The White House admitted in a court of law this week that it blatantly broke the law and... nobody gives a shit. Late on Sunday night, the criminals known as the Bush Administration acknowledged in a court filing that they don’t have backup tapes of emails between March 1 and May 22, 2003. Nothing much happened during that time, except the build up to the Iraq War. As a matter of fact, May 22nd just happens to be the day the UN gave formal approval to the US occupation of Iraq. How unlucky is that? And, it turns out we have something called the Presidential Records Act, which is a law that requires the president to save all his records. Thank God nobody gives a shit about our president breaking the law.

Yeah, that's a bummer Tommy. Did you see the Laker game?

Two non-profit organizations are suing the White House to recover any missing emails and to create a more effective email archiving system. (That basically means, don’t throw your hard drives in the shitter.) Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) and the National Security Archive (NSA) are the two groups on this mission of failure.

Up until Sunday, there were quite a few contradictory reports coming from the administration. They said they had them, then they didn’t have them, then they did, then they recycled the back up tapes, then they were lost in a boat accident, then they were killed in Russia and finally, the court was told the emails got drunk and took off in a Jeep. None of those statements turned out to be true. The court asked the White House to clear up the confusion and state exactly which backup tapes it did and did not have from March 2003 to October 2005. Finally, late Sunday night, the White House came clean and said they had totally blown it. I believe they used the legal term, “My bad” and the US media responded with the journalistic expression, “No worries.”

In October 2003, the White House stopped their “policy” of recycling backup tapes. All tapes after that date have been preserved. Up until that point, it’s a bit spotty. In 2003, no tapes exist for March thru May and for the months May thru September the number of existing tapes is extremely low.

It’s been 2 ½ years since the White House “realized” there was a problem with the archiving system – and they are still trying to say they don’t know whether many emails are missing or not. The White House is clearly trying to run out the clock, knowing nothing will be done to punish them once they are gone. After Bush leaves the White House, the Republican media machine will go bat shit crazy if anyone investigates their obvious criminal activity and the Democrats will cower in a corner and shake. But, hey, the worst thing they did was commit an act of treason, so no big.

At this point, CREW and NSA want the judge to issue a ruling that forces the White House to copy email archive files from all electronic sources. It may actually happen now that the Administration has admitted that they “can’t find” a couple months worth of emails.

Go America!

Yesterday, Democratic Senator Chris Dodd stood up to Bush, Republicans and even his own party and showed them all what leadership qualities actually look like. The Democrats were about to cave once again, this time on the FISA wiretapping bill, when Dodd placed a hold on the legislation. It is the first time any Democrat has said, “Enough is enough.” As of now, the bill is stalled.

Amazingly, the Democratic leadership had once again given in to our very unpopular president’s wishes to undermine the Constitution. The bill would have given retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies for breaking the law. Democrats were actually going to let companies and the president get away with breaking the law.

I thought the government was made up of three branches. This article in the Washington Post is a tad misleading, because it is not the government that gave a legal directive, but the White House. This sort of shitty reporting is becoming the norm, however, and it is part of the reason Bush can get away with his nightmarish policies. They also neglected to mention that Democrat Jay Rockefeller is a telecom whore and greased this bill through his committee.

There is absolutely no need to update FISA as the Patriot Act already gutted it. In 2001 Bush authorized the NSA to secretly wiretap Americans without a court order, which happened to be illegal at the time. Telecommunication companies jumped at the chance to give away private citizens records and Bush was on his way to violating the Fourth Amendment. Comcast even charged the administration $1000 for each person’s record they illegally handed over. Currently lawsuits are making their way through the courts and it is not looking good for the telecom companies.

The Democratic Congress has attempted to investigate the administrations circumvention of FISA, but the president has refused to give up any documents. And Vice President Cheney went as far as to actually block telecom companies from testifying before Congress, an act that is not even remotely legal. Now that a federal court has found the entire program to be illegal and unconstitutional, the telecom companies could be liable for damages. But we can’t have that now, can we? Those poor companies took part in a crime because a powerful person asked them to. How can you hold someone liable for something like that? If my mayor asks me to rape a lady, I do it and I shouldn’t be prosecuted for it. That is how America works. If an elected leader asks you to break the law, you do it and you get off totally free.

