One by one, Senators are coming out to express their reservations about the nomination of Michael Mukasey for Attorney General. From John McCain and Lindsey Graham (both of whom, to be frank, everyone should expect to roll over in the end), to John Kerry, to Bernie Sanders, Senators have expressed puzzlement and astonishment at Mukasey’s inability to take a clear position on whether or not waterboarding is torture.

Still worse, if that’s possible, is the fact that Mukasey remains unwilling to say definitively whether or not the President of the United States is bound by statutory law of any kind.

In a NYT op-ed published last week, Prof. Jeb Rubenfeld of Yale Law School identified an answer given by Mukasey that should prove far more troubling than the horrifying but considerably narrower answer he gave to the torture question:

AT his confirmation hearings last week, Michael B. Mukasey, President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, was asked whether the president is required to obey federal statutes. Judge Mukasey replied, “That would have to depend on whether what goes outside the statute nonetheless lies within the authority of the president to defend the country.”

Rubenfeld elaborates:

According to Judge Mukasey’s statement, as well as other parts of his testimony, the president’s authority “to defend the nation” trumps his obligation to obey the law. Take the federal statute governing military commissions in Guantánamo Bay. No one, including the president’s lawyers, argues that this statute is unconstitutional. The only question is whether the president is required to obey it even if in his judgment the statute is not the best way “to defend the nation.”

If he is not, we no longer live under the government the founders established.

True.

And thankfully, the op-ed caught the eye of Sen. Chris Dodd, who today announced his opposition to Mukasey’s nomination based specifically on this point.

Which, since it’s a point I’ve been making about this “administration” for going on two years now, brings me back to the position I took just a few days ago: Nobody for Attorney General.

What Mukasey has expressed here is really a basic tenet of the Bush “administration’s” view of constitutional law. Mukasey himself has expressed nothing here that puts him at odds with the policy-making elements of the “administration” with respect to executive powers, and that’s something Senators need to recognize if they’re going to approach this nomination, or indeed any dealings with the Bush White House at all, in any rational fashion.

Ask yourselves who could convince you – and how would they do it? – that they were serious about safeguarding the basic tenets of the Constitution and its separation of powers, and at the same time keep faith with this “administration?”

Any president — and I mean any president — ought to be able to depend on a certain amount of deference from his or her Attorney General, of course. This ordinarily goes without saying, but in this case must be said because it sets up an irreconcilable paradox. Is it even possible to serve an administration that regularly asserts constitutional interpretations like the one Judge Mukasey did and protect the fundamental rule of law which underlies our entire constitutional system of government? How could it be so?

Who could do that? Could anyone?

If not — and I assert that it is simply not possible to do — should Senators be operating under normal circumstances? That is, should they be proceeding with the nomination as if this president — who has himself created this irreconcilable paradox — were in fact entitled to this or indeed any nominee?

An “administration” that sends distinguished federal judges to Capitol Hill and puts them in a position requiring them to hedge on answers to such basic questions as must a president obey federal statutes is operating so far outside the bounds of normalcy already, that it hardly seems worth anyone’s time to pretend that an Attorney General is necessary to the functioning of the government at all.

Indeed, the confirmation of an Attorney General at this point does the country a considerable disservice, by glossing over the fact that the “administration” is operating in a manner that would actually require this kind of evasion from someone who supposedly aspires to the nation’s top law enforcement position.

This is a process that should come to a full stop, so that Senators may pause and take a good look around at what’s happened, and what they’re being asked to facilitate, in the name of “business as usual.”

Let me say first that I am a big fan of Richardson.  He is a fellow Fletcher alumnus (spoke at my graduation), has a sterling resume and is a deal-making SOB (this is high praise in my book).  

The problem is that he is a bit undisciplined on the stump.  He  says things like this.  Ugh.  Again, he is a great guy and would make a very good president, but I worry that he doesn't have the discipline on the campaign trail to fend off the right wing attack machine.   

I've been criticized for focusing on the campaign and not just the candidate.   I switched from Tsongas to Clinton in 92 (a NH voter at the time) because I felt Clinton could win even though I was a bit more comfortable with Tsongas on the issues.  I feel the same way about Richardson and Obama.  Maybe it is cynical, but I'd rather the candidate whom I agree 85% of the time and can win, than over the candidate I agree with 90% of the time, but lacks the goods on the trail. 

