The pressure is growing on the Justice Department to produce supposedly "deleted" e-mails that could reveal whether government lawyers during the Bush administration were instructed to devise legal justifications for torture.
There is strong evidence that John Conyers, Patrick Leahy, and most of the rest of us are in love with torture-lawyer Jay Bybee. I'm not talking about sexual love and wouldn't, because people's lives are lost to such bread-and-circuses journalism every day. I'm talking deep personal devotion.
Let's examine the evidence.
1. As head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jay Bybee committed felonies in exchange for being nominated to a life-time seat on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Bybee violated the Anti-Torture Statute and the War Crimes Statute by facilitating torture through secret memos purporting to legalize specific criminal acts. Bybee also played a leading role in a conspiracy to violate the UN Charter, the US Constitution, and the War Powers Act by signing a secret memo purporting to give presidents the unrestricted power to launch aggressive wars.
There's a fundamental lesson in collective bargaining that seems to have been lost on the White House, and those in Congress who devised their failing strategy on healthcare reform:
Don't make all your compromises before you walk in the room.
House Democrats reached a compromise yesterday on the cramdown provision of John Conyers' Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, and for a change, it was a decent compromise. Proponents of this legislation pretty much managed to keep the cramdown provision intact, meaning that bankruptcy judges will be able to modify mortgages for homeowners facing foreclosure on primary residences. Plus, there were negotiations with Senate Dems and not just New Democrats, who have been acting on behalf of their corporate interests and have made passing cramdown legislation ridiculously and unnecessarily difficult.
If you want to see what I mean, read Dday's excellent post, "Ellen Tauscher's Insatiable Appetite for More Homeless People," which lambastes Rep. Tauscher, head of the New Democrat Coalition and former Wall Street investor, for delaying this much needed legislation and then bragging about it. Then, read the hilarious message Tauscher's office sent to Chris Bowers, which took a defensive tone over the criticism Tauscher has received. Tough shit Tauscher! She's the one who put the interests of banks before her constituents. Not to mention the fact that she has a former bank industry lobbyist working in her office, and is STILL working to restrict the power of bankruptcy judges.
Chances are Conyers' compromised legislation will pass the House tomorrow. And while, as Chris noted, it was a good sign to see Senate staffers participating in yesterday's negotiations, odds are HR1106's counterpart in the Senate will still face a tough battle. That's why it's key to keep Brave New Foundation's petition going that over 17,000 people have signed in the last four days! We have to keep the pressure up on Congress and get these judicial modifications passed.
Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi announced that a housing bill which could come up for a vote this week would include the "cram-down" provision, which would allow bankruptcy judges to modify the terms of mortgages for borrowers on their primary residence (currently judges have the ability to do this on secondary residences). This is an important provision, which most economists believe will be the best tool homeowners can have for them to stay in their homes, and for lenders to agree to loan modifications. The banksters hate this idea, mainly because they know it would blow the whistle on their consistent violations of the spirit and the letter of the Truth In Lending Law, in their mania to lock as many people into mortgages as possible without regard for ability to pay, so they could sell those mortgages on as securities, and so on and so forth. This ultimately is the fault of the lender, who are clearly the irresponsible ones in the whole scenario.
Along with my friends at Brave New Films, I talked to Rep. John Conyers, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee and the author of HR 200, the cram-down bill, about this provision and why it's needed at this time.
When John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, I was 6 years old, so his election didn't mean as much to me as it did for my parents. For them, JFK's election legitimized Irish Catholics in American society, more than a century after our ancestors had immigrated to the United States.
Before JFK, many Catholics felt they had something to prove, particularly in Northwest Iowa, where Irish Catholic was about as "ethnic" as you got in the 1950s and '60s. Since JFK, we haven't sent any more Catholics to the White House, but that's because we have better things to do (mainly fighting amongst ourselves).
Now, whatever else happens, a clear majority of voters in the United States have put their trust in a black man to lead us into what appears to be the roughest economic patch since the Great Depression. It isn't the end of racism, as some Republicans have suggested, but from here on African-American parents won't be jiving their kids when they tell them they can grow up to be president. Regardless of whatever else Barack Obama accomplishes in the next four years, he has raised aspirations.
Rep. John Conyers has subpoenaed Karl Rove again to testify about White House influence on the prosecution of Don Siegelman, but Rove's lawyer claims that executive privilege invoked by President Bush still applies, and Obama is bound by his oath of office to maintain Constitutional separation of powers by endorsing Rove's immunity and instructing the Attorney General to resist the Congressional subpoena. So...