The Democrats gave in after blustering last week that the the telecom companies would not get immunity until they explained what criminal acts had been committed. Bush said no to the request, and the Democrats then reverted to their normal spineless selves and said, “Okay," because they are the world’s biggest pussies who wouldn’t know power if it was rammed up their anuses. (That is a double body hole sentence – 27 points)

But one man stood up yesterday and put a stop to this egregious crap: Chris Dodd.

As far as I am concerned, someone just stepped to the front of the Democrat presidential candidate line. Barack Obama can blow all the rhetoric he wants out of his mouth, but until he actually stands up and takes action I don’t give a shit or have any reason to believe what he says. We don’t need the “politics of hope” right now; we need the “politics of knock that shit off.” Hillary Clinton runs her campaign by polls and would never have the courage actually stand up for what she believes in, whatever the fuck that is. Chris Dodd showed leadership qualities today, more than any other Democratic candidate so far. Personal strength is the most attractive quality a politician can have and Dodd is looking like the man right now.

So, what does the hold accomplish? Holds are a strange thing. If a Senator wants to hold up a bill, they tell the party leader that they will object and withhold their support from a bill being brought to the floor under unanimous consent. It forces the Senator supporting the bill to follow the actual rules of the Senate, which are much more difficult. They have to make a “motion to proceed,” which requires a vote on whether or not to start debate. The objecting Senator can then filibuster the motion to proceed. At that point 60 votes would be required to stop the filibuster. In a Senate that barely has a majority, Senators generally don’t want to risk angering anyone who they may need on their side some day. It’s an “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” situation.

If Democrats vote to end the filibuster, they are pissing off one of their own – in this case a man who is putting his career on the line for what he believes is right. And now Dodd is that guy in Tiananmen Square standing in front of the tanks. The left’s heroes, like Boxer, Feingold and Obama, did not have the balls to take this action. It is a big deal and a rare show of responsibility, courage and conviction by a politician.

And Dodd is about to get hit with a shit storm from the right. I don’t think we’ve ever seen the kind of attack we are about to witness on just one man. He will be threatened with retribution in the Senate by the right wing. His fellow lawmakers will threaten to filibuster and knock down every bill he introduces from this day forward. Fox News, the president and AM radio are going to go ape shit on the man. But Dodd did it anyway and it is important to recognize.

Dodd is a rare politician and everyone should now take a look at the man as a presidential candidate. At the very least, you can shoot him a message to thank him for doing what is right.

Update:

Majority Leader and amazing coward Harry Reid is threatening to do what he can to push the bill forward. Dodd responds:

Last year's biggest and most troubling political scandal from the perspective of civil libertarians and privacy advocates alike was the revelation that the Bush White House was illegally spying on US citizens by setting up wiretaps without the express authority of the FISA court set up just for this purpose. The hammer finally came down today, with a federal court smacking Bush upside the head with a ruling that his wiretap program violated first and fourth amendment rights.

It's nice to see someone in power finally take the perspective that the Bush administration's long standing National Security trump card in fact does not hold sway over constitutional limitations on his power. Gonzales' argument essentially boiled down to the program''s efficacy and how it has made Americans safer by stopping would-be terrorists. Despite his and his boss' disdain for the separation of powers and the constitution that created them, one might expect the Attorney General to be familiar enough with the document to realize that the courts are not there to enforce the laws in the most effective fashion, but to decide whether their enforcement or existence is legitimate in the first place. In this case, they're not. Not surprisingly, the White House disagrees.

Too fucking bad. You know what would be a really effective way to stop terrorism in the US? To lock up every single civilian and keep them all under nonstop surveillance, with all communications monitored constantly. I'll bet that would reduce terrorism. But the fact is, that's not the country that we've chosen to create, and even with the gaping security holes that riddle our society the US has managed to last quite a while with a remarkably low number of terrorist attacks against it. And that's with constitutional restrictions on legislative and executive powers intact. Knowing that, even the national security argument is in no way a compelling reason to toss aside our constitutional liberties, and it's nice to see the courts agree.