As you probably know, Vermont is examining its energy future. as you follow this discussion you might want to hop on over to Welcome Campground and take a look at this post about what role coal should play in the picture:

The Global Warming movement has now focused in on the reduction of COAL fired power plants. Preceding the lecture by Hansen, there was a rally outside called No New Coal which was organized by David Merrill and friends to bring awareness to possible coal developments in Montana and the states in general and why they are a TERRIBLE idea that don't benefit the country.

(The editorial really is worth a read – promoted by JulieWaters)

If you haven't seen it yet, take a look at today's editorial in the Times Argus on Douglas' recent “Set the Agenda” tour.  I give it a “4”.

Nate

( – promoted by odum)

On my tour around the Vermont webscape, I noticed that Colby has resurrected a perennial canard that's worth responding to; the myth of the Democratic overlord (or boogeyman, if you prefer) – Harlan Sylvester.

To start, Colby sets up a faux cause-effect link by stating “I told you the real behind-the-scenes Vermont Dems weren’t going to sit on their hands and watch Anthony Pollina play in the media spotlight for long,” and goes on to implicate Sylevester as “The real behind the scenes kingmaker of Vermont politicians” in a post dramatically entitled “The Hand of Harlan.” It's just the kind of chatter that makes most actual, hands-on Dem insiders roll their eyes. While Colby's overall assessment of mainstream politics and the Democratic Party is a legitimate, defensible opinion that one may or may not agree with, his “insider info” can be very bit hit-or-miss.

This one, while dramatically compelling, is a miss.

The reason the Democratic gubernatorial whisper campaigns suddenly went live, is that rank-and-file Democrats were getting antsy – even rebellious. And with reorganization coming up, and the Party Chairmanship at stake, that matters in a big way. The idea that a Democratic Wizard of Oz behind the curtain decided to throw a switch to avoid Pollina is sexy, but off-base. This operation just aint that coordinated. If there were such a command-and-control operation, its a switch that would've been thrown weeks or months ago. The fact is that Pollina's entry into a left wing vacuum threw gasoline on a sense of humiliation already bubbling among the rank and file, and a grassroots pushback from many Dems was inevitable.

And setting the record straight on all this matters for one reason; that if such a narrative gets wide enough circulation, perception can become reality (at least to a point). The perception of power is power, and the limited power Sylvester does have, he has precisely because there is still this myth of the uberlord Sylvester in some, old-school circles in Chittenden County, and the mutterings about the “Burlington mafia.”

For an example. By the time I could get corroboration from enough sources, this was already old news – but the mystery man in this article from back during the session was, reportedly, Mr. Sylvester:

The energy bill also caused one of the more tense moments in the Statehouse recently.

Sen. John Campbell, D-Windsor, said he felt threatened by David O'Brien Wednesday evening when the head of the state's Department of Public Service was trying to convince the Senate majority leader to vote against the energy bill.

O'Brien told him a prominent member of the state's business community and a major force in state politics, whom Campbell declined to name, would be disappointed if Campbell supported the bill.

Campbell said he found O'Brien's comments “extremely disturbing” and took them as a “direct threat” to his political future. The lobbying “jeopardized the integrity of the legislative process,” Campbell said.

That's the hubbub, anyway. Clearly the Governor's people have bought into the line that Sylvester is some sort of kingmaker, but that breaks down fairly quickly when you think about it.

Sylvester's a wealthy guy, but you can only throw so much wealth around in this state. And he's hardly in a professional position to put together contribution “bundles.” Sylvester is a conservative investment banker and stockbroker, who rose to political prominence as a primary financial adviser to Howard Dean's governorship – to the dismay of liberals. His Democratic Party context has always been a Howard Dean context. Once Dean moved off the state scene, Sylvester became a Douglas supporter, becoming the Chair of his Governor’s Council of  Economic Advisors.

Believe me, the Chair of Douglas’s Council of  Economic Advisors is hardly in control of the Democratic Party.

The simple fact is, he hasn't been on the radar screen as a Dem force since the Dean days, and there's no way he's a master manipulator. When Doug Racine was running to replace Governor Dean, Sylvester was reportedly dour and resigned to the prospect of Racine beating his new man – Jim Douglas. He assumed a few months before the campaign (incorrectly, as we all did), that lefty Vermont would easily promote the liberal Racine to the top spot. It's hard to be the master manipulator if you're just watching and reacting to the conventional wisdom just like the rest of us. And do you really think, if he had been the overlord of the party, he would've “allowed” a Peter Clavelle or Scudder Parker candidacy?

And the truth of the matter is, at this point, most people working the Statehouse have still never even heard of the guy. That's not because his existence is some super-secret dogma that only the illuminati are graced with, it's because he's not really a factor. It may not be very exciting, or sexy, or sufficiently spooky in a Da Vinci Code kinda way, but life is never that simple.

