Senator Feingold's recent DKos diary has made clear that the cupboard is bare for those of us expecting democracy to survive in the United States. We can write hopeful diaries that attempt to decipher to the rest of the DKos community the artful ways of Speaker Pelosi, but the Speaker, like the rest of her political clan, has no art or magic left. Whatever magic we thought we drew upon last November to break the Rovian spell on the electoral process has dissipated. Even a senator as respected by the DKos community as is Sen. Feingold has shown himself powerless to draw on the magic of the populace and the polls indicating the American people's desire to bring this unjust war to an end. To the good senator (whom I applaud for posting here) and his colleagues, we can attribute several reason for their general failure, among them a fealty to a political party rather than an ideal and those of us who still honor the later. But such reasons will prove to be but symptoms of a more general loss: Our ideal has lost its magic.

What in the world is Levin thinking here, much less his Senate colleagues? After 5+ years and over 4,000 American deaths built on an edifice of lies, we take a major step toward expanding U.S. aggression in the Middle East? Wasn't mindless aggression one of the major major reasons  why we voted the Dems into office last November? Or are Dems not pulling an Iraq on us in Iran, using the scare tactics to try to get votes?

I would love for some of our honorable and respected elected officials to drop by DKos, as they've been known to do in the past, and explain the deja-vu I am experiencing.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin was interviewed this morning on NPR's Morning Edition and asked to respond to Gregg Easterbrook's criticism in Wired magazine of the agency's priorities. Easterbrook summarizes NASA's current priorities thusly:

(1) Maintain a pointless space station. (2) Build a pointless Motel 6 on the moon. (3) Increase humanity's store of knowledge by studying the distant universe. (4) Keep money flowing to favored aerospace contractors and congressional districts.

Below the fold, read how Griffin evades these criticisms ...

Sorry for brief diary. Just wanted to bring this story from TPM here. Apparently, the purge we've been following at the DOJ was broader than I've thus far seen reported. It included "intimidating" career people in the Civil Rights Division.

More below the jump.

In just one more case that shows us that the stated aims (depending on the day of the week) by Bush when it comes to Iraq (and just about anything else) are uncannily in direct contradiction to the actual results ...

I heard on Radio Netherlands the following story:

The British newspaper The Times reports that United States prisons in Iraq have turned into terrorist training centres. Supervision in the wards, where extremists mix with regular inmates, is so lax that detainees are free to preach hate and convert other inmates. The paper also says inmates seen as enemies or American informants are regularly beaten to death. In a reaction, the Iraqi human rights ministry says the situation is untenable and warns that the US authorities have no solution at hand.

Quotes from The Times below the fold

Bush said Tuesday he worried that allowing testimony under oath would set a precedent on the separation of powers that would harm the presidency as an institution.

I have to hand it to George. He still gives me a laugh.

Well, it would be gratifying to learn that our president, infamous for his incurious nature and his abuses of our Constitution, is "worried" about "separation of powers" issues. But, you know, our president is a folksy guy (in the "big hat and no cattle" sense) and so he is assuredly not the most precise orator, which is a trait so many of his supporters say foments their affinity for the guy.

But, what evidence from the George W. Bush administration do we have thus far that it is interested in protecting the separation of powers in the spirit of the Framers of the Constitution?

And what evidence do we have that this administration is not interested in protecting separation of powers?

In his article "Impeachment in the Constitutional Order," Scholar Jeffrey K. Tulis speculates on why "impeachment" has fallen into disrepute since Andrew Johnson. Tulis argues that impeachment is "anything but an anachronism," and has received a bad rap due possibly to a misleading analogy with legal process. Hence, we've been conditioned to be afraid to use legal means to solve what is seen a political problem to be solved at the ballot box. Rather than being afraid of using impeachment, Tulis concludes that the Framers intended for impeachment to be indeed a political rather than a legal tool, and thus impeachment is nothing less than a "constitutive feature in the theory of the constitutional separation of powers."

To understand why, please read below the fold.

In his article "Impeachment in the Constitutional Order," Scholar Jeffrey K. Tulis speculates on why "impeachment" has fallen into disrepute since Andrew Johnson. Tulis argues that impeachment is "anything but an anachronism," and has received a bad rap due possibly to a misleading analogy with legal process. Hence, we've been conditioned to be afraid to use legal means to solve what is seen a political problem to be solved at the ballot box. Rather than being afraid of using impeachment, Tulis concludes that the Framers intended for impeachment to be indeed a political rather than a legal tool, and thus impeachment is nothing less than a "constitutive feature in the theory of the constitutional separation of powers."

To understand why, please read below the fold.

I feel ridiculous coming here on Dkos to reiterate what everyone else on DKos knows and probably most of our senators and house members know, that to the Congress the US Constitution has given the "power of the purse" over the President.

