Good news on FISA front

As Glenn Greenwald notes, an appeals court has said that plaintiffs in a suit the ACLU has brought against the U.S. government over warrantless telecommunications wiretapping have legal standing to sue the government.

Team Obama had been continuing the BushCo argument that the plaintiffs could not prove they themselves had been harmed by the snooping and that, due to the stase secretes executive privilege, they could not look at records to determine if this might be the case.

Well, now, just maybe, the state secrets bullshit can get blown up in court.

Maybe some Internet utopians can fill amicus briefs on behalf of poor, poor Team Obama, too.

Or, more seriously, maybe Wikileaks can have some new dumps, directly relevant to this, by the time this goes to SCOTUS because, without that, given the Supremes' deference to the executive branch, I'm afraid this will be overturned.

BushCo lies continue even with a new presidnet.

Gale Norton has no shame, it's obvious; Dirk Kempthorne is not a whole lot better:

Norton said the Bush administration focused primarily on onshore drilling and that there "was really not much change as to the outer continental shelf."

Henry Waxman gets it right, including not giving Team Obama a pass:

The Interior Department under both Bush and Obama made serious mistakes, Waxman said.

"The cop on the beat was off duty for nearly a decade," he said. "And this gave rise to a dangerous culture of permissiveness."

Recommendations by Cheney's energy task force and Norton's failure to act on safety warnings about blowout preventers and rejection of proposals to strengthen standards for cementing wells sent a clear message that "the priority was more drilling first, safety second," Waxman said.

Kempthorne oversaw the "deeply flawed assessment" of potential environmental impacts of the lease sale, and MMS's mission became "to serve the oil and gas industry," he added. But Congress "was complicit in this lack of oversight," failing to strengthen regulatory requirements, Waxman said.

"As a Democrat, I hoped the Obama administration would do better and, in some ways, there have been reforms," Waxman said. "But there is little evidence that these reforms changed the laissez-faire approach of MMS in regulating the BP well."

Polishing Bush's BP apple

At first, I read this NYT column noting that Congress had a share of blame for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and definitely agreed. Then, I got to the part where "the environmentalists" were blamed, and though I agree that Gang Green groups have made some pig-in-a-poke tradeoffs with Big Oil, I knew the author was stretching things.

Then, I noticed George W. Bush got nothing but kudos for trying to stop Congress, the GOP in Congress no less, from buttering up Big Oil. I also noticed that the Obama Administration also did NOT get blamed.

Then, I looked at the endline of the column and realized it was Executive Branch common oourtesy.

Passivity adding to pain of economic problems?

Bob Herbert says many Americans’ passivity, stemming from a refusal to accept personal responsibility for many things in recent years, is part of why the current recession, H1N1 flu worries, etc. all feel so painful..

Being an American has become a spectator sport.

I’d say that’s more on the right, tea-party activism aside, than on the left. You re-elected the guy who rang up massive deficits, who presided over the housing and other booms and bubbles, and who then initiated much of the government-funded set of bailouts for which you blame President Obama. (I have no doubts Bush would have bailed out GM, at least; less sure about Chrysler.)

Stop the cover-up, Mr. President

The New York Times tells President Obama to come clean on “enhanced interrogation,” and not just what the Bush Administration did, but what it may be doing, or trying to do, too.

BushCo smoking gun on CO2 revealed

We all knew the Environmental Protection Agency, below the level of Administrator Stephen Johnson, had good reason to support California’s car CO2 regulations and waiver request two years ago, and that the Bush White House stiffed it. Well, we now have the proof.

Holder to name BushCo special prosecutor?

Newsweek says Attorney General Eric Holder is considering appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Bush Administration torture of detainees, though Newsweek uses the euphemistic “brutal interrogation practices.” Four sources spoke on background, saying a decision one way or the other could come in a few weeks.

But, but, but…

Earlier, the story opens by noting AGs have in general stuggled to find the line between serving their country and serving their presidential bosses.

Color me skeptical, but, especially without knowing who these four sources are, it’s possible this is a deliberate leak, even as President Barack Obama himself battles Congress over a new intelligence bill’s parameters. A leak intended to be a sop to increasingly restless left-liberals and progressives, because of that, because of his expanse of “presidentialism” beyond even President Bush, and more.