Will Obama support executive privilege for Rove, or not?
Otherwise Obama has to give up his pipe-dreams of bipartisanship, and declare all-out war on Republicans by nullifying the claim of executive privilege and forcing Rove to testify, and it's war because the former President and Vice-President are only one step behind Rove as targets for prosecution. This would be the mythical equivalent of kidnapping Merlin from a Republican Camelot, and the boy-king Arthur W. Bush would be honor-bound to rally his knights in exile and storm the White House!
Or will Obama betray the credulous peasants who made him their king, and ally himself instead with the dark hordes of disorder and eternal sorrow?
Both alternatives are obviously impossible, and if Barack Obama is squeezed into the infinitesimal branch-point of this paradox, then the Universe will accordingly fall into a Logical Singularity where all known laws of physics and politics will be abrogated!
Our world will be swallowed by a black hole of Chaos and Unreason!
Bipartisanship is Obama, and Obama is bipartisanship, from his first real blip on the national radar at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, right through his otherwise incomprehensible and completely useless attempt to rally Republican support for his economic stimulus with humongous tax-cuts.
No entity can act in absolute opposition to its essence! Obama cannot abandon bipartisanship and declare war on Republicans by seizing their Merlin.
But not even the original Merlin could so mystify the rubes that they accept Obama's Department of Justice defending Karl Rove against a Congressional subpoena!
It's like biting the head off a chicken and screaming "Hail Satan!"
If Obama is rejected by his outraged base, his fragile identity would be undone, the mask of Barack Obama, Progressive Hero, would disappear, and only the original face of Little Orphan Obama would remain, abandoned by Dad and dumped on the grandparents by Ma Dunham, desperately cobbling together a credible persona in the lily-white paradise of a Hawaiian prep-school.
Obama cannot return to that nightmare of anomie! But he cannot make war on Republicans! Neither A or Not-A!
A logical apocalypse!
So anyone who wants our old familiar Universe to creep along through the next Great Depression that is already rolling down upon us, and anyone who wants a ring-side seat when either India and Pakistan or North and South Korea take that last little step into nuclear war and poison what's left of our already almost poisonous atmosphere...
Anyone who wants to survive for the next few years of our miserable future should call, write, or email John Conyers and tell him to stop squeezing Barack Obama into a paradoxical branch-point that will plunge our Universe into the nothingness of Singularity and Annihilation!
But there's obviously room for reasonable people to disagree on this issue, and maybe it's just as well to skip the last few chapters of humanity's absurd tragedy or sad farce, and let the whole thing disappear in one painless, illogical poof!
"Cram-down" bankruptcy and mortgage reform being marked up in House Judiciary committee: Just yesterday came the final word that "cram-down" bankruptcy mortgage reform was not going to be in the stimulus package. However, the House is not wasting any time pushing it through as separate legislation, and it is already being marked up in the House Judiciary committee. No word on the chances of this legislation passing the Senate just yet, but the rapid turnaround in the fortunes of this legislation is welcome.
Broadband grants pass with Net Neutrality intact: There was a lot of worry in the media reform community that the new grants for broadband would happen only with a gutting of regulations on network neutrality. Fortunately, from what I have heard, this aspect of the stimulus appears to have passed through the committee markups in the House and Senate with the Net Neutrality regulations intact. There is still worry that the $6 billion for broadband in the stimulus will turn into corporate welfare, though. Tim Karr has more on this at the Huffington Post.
Timothy Geithner is confirmed as Treasury Secretary. By a vote of 60-34 in the Senate, Timothy Geithner has been confirmed as Treasury Secretary. Four members of the Democratic Senate caucus voted no: Robert Byrd, Russ Feingold, Tom Harkin and Bernie Sanders. Feingold's no vote is surprising, as he rarely votes against Presidential appointees. Ten Republicans voted in favor of confirming Geithner. While I would have been fine with him being defeated, this is really a "meh."
John Conyers continues investigation of Bush administration. While discussion of investigation the Bush administration has often been couched in hypothetical terms, House Judiciary Chair John Conyers today showed that such investigations are currently ongoing. A few hours ago, Conyers subpoenaed Karl Rove, as part of an ongoing investigation of Karl Rove, former Attorney General Michael Mukaksey, former White House consul and Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers and former White House Cheif of Staff Josh Bolton that was actually written into the judiciary rules package. So much for hypotheticals, or for looking forward rather than back. Let the investigations continue!