I feel ridiculous having to write here what has been already written so many times before on this great public forum, that in November of 2006 we (the people) placed, by casting our votes, into our public service candidates from the party presumably opposed to the President's party, the GOP, because we believed that they were running against the President's ill-advised war.

Having taken that step toward popularly ending this unpopular war, we waited with great anticipation for our new Congress to lead us out of this bloody and despicable adventure. But what have we received thus far?

Like some other diaries I've read on DKos, I began to write this one as a response to Erevann's diary Impeachment: "War is the continuation of policy (politics) by other means."

It took a tangent to the main theme of Erevann's diary, the question of impeachment, and so I've decided to spin it out on its own, hopefully for your pleasure and thoughtful commentary.

It deals with the issue of the truth we speak to power, as when we question the lies of the Bush administration. Lest there be misunderstanding about my intent, I make clear now (and later in the diary) that we must continue this task of "speaking truth to power," of questioning the administration as well as the other branches of our government, and the press/media industrial complex too.

But this diary also poses, by way of a quote from Nietzsche, a reflexive question to the netroots about the truths we speak.

I hope you will read the question written below the fold.

I didn't see this posted on DKos after a search for "Global Warming".

5 MINUTES OF RELIEF FOR OUR PLANET

Turn everything off on February 1st between 7:55 p.m. until 8 p.m.

Urgent: action against climate change

On February 1st you can participate in the worldwide greatest action against climate change!!!

Various environmental organizations are asking the peoples of this planet to hold 5 minutes of "silence":

Everyone should turn off all lights, electricity etc. between 7:55
until 8 p.m. to bring attention to other inhabitants, the media and
politicians about the daily waste of energy. An act which takes only 5
minutes, which costs nothing, but shows the governments that climate
change should be on the top agenda of world politics. Why this date?
On February 1st the United Nations is publicizing the newest results
and knowledge base on climate change.

I wonder if some of the Kossacks more versed in the rhetorical technicalities and history of the U.S. Constitution might comment on how the Congress was supposed to work with the Executive to initiate and manage wars. Anyone with any ideas about this is invited, of course.

Article I. Sec. 8:

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water

Article II. Sec. 2:

The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States

Some quick thoughts below the fold ...

It is so sexy to discuss politics and policy. And I already love some of the people on here! ;-)

Just having a little fun with the poll and DKos.                          
               
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iPhone offers software, according to Steve Jobs, 5 years ahead of anything else currently running on other smartphones.

Bush offers us in iRaq a return to a war 40 years ago.

Bush is the marriage of Narcissus and Oedipus. He is caught in a specular trap of self-love, unable to attend to anything except his own image. At the same time, he is doomed to screw himself (and his motherland) by force of a tragic (actually, idiotic) compulsion to repeat mistake after mistake, including the "mano-a-mano" fight he once had with his father on the front yard. Thus, now he resists his father's advice, give to O W by the oracle (the Iraq Study Group).

I've sometimes wondered about the history of the relationship between the GOP and the so-called religious right (RR). Much of this has been talked about here and elsewhere. But in my ignorance I don't recall a discussion on DKos concerning the neoconservatives (neocons), who as a group seem to me indifferent to religion, and their relationship with the RR. In looking into this possible relationship, I realized that I had assumed that the RR's connection with the neocons was largely coincidental, to the degree that I had probably bought into some natural affinity between the RR and the forces of conservatism such as the GOP has come to represent, specially since Nixon. This timeline by itself should have alerted me, since we are becoming more familiar now with the roles of neocon liaisons, Rumsfeld and Cheney, in the Ford administration.

More after the fold.

"I simply was not convinced that the country wanted to see an ex-president behind bars," he wrote. "We are not a vengeful people; forgiveness is one of the roots of the American tradition. And Nixon, in my opinion, had already suffered enormously."

And, Ford said, so had the nation.

President Bush has publicly condemned Saddam Hussein as the man "that tried to kill my dad".

Mr Bush disclosed his personal reasons for hating the Iraqi leader during a Republican fundraising event in Texas.

Last night on NBC Nightly News, Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski said that many military officials are "suspicious" of President Bush’s announcement that he plans to increase the size of the armed forces. They believe that "he’s dangling that offer out there in an effort to buy the military support for the option to surge additional American troops into Iraq as if it’s some kind of tradeoff."

Miklaszewski added that military leaders are also still opposed to an increase in U.S. troops in Iraq, believing it would "be like throwing kerosene on a fire."

And they are going public with their thoughts

It is time to put a stop to Bush's game! With today's published interview with President Bush in the Washington Post, in which he reveals that he has asked Secretary Gates to draft a plan to expand the Army and Marines by as many as 70,000 troops, it is abundantly clear that Bush has no intention of carrying out the will of the people, who expressed in the November elections their dissatisfaction with Bush's war, and the need for withdrawing our troops from Iraq.

It should also become clear that this move is political poker, being played by this administration against the Democratic leadership which will take control of the House and (hopefully) the Senate in January, using our troops as the chips.

More below the fold ...