Seriously, if the Democratic Party really were a dictatorship, it wouldn't be such a perennial mess.

Yesterday I wrote about fascism, with little optimism.  Today I’m going to write about someone who fought authority in a big way.  After she died two years ago, I wrote about Rosa Parks:

I just read tonight that Rosa Parks has died at the age of 92

I’ve always loved the real story behind Rosa Parks, which is a bit different than the one most of us read about in school.  The mythology runs that she was a tired lady who just got fed up with having to give up her seats one day.

This isn’t quite how it happened.  Rosa Parks was an activist and she knew exactly what she was doing at the time.  The bus boycott didn’t just happen spontaneously.  It was planned and executed masterfully.

More on Parks, her legacy, and what we, as activists, can learn from it, after the fold.

The mythology behind Parks served its purpose at the time.  NPR’s “On The Media” did an interview with Tim Tyson about Parks.  Here’s a question that was asked as part of that interview, by Bob Garfield:

I’m speaking to you on Wednesday – the Washington Post, in its appreciation of Rosa Parks, referred very much to her as a seamstress and very little to her as an activist. It did nothing to squelch the myth that she was just one woman who, on a certain day, had had enough.

Tyson’s response is instructive:

I think for some reason we are unwilling to honor people who are politically active. We want to honor people who just have had enough and sort of spontaneously won’t take it any more. But somehow if they get categorized as active citizens, which would be a positive way of saying it, as troublemakers… then somehow it becomes self-serving, part of a movement which we’re less comfortable with… it started very quickly after the bus boycott. And they talked about her tired feet. That gets mentioned a lot more often than it should. She may have been a little bit tired, but that had nothing to do with the decision that she made.

So here’s the thing: nothing in the narrative is wrong exactly.  She was a seamstress.  She was tired.  But she was smart, articulate, and really knew what the hell she was doing.  I like to use this as an example because it wasn’t just about doing the right thing.  It was about doing the right thing in a really smart way.

As activists, we have an obligation to push, and we’re often at odds with those who are more mainstream.  Barney Frank opposed the activist San Francisco same-sex marriages a few years back, saying it was merely a symbolic diversion.  Nancy Pelosi complained that she couldn’t arrest the anti-war protesters who have been dogging her.

Time and time again, activists and mainstream politicians create these divisions between themselves which don’t reach a solution, and part of the reason for this is because we’re a culture that has convinced itself that activism is selfish.

The reason Rosa Parks is portrayed as a tired lady who just got fed up is because, as a culture, we’re afraid of acknowledging what she really was: a powerful woman who had used what wits she had to take control over her situation against overwhelming odds.

She didn’t do it alone, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott had been planned for some time before, but the organizers of the boycott were really smart about it, too.  As Tyson notes:

Within a year, there had been a couple of cases of black women arrested on the buses who they almost had a boycott around, but who weren’t just right in one way or another. And so they were sort of waiting for this case… When she [Parks] got arrested, the word went forth and people in the community knew what would happen.

They waited for the right case and were patient and prepared and ready to go.

Can you imagine what could happen if we had a highly organized and coordinated opposition movement which would be ready to start flooding the media with letters to the editor whenever some boneheaded Republican would say that Iraq was worth the deaths of thousand of American troops?  Can you imagine what would happen if, today, we had people writing letters to every news organization that didn’t bother with this story?

Can you imagine what would happen if instead of just being outraged and frustrated we were outraged, frustrated, and extremely well coordinated?

Can you imagine what could happen if we were to transform the public dialogue and make activism something to be proud of?  Can you imagine what would happen if we told people far and wide that not only should the admire Rosa Parks for standing up for herself, but for doing so with eyes open, knowing that she was risking arrest in doing so?

I’m an activist and I’ve been an activist for most of my adult life, but I don’t tell many people this because I know that it might make them uncomfortable.  I need to get past this and say screw it; activism is good and we’re doing this because it’s good for the damned country.

Take this with you throughout the day: be proud of your activism and support other activists.  Don’t be afraid of what people will think of you for it.  Speak your mind, but see if you can find other like minded people to help, because this isn’t fun to do alone.  Parks strength came from her courage, but it also came from her allies and her willingness to sacrifice herself for a greater good.

  What are you going to do today that connects with other people?

  What are you going to give up today that makes the world a better place?