In advance of tomorrow's action to try and push the DeFazio amendment to increase high-speed rail funding in the stimulus package, I was wondering if anyone had a list of legislative directors for Democratic members of the House Rules committee. For that matter, a complete list of House legislative directors would be extremely useful. The reason for this is that, as I am coming to understand it, citizen lobbying is far more effective if it is aimed at legislative directors rather than simply leaving comments with the front desks of congressional offices. It is worth noting that the Rules committee also appears to contain many progressives, and should be fertile ground for our action.
Lots of action in Capitol Hill, and also in the White House. Isn't it great to actually be governing? :)
We received word this afternoon that Rep. DeFazio's amendment that would have provided $2 billion in assistance to transit agencies was required to be withdrawn. We'll post more as we learn it, but had something to do with parliamentary issues.
If you called Rep. Slaughter on the Rules Committee today, we thank you very much for your support and effort to get that crucial funding included in the economic recovery package. (And we point out that calls to her should no longer be made.)
Frak. I didn't act fast enough on this one. Still learning about how these things work.
"Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor (ideally Patrick Fitzgerald) to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?"
This question has received a decent amount of media play, as it is featured by Keith Olbermann and George Stephanopoulos. The latter teases that he asked Obama this question in an interview for "This Week" tomorrow morning.
Change.gov's response to Fertik's question was a bit of a non-answer, quoting Biden from three weeks ago:
Vice President-elect Biden, 12/21/08: "[T]he questions of whether or not a criminal act has been committed or a very, very, very bad judgment has been engaged in is--is something the Justice Department decides. Barack Obama and I are--President-elect Obama and I are not sitting thinking about the past. We're focusing on the future... I'm not ruling [prosecution] in and not ruling it out. I just think we should look forward. I think we should be looking forward, not backwards."
While not ruling out investigation, Biden's response makes it clear that such investigations will not be a priority. It is a safe bet that Obama will provide a similar answer tomorrow morning.
This is an instance where we do not have to wait for the Justice Department, however. Given that, in the U.S. House, John Conyers has introduced legislation to set up commissions to investigate the Bush administration, this could actually be a perfect starting point for the progressive legislation monitoring project. Starting on either Monday or Tuesday, we could call the Democratic members of the four(!) committees to which the Conyers bill, H.R. 104, has been referred, and ask them if they support it. In so doing, we can find out who is blocking the bill on our end.
Now, I did not originally list H.R. 104 as one of the pieces of legislation for the project to start with, because it is just a commission rather than an actual investigation. If no one is actually going to be prosecuted, this might not rise above the level of a resolution condemning something or congratulating someone. However, it is something that a lot of netroots activists and media types are both interested in, so I am willing to make it one of the bills we start with if there is enough support here. To go along with it, I will try to find another piece of legislation that has been referred to each of the four committees in question, so that we are asking members about more than one bill. If we can find out about more than one piece of legislation with each contact, it would make the monitoring project much more efficient.
The National Nurses Movement, and healthcare activists across the country, believe in Andrea Miller. Her message of guaranteed healthcare, as represented by HR 676, is just what this country needs--and just what she needs to beat out-of-touch Republican J. Randy Forbes in Virginia's 4th District.
That's why she's been named this week's Healthcare Hero. The Healthcare Heroes are nominated by the National Nurses Organizing Committee, California Nurses Association, and Leadership Conference on Guaranteed Healthcare to honor and bring attention to Congressional candidates who commit to fight for--and win--genuine healthcare reform.
John Conyers yesterday...and the Seattle PI today...ask us the same question: are you ready to rock the boat on healthcare and fight for genuine reform?
The answer is yes from a growing number of people....editorial boards across the country, 450+ labor organizations, 59% of physicians, the national nurses movement, and--I suspect--a majority of delegates to the Dem convention.
As we head into the Democratic convention in Denver, here's a look at where we are in the fight for Guaranteed Healthcare, courtesy of America's RN Union-the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee-which is working closely with the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) to unify party support for HR 676, the bill to end our healthcare crisis through an expanded and improved "Medicare for All."
I'll sum it up: among Democrats at least, there now seems to be a common vision of guaranteed healthcare, thanks to progressive activism.
At the same time, the movement has to deal with lobbyist-driven fake reform groups undermining the national desire for genuine reform, and with a healthcare crisis that is worse than ever. On a national stage, Conyers' bill HR 676 continues to gather support, while Obama repeats that he would support single-payer, if he were starting from scratch.
Infomercial king Billy Mays, known for screaming about the wonders of cleaning solutions Kaboom!, OxiClean, and other household products, is now starring in a commercial for what he calls "the most important product I've ever endorsed:" health insurance.