(Update: Hold on, hold on indeed; evidence is mounting that Holder’s plan might be a sham and a head fake and this Newsweek story a bit of a fluff piece.)

In short, without knowing whether the four backgrounders are career civil service or political appointees, or a mix, I don’t know what angle the leak is from. And, Newsweek doesn’t enlighten us.

However, to be a bit less skeptical, it appears at least some of the four might be careerists. And, he supposedly has gotten him staff to compile a list of 10 potential nominees, five inside Justice and five outside.

So, what changed Holder’s mind, after he had seemed to let go of the idea a couple of months ago? Looking at the CIA IG’s report late last month.

And, he appears to have learned his “Marc Rich” lesson about maintaining independence from the White House, the story notes.

It’s a long, four-page story that talks about Holder’s first six months on the job in general, as well, so, give it a read.

It is NOT the ‘Obama deficit’

Dave Leonhardt makes that clear, despite lies by conservative bloggers such as Von at Obsidian Wings.

That said, Leonhardt also makes clear that Obama has chosen to continue many Bush choices; putting some of them on-budget is part of what makes the current deficits look so bad.

But, other stuff just got dumped in his lap.

That said, nobody’s forcing Obama to increase Pentagon spending so much, etc. And, I voted Green, so I have no special interest in defending the portion of debt and deficit that IS his fault.

Bush-Israel had backdoor settlements deal

News of the fact that the Bush Administration had an unannounced deal with Ariel Sharon, negotiated by (shock me) neocon Elliott Abrams, to allow some Israeli settlements to continue to be built in the West Bank, is surely going to up Bibi Netanyahu’s intransigence level with Barack Obama.

Obama torture apologetics logic undercut

Mark Benjamin succinctly makes the case, based on the details of the just-released Senate Armed Services Committee special report (PDF), that the CIA was engaging in at least “torture lite” BEFORE the Department of Justice’s Bybee-Yoo-Bradbury lawyers’ troika issued what is clearly an ex post facto green light in August 2002.

The Justice Department opinion condoning abusive interrogations did not come out until August, eight months after the Bush administration started putting the program together and presumably well after Zubaydah's torture had begun.

In fact, as Mike Madden notes, the Senate report shows in detail what has already been known, that by the end of 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for at least “torture light” if not more.

Oh, and in yet another tie-back to Obama, let’s not forget that this all started, NOT at Gitmo, NOT at Abu Ghraib, but at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, the place Obama wants to expand.

It’s going to be a long 45 months. Because you and I will not change the Obama Administration. You can sign 500 petitions, and they will not change Barack Obama.

And, I will refuse to sign any more petitions to Obama anybody else asks me to sign until they pledge to support third-party politics.

Barack Bush – ‘Torture on my mind’

No, President Barack Obama ain’t thinking of Georgia, he’s thinking of Gitmo East, otherwise known as Bagram Air Base, as his administration has officially announced it will appeal a federal district court ruling allowing prisoners at Bagram to sue for habeas corpus rights. The Justice Department also asked District Judge John D. Bates not to proceed with the habeas-corpus cases of three detainees at Bagram.

Coming on top of Glenn Greenwald’s great roundup of Obama imitating Bush on the issue of state secrets, this isn’t surprising, while it’s still certainly disgusting.

U.S. torturing – a ‘perpless crime’?

Ted Rall, in smacking down the reasons President Barack Obama, CIA Director Leon Panetta, et al offer for not criminally investigating BushCo torturers and their legal justifiers, says that, in a reverse of a victimless crime, Team Obama is claiming torture at Gitmo was “a perpless crime..”

Obama IS the new Bush on state secrets

The Obama Administration has filed its first response (PDF) to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Jewel lawsuit on AT&T’s telephone wiretapping at government behest.

As Greenwald notes, there’s not a shred of difference between Obama and Bush now on state secrets issues.

This is at the point where real progressives note, with allowance for inflation, there’s not a quarter’s worth of difference between the two on civil liberties overall.

1. Obama renames “enemy combatants” but keeps the idea;
2. Obama closes Gitmo only to expand Bagram.
3. Obama has the same idea on state secrets.
That’s just for starters.

MSM finally notices Obama lip service to civil liberties

The Washington Post finally rights about how Obama is BushCo light, or even just plain BushCo, on state secrets — and civil liberties issues that relate to that.