While Bush is gearing up for possibly his first veto ever over a bill that would allow embryonic stem cell research to continue, it won't be the first time he's stopped something that's good for America. Evil henchman Alberto Gonzales testified in front of the Senate judiciary committe today that Bush personally prevented the Department of Justice's Office of Personal Responsibility from receiving the necessary security clearance that would have allowed them to investigate the White House's illegal domestic wiretapping activities.

"The President makes the decision and that's that"? The Senate really is reasserting its power in the ongoing struggly with the executive branch. As much of a bullshit, partisan travesty as the Clinton impeachment proceedings were, one thing that Republicans kept harping on throughout that they got right was the importance of keeping the DOJ independent from the President. The Attorney General is not the same thing as the White House counsel, that title belongs to GOP closet embarrassment Harriet Miers. The AG, while appointed by the President, is expected to be able to work independently of the President, and in certain cases to direct investigations of wrongdoing at the White House. Clearly that's not happening, if Bush is the one making the calls on whether he should be investigated at all by doling out or refusing to give the appropriate security clearances.

I'm not sure what's more disturbing - the fact that the President can and does get away with this sort of overreaching power grab, or that key Senators seem perfectly happy to sit by and watch it all happen with little to no objection.

The revelation last December that the NSA had been actively wiretapping US citizens living in the US in the interest of "national security" has been a major factor in the continuing decline in approval ratings of the President and Congress. The American Civil Liberties Union has also initiated a lawsuit challenging the legality of this surveillance program, claiming that it is tantamount to domestic spying and exceeds the authority granted to the President by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which states that surveillance requires a warrant in order to comply with constitutional concerns. The government filed two separate motions to dismiss the case in Federal court today, the first claiming that the plaintiffs have no standing to file, the second says that because of the risk to national security the necessary details that would allow for prosecution of the case cannot be made available.

Their argument also makes no logical sense, it is a tautology. An illegal action whose validity is challenged cannot be challenged because of the illegal nature of the action itself. The executive branch is attempting to put itself in a position where it cannot be challenged on anything because of "national security." It's another example of the scare tactics and bullying that Bush has brought out every time Congress threatened to take him to task for something he had done in the name of the "war on terror." But this is a wholly different sort of opponent for the President. Federal judges are appointed for lifetime terms, and while resisting administrative pressure may jeopardize the future promotions of a federal judge, no other politics come into play once the judge has been appointed. The absolute worst case scenario is that a judge's decision is appealed and then overturned, with no ramifications at all for the original judge. This was the intent of the framers when the constitution was drafted, recognizing the importance of an independent judiciary they made the position as nonpolitical as possible after a judge had been confirmed and appointed.

So bringing out the "national security" bogeyman may not prove to be as effective as it has been in the past. Particularly considering the nature of the complaint; the FISA provides ample opportunity to quickly obtain a wiretap warrant in a secret court where no sensitive issues will be made available to the public, and even this was ignored in the administration's zeal to spy on its own citizens. Fortunately Judge Beeson doesn't seem to be buying it.

It's not as if the president was likely to face a hostile Congress if he asked for more authority in generating warrants for wiretap authority. But that doesn't seem to be how this administration operates, from the beginning it has searched to increase its own authority at the expense of that of both the legislative and judicial branches.

What is unfortunate is that the government's other objection, that of the standing of the ACLU to even file a complaint, could very well lead to the case being dismissed before a judge has a chance to weigh in on the meatier issues at hand. But even that objection is based on somewhat circular reasoning, as the government claims that it would violate national security to release information showing who had been adversely affected by the wiretapping, and therefore since it is unwilling to do so that the initial challenge against the government has no ground upon which to stand. In essence, the plaintiff has no evidence upon which to file suit because the government refuses to give out that information because of what the plaintiff is initially complaining about.

Wrap your heads around that.