In today's roundup from the movement for guaranteed healthcare, Progressive Democrats of America lead the charge to put real healthcare reform in the Democratic platform, a Hawaii activist reports on single-payer organizing at Obama platform meetings, a Massachusetts RN warns that the healthcare mess in their state was created when "moderates" cut a deal to protect insurance profits, and Senatorial candidate Jeff Merkley endorses HR 676...though he also endorses the terrible Wyden bill, from his future fellow Oregon Senator.
Oh and health insurers keep laughing to the bank, with Aetna reporting another few hundred million in profit.
It's all below! Brought to you by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee and the Guaranteed Healthcare Blog.
Maybe I'm seeing things too optimistic, but stepping back from the details of the healthcare reform movement, and looking at the big national trends, there is reason to hope that the movement in California for guaranteed healthcare will lead the nation along a path to progress.
Obviously in many ways the situation is different...labor unions are stronger in California than they are nationally, (and led the way in defeating the insurance industry-backed fake healthcare reform bill offered last year by Arnold Schwarzenneger and former Speaker Fabian Nunez), and the healthcare grassroots might be more developed as well.
But the underlying economics are the same...workers, families, employers and the state budget alike are all being crushed by out-of-control costs for insurance premiums, deductibles, and co-pays, all for a service that places us last in the industrialized world, and to subsidize a health insurance industry that plays no role in the delivery of patient care.
So let's just take a look at the evidence that suggests California is leading the nation:
This year's extended primary just might be great for healthcare reform as the Clinton campaign's failure may have killed off the terrible idea of insurance mandates. She ran on it, and lost--just like Arnold did in California last year.
If so, great news all around. Working people, already struggling, will not face the prospects of having their wages garnished to pay off Blue Cross' inflated premiums, overhead, and denials. Healthcare reformers can focus their work towards enacting genuine solutions, rather than fighting off this insurance marketing scheme masquerading as health care policy. And all of us can debate the real issues at hand here, like the new report finding the number of underinsured is spiking as our healthcare system continues its death-by-insurer spiral.
We'll take a look at this and updates from single-payer movement below!
The credit card associations and the banks that support them have gotten away for too long without answering serious questions about their practices, and at long last, tomorrow there will be a hearing on Capitol Hill to consider the Credit Card Fair Fee Act - HR 5546. It hasn't had the same press as the Credit Card Bill of Rights but it is no less important, and I say that not just because I work with the merchant group that has done tons of work over the last couple years to bring the issue to this point.
One co-sponsor of the bill who speaking up on the issue is Vermont's Peter Welch, one of the best progressives we have in the House. Comments from Welch and more details via the Rutland Herald below:
On a day when the Bush administration is getting caught for misusing credit cards, it's a good reminder that the industry itself is broken. I work for a group that's focused on unfair credit card fees, so I see it all the time.
Not that the Wall Street Journal is willing to face the facts about just how broken the industry is. They don't DO facts.
So it's nice to see Rep. Conyers defend his bill, the Credit Card Fair Fee Act, in their pages. The Journal's faulty logic and the response below:
One of the reasons that it's so hard for the public to have a role in governance is because the main body that is supposed to intermediate - the media - is just so bad at explaining substantive policy disputes. Take net neutrality, which is on a slow boil, subsumed under the Presidential race and the much more immediate retroactive immunity fight.
The issue has been moving slowly, and now, John Conyers is getting into the fray, using his position as Chair of the Judiciary Committee to push for antitrust enforcement of network neutrality.
House Judiciary Chair John Conyers is apparently newly open to the idea of impeachment hearings following a contempt-filled performance by Attorney General Michael Mukasey last week, during which he said that he would not investigate torture or warrantless spying, would not enforce contempt citations, and he would treat Justice Department opinions as providing immunity for crimes.
As a result, Democrats.com has sent out an email requesting people to contact Conyers to support impeachment hearings on Cheney. The issue is politics, nothing more. It's clear to Conyers that high crimes and misdemeanors have taken place, what's not clear is that impeachment is politically a good idea.
On the jump, I've included both the email from Democrats.com and their argument for the political logic of impeaching Cheney, which pretty much revolves around the fact that (A) we're talking about impeaching Cheney, not Bush, (B) Cheney makes George 30% look like George Washington in terms of popularity and respect, (C) If anyone wants to defend Cheney... let them do it! (You think McCain's got problems now trying to appeal to both independents and movement conservatives?)