He's at it again.. I mean, seriously, why does he even live here? I was reading in the Tmes Argus today the latest about  Whinin' Jim – “High taxes, a big peeve, says Douglas” It's about his recent taxpayer-funded campaign “Set the Agenda” tour, in which he travelled around the state listening to 'ordinary Vermonters” about what was on their minds, and you guessed it, the constant scourge of the GOP – taxes, was at the top of the list, according to Whinin' Jim. It's more of what we've been hearing constantly from him as of late – variations on a theme, “How Lousy it is to Live in Vermont” or something. And Jim had some other things to say as well. Jump below the fold for the goods.

Now, I'm not diminishing the impact that high property taxes have on many of us in Vermont, in particular, working families. But I'm also really tired of Duglas continually harping on life in the state, while offering no real leadership of his own. In the article, Peter Shumlin summed it up like so:

“It's exactly the same agenda that Jim Douglas has laid out for the last five years,” said Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, D-Windham.

Citing rising fuel, health care and other costs, Shumlin added, “Most Vermonters are finding life less affordable today than they did when Jim Douglas took office almost six years ago. It's time for him to start solving problems, not just talking about the problems.”

Indeed. Now, this is where it gets interesting: 

Douglas has said repeatedly in recent months that lawmakers spent too much time last year on issues like global warming and too little on reducing taxes, bringing more affordable housing and other bread-and-butter issues.

Apparently, the governor has failed to read the final report from the Governor's Commission on Climate Change, which was released today.

The first line of the report states, “The climate change crisis may represent the most important and comprehensive global challenge of our lifetime.”  It continues in the second paragraph, “Global climate change is occurring, and every Vermonter will experience its impacts on the quality of life for which Vermont is justifiably famous.  If properly seized, however,climate change action can provide an unprecedented economic development opportunity for Vermont.”

And by “unprecedented economic development opportunity for Vermont”, I don't think they're talking about those McJobs that Douglas is so fond of. As far as the legislature “spending too much time on the issue”, House Speaker Gaye Symington said this in her statement today:

The governor seems to be of two minds. On the one hand he dismisses the legislature's leadership on climate change as irrelevant to Vermonters' lives, and on the other, his own commission describes climate change as one of the most important challenges of our lifetime…

  Legislative leadership, on the other hand, is of one mind: climate change represents an extraordinary opportunity for Vermonters to save fuel costs and grow innovative businesses.  The Governor's commission makes it clear that “attainment of the state's ambitious goals requires the implementation of all the 38 Plenary Group options” , and where further analysis or refinement is needed, “we recommend that this additional work begin immediately.”

I hope the commission's report is a sign that the governor will begin to take climate change and the pressures on Vermonters' fuel bills seriously. I urge Governor Douglas to join us in implementing the recommendations of the Commission on Climate Change, several of which can be found as key elements in H.520, legislation he vetoed last session.

So perhaps the governor should start doing a bit more listening to his own comissions, eh?  I certainly hope that the legislature, in this next session starts to realize that leadership can often involve playing hardball. It's time to start playing hardball with Governor Douglas. He has no bold initiatives,and of course, nothing that will offend his business constituencies, a major obstacle to positive change. He seems to be able to politically survive merely by lack of strong political opposition and a rather non-threatening demeanor, not through any merits of his own (which is exemplified by the challenge of finding a good candidate to run against him). That needs to change. Sooner, not later. He can be beaten.

Is anyone else seeing what I'm seeing? In the new environmental crisis — wildfires in the hills around San Diego & Los Angeles — The Bush — um — team has been most helpful to their fellow Republican governor Aah-noldt, in helping to feed, water, and temporarily house middle class mostly white fire refugees.   CarpetBagger Steve Benen's look is a tad less cynical, if you want to check it out. No mercenaries barring access, way less despair, everyone but a handful of people got out, and many are now returning to their homes, although a couple thousand homes are ash and debris.

Except, somehow, the migrant workers who were left in the fields by their employers, and stayed there, worried they would lose their jobs if they evacuated as urged by migrant aid groups and authorities.

Some may say it's different — and better — because the Bushie FEMA folks actually “learned” something from the Katrina-levee disaster fiasco. I suspect that the party of the governor and the race and class of the victims have way too much to do with it.

My belief is partly fallout from the politicization of the Justice Department: if the Current Occupant's administration can pressure prosecutors to ignore Republican crime to animate dead cases against Democrats, what would stop them from shipping aid hand over fist to a Republican-led state versus a Democratic-led one?

