsky, Dennis Kucinich and other House Democrats, urged that the seriousness of the evidence on the program warrants a thorough investigation by a special counsel.

Revelations about the Bush administration’s interrogations policies, along with its systematic practice of controlling information provided to the media and the American people, led Kucinich to conclude that the president has “misled the Congress and the citizens of the United States” and should be held accountable for violating his oaths of office to “faithfully execute the office of the president” and “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.”

by Dan Rather
Free Press

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather delivered a blistering critique of corporate news on Saturday night at the National Conference for Media Reform hosted by Free Press.

The following are Dan Rather’s prepared remarks:

I am grateful to be here and I am, most of all, gratified by the energy I have seen tonight and at this conference. It will take this kind of energy – and more – to sustain what is good in our news media… to improve what is deficient… and to push back against the forces and the trends that imperil journalism and that – by immediate extension – imperil democracy itself.

The Framers of our Constitution enshrined freedom of the press in the very first Amendment, up at the top of the Bill of Rights, not because they were great fans of journalists – like many politicians, then and now, they were not – but rather because they knew, as Thomas Jefferson put it, that, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free… it expects what never was and never will be.”

And it is because of this Constitutionally-protected role that I still prefer to use the word “press” over the word “media.” If nothing else, it serves as a subtle reminder that – along with newspapers – radio, television, and, now, the Internet, carry the same Constitutional rights, mandates, and responsibilities that the founders guaranteed for those who plied their trade solely in print.

So when you hear me talk about the press, please know that I am talking about all the ways that news can be transmitted. And when you hear me criticize and critique the press, please know that I do not exempt myself from these criticisms.

In our efforts to take back the American press for the American people, we are blessed this weekend with the gift of good timing. For anyone who may have been inclined to ask if there really is a problem with the news media, or wonder if the task of media reform is, indeed, an urgent one… recent days have brought an inescapable answer, from a most unlikely source.

A source who decided to tell everyone, quote, “what happened.”

I know I can’t be the first person this weekend to reference the recent book by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, but, having interviewed him this past week, I think there are some very important points to be made from the things he says in his book, and the questions his statements raise.

I’m sure all of you took special notice of what he had to say about the role of the press corps, in the run-up to the war in Iraq. In the government’s selling of the war, he said they were – or, I should say, we were “complicit enablers” and “overly deferential.”

These are interesting statements, especially considering their source. As one tries to wrap one’s mind around them, the phrase “cognitive dissonance” comes to mind.

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