The story — only a month or so after Glenn Greenwald, among others — focuses on the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation suit. There, Team Obama has made the same use of the “state secrets” claim as BushCo did, essentially claiming, “We’ll let you the court know what you get to read and when.”

Even the most ardent Obamiacs haven’t offered much defense of what amounts to a claim for authoritarian government. And, the Obama Administration doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on:

“There has to be other ways to protect secret information without having to block accountability,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine. He said that “state secrets” has become a sort of “talismanic phrase” uttered by government officials who want to dispose of inconvenient or troubling challenges to their authority.

In fact, the story rightly argues that, in some matters, the Obama Administration may be worse than BushCo.

Otherwise, if you’re NOT familiar with some of the issues at hand, the article does a good job connecting the basic dots.

And, if your blog reading has been confined to mainstream liberal blogs like Washington Monthly or Talking Points Memo, you’re probably NOT too familiar with what’s up here.

Axis of climate evil, anyone?

Well, now we know just how opposed the Bush Administration was to real science, with word it was one of four countries to oppose the insertion of an illustrative graphic in a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The other three?

Russia, China and Saudi Arabia.

Axis of climate evil, anyone?

Leahy willing to investigate Dems on civil liberties, too

Now that Sen. Pat Leahy has said he will look at Congressional Democrats as well as BushCo Republicans on warrantless wiretapping, torture and other civil liberties issues, the GOP’s resistance to his “truth and reconciliation commission” idea has lost about its only rational plank.

Here’s one reason we need to investigate:

Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., who served as chief counsel for the Church Committee and has called for a new commission, said there is no telling what a thorough investigation may turn up. He recalled his shock as he sat in a secure room at the C.I.A. in 1975 and read that the agency had recruited the Mafia in a scheme to kill Fidel Castro.

“It may seem that we already know a lot,” Mr. Schwarz said. “But based on my experience, I’m certain there’s a lot that went on the last eight years that we still don’t know.”

Indeed, how many things besides TIP, Werewolf, etc., are still hidden from light?

Obama tanks for Bush again

And, once again, it’s on an issue of government openness.

Just.Another.Politician.™ is reportedly trying to kill the lawsuit seeking millions of “missing” Bush White House e-mails.

The Obama Department of Justice is continuing Bush DOJ efforts to kill the lawsuit.

“The new administration seems no more eager than the last” to deal with the issue, said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Kool-Aid drinkers, still ready to tout the “change”? (Other than the loose change in the WH sofas.)

So far, from a stimulus bill on down, Obama’s not doing anything more than Hillary Clinton would have done by this point. Whether she could have done a better, or a worse job, on herding Democratic cats in Congress on the stimulus bill is an open question, of course.

Bush’s worst legacy outside of war and civil liberties

His worst other legacy, without a doubt, is his anti-environmentalism. It could take decades for the National Park Service to recover from the neglect, cut budgets, neglect and worse.

That’s not allowing for the fact that new Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, while an improvement by far over Gale Norton, has a far from unblemished record on this such as oil and gas drilling in pristine lands, endangered species protection and other things.

That's BUSH - BushCo shuts down WH comments phone line

Far worse than stealing the "W" off computer keys eight years ago, if that had even happened (and it didn't), I'm getting reports from multiple activist groups, such as Clean and The Hastings Group, that the White House's telephone comment line was deliberately shut down by Bush staff and that Obama staff were not told how to reconnect it. Could be a day or two, is what I hear, before it's restored.

That's BUSH.

Obama has no excuse now not to prosecute BushCo war crimes

But he won’t, anyway

President-elect Barack Obama’s Attorney General-designee, Eric Holder told Congress today that waterboarding is torture and that we prosecuted it in the past as a war crime.

Military commissions overseer Susan J. Crawford said we tortured Mohammad Qahtani in other ways.

We’re a signatory to, conventions against torture that are now, per the Constitution that Barack Obama will swear to preserve and protect next Tuesday, the “law of the land.”

So, no excuses. Other than being Just.Another.Politician.™

I’m not going to repost the petition to get Obama to appoint a special prosecutor. It’s clear that he won’t do it. It’s clear he can’t be shamed into doing it. It’s clear that he wants to keep at least some of the expanded presidential power that Bush arrogated to himself.

Therefore, it’s clear he will NOT prosecute, or even look into prosecuting, former executive branch individuals in this area.