In a Time of Universal Deceit, Telling the TRUTH is a Revolutionary Act. — George Orwell

Last year, Live Science published a nice little summary article (How the Brain Tunes Out Background Noise)) about our mental process and how our perceptual process will tend to phase out the aspects of our surroundings which are routine or predictable:

The “novelty detector neurons,” as researchers call them, quickly stop firing if a sound or sound pattern is repeated. They will briefly resume firing if some aspect of the sound changes. The neurons can detect changes in pitch, loudness or duration of a single sound and can also note shifts in the pattern of a complex series of sounds.

This applies to politics a lot more than we might think.  I’ve got some writing below about general concepts (driving and music).  At the end, I’ll apply this to fascism and where our country might be headed.

The piece continues:

“It is probably a good thing to have this ability because it allows us to tune out background noises like the humming of a car’s motor while we are driving or the regular tick-tock of a clock,” said study team member Ellen Covey, a psychology professor at the University of Washington. “But at the same time, these neurons would instantly draw a person’s attention if their car’s motor suddenly made a strange noise or if their cell phone rang.”

I’m interested in how this applies to driving– there’s a lot we need to attend to, as drivers, and a lot we don’t even notice on a conscious level.  How much of what we do when driving is necessary and how much of it is background?  Do some people tend to have more trouble with the distractions than others?  Do some of us have the ability to better distinguish background noise from necessary information?

As I am known to do from time to time, I will use birding as an example.  When I’m looking for birds, I pay a lot of attention to the sounds and calls of birds, but I suspect that, after a short while, I do not pay any attention at all to familiar birds.  Once I know that there are American Robins around, do my ears pay attention to them any longer, or do I just mentally dismiss them?

Or, on the other hand, we can think about music: when I am listening to a fairly common and unoriginal melody, I may not notice it at all on the surface, but I may notice unusual harmonies or arrangements of that same melody.  Or, alternatively, unless I specifically attend to it, I may not even notice the chord progression of a tune, once it’s gone through once or twice.  Unless the music does something interesting, it may fade entirely into the background– how often have you not even realized what song was playing on an intercom until someone pointed it out to you?

This may seem like a stretch, but let’s apply this to fascism:

One of the things the Bush administration is very smart about doing is to introduce concepts through slow bleed:

• don’t just start war in Iraq– spend months making it sound inevitable and then just do it;
 

• don’t just start spying on everyone.  Claim you’re spying on terrorists.  Then claim you’re spying on suspected terrorists.  Then claim you’re spying on suspected terrorists and those who talk to them.  Then claim you’re spying on those who talk to the people who talk to the suspects.  Pretty soon it’s everybody;
• don’t just announce that you’re torturing people.  Slowly get people used to the idea of torture by calling it someone else.  Then break down the definition.  We don’t torture, but we will use harsh interrogations.  Causing severe emotional distress?  Oh, that’s not torture.  It’s just extreme persuasion.

Little by little, break down peoples’ natural reaction of shock and surprise– keep it subtle enough that, eventually, Dick Cheney can shoot a guy in the face and get the victim to apologize.

If Bush and Cheney had just announced early on that they would be a lawless government accountable to no one, our novelty detector neurons would have been flashing like crazy.  But today, we’ve got basically that, and no one seems surprised by it at all.  This is because today, it’s background noise.  We can speak today of the evils of internment camps in WWII, but we can have people interned in Guantanamo Bay without it shocking anyone at all..  We can have a whole country being spied on and treat it as though it’s not something unexpected or totally out of the realm of possibility.

As I write this, I worry about crossing that line between useful and healthy paranoia and freakish conspiracy theory, but as much as I read about how there are people vehemently opposed to us invading or bombing or whatever to Iran, even people within the government, and I keep hoping that such a move would be enough of a “novelty” for us to be sufficiently shocked, but I don’t see anything actually stopping military action against Iran if/when this administration decides it’s time.  What I see, instead, is a bunch of rhetoric about it in advance so that we can get that novelty and outrage out of our system, and then, in the not too distant future, an attack and an after the fact explanation for it.

I don’t see us stopping it.  I don’t see the Senate stopping it.  I don’t see the House stopping it.  I don’t see the country stopping it.

Clearly, I’m not in an optimistic mood.

(Not in Vermont, but just across the border.)

On Monday, Senator Barack Obama officially filed to appear on the ballot in the first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire, writing on the traditional Notice to Voters “It is time for real change.” Immediately afterward, Obama was received by a crowd of 1,000 on the State House lawn in Concord, where he stressed that real change is going to take strong, principled leadership and the ability to bring people together.

Obama continues to show that kind of leadership at events when he visits New Hampshire, offering clear, direct answers on the issues that matter to voters.

Tim Foley
Proud to be a New Hampshire staff member for Barack Obama’s movement for change.