by TChris

TalkLeft now joins the chorus of bloggers (many of them mentioned here) calling attention to this editorial in the conservative Barron’s. Think of it as a Christmas present:

The administration is saying the president has unlimited authority to order wiretaps in the pursuit of foreign terrorists, and that the Congress has no power to overrule him. … [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales last week declined to declassify relevant legal reviews made by the Department of Justice.

Perhaps they were researched in a Star Chamber? Putting the president above the Congress is an invitation to tyranny. The president has no powers except those specified in the Constitution and those enacted by law. …

Peter Daou of the Daou Report provides a scenario for how Bush's warrantless surveillance orders will play out. As Jane says in a post focusing on Obama, it's dire indeed. Daou says of the Constitution:

The cause of its demise is the corrosive interplay between the Bush administration, a bevy of blind apologists, a politically apathetic public, a well-oiled rightwing message machine, lapdog reporters, and a disorganized opposition. The domestic spying case perfectly illuminates the workings of that system. And the unfolding of this story augurs poorly for those who expect it to yield different results from other administration scandals.

He then recaps the familiar pattern all of Bush's abuses fall into: Talk radio attacks the critics as unpatriotic. The Republicans then defend Bush, resulting in blogswarms by left-leaning bloggers. MSM lends lip service and then drops it. The public gets scandal fatigue.

The president breaks the law. Life goes on....Rinse and repeat.

President Bush has granted a pardon to a former drug offender and current Denver lawyer, Wendy St. Charles.

A Denver lawyer was pardoned Tuesday by President Bush for drug-related crimes she committed more than two decades ago. Wendy St. Charles, now 49, was among 11 people who received presidential pardons.

In 1984, she was sentenced to four years in prison in Illinois for conspiracy to conduct a narcotics enterprise and distribution of cocaine, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. She was also put on four years of special parole and four years of probation, which were to run consecutively with her sentence.

Why Ms. Charles? My surmise is her employer lobbied hard for her.

by TChris

The Washington Post notes that the House of Representatives is doing its dirty work in the dead of night or in the wee morning hours — “well past the deadlines for the evening news or the morning paper.”

The House voted at 6:07 a.m. yesterday to shave $39.7 billion from entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. At 5:04 a.m., lawmakers voted to open the Alaskan wilderness to oil exploration.

Another sad death to report. Former Senator Eugene McCarthy has died at 89.

Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take seriously his message against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 89.

McCarthy died in his sleep at assisted living home in the Georgetown neighborhood where he had lived for the past few years, said his son, Michael.

Joe Lieberman has been Republican lite for years. Now he's a Bushite. It's great to see that Democrats are finally acknowledging it.

At the same time, Republicans are embracing him, including Dick Cheney.

Although some Democrats are upset with Mr. Lieberman, Republicans are embracing him, with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld singling him out, and his support for the war, for praise in speeches this week.

Does anyone remember when Lieberman backed Jeb Bush's law that called for the reinsertion of Teri Schiavo's feeding tube? Or that he supported the death penalty for offenders under 18 at the time of their crimes? That he was willing to work with Bush on social security?

Memo to Republicans: Take him, he's your's.

Via Atrios, Adam Kidan, currently charged with lobbyist Jack Abramoff in federal court in Miami, has made a deal to flip on Abramoff:

If the deal goes through, Kidan, who was looking at up to 30 years in prison, could now face a maximum of 10 years. That sentence could be reduced depending upon the extent of his cooperation as a witness, not only against his co-defendant -- embattled super lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- but also in the prosecution of three men charged in the Feb. 6, 2001, slaying of Boulis, the sources said.

Kidan would plead to two five year counts, and get a sentencing reduction for his cooperation. As Atrios says, now it's Jack's turn.

by TChris

Terri Schiavo's husband, vilified and demonized by members of the extreme right, is using the political process to fight back. He’s created TerriPAC to raise funds to defeat the politicians who exploited his family’s personal tragedy for their own political purposes.

Among Republicans it is targeting are Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas.

Michael Schiavo’s experience made him realize that his party has been hijacked by extremists.

"I was a lifelong Republican before Republicans pushed the power of government into my private family decisions," Schiavo said in a statement. "And it is not so simple to forget those politicians who shamelessly sought to squeeze political leverage out of my family's most emotional hour."

by TChris

Career lawyers in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division would have moved to block the Texas redistricting plan that provided Republicans with additional House seats in the last election, on the ground that the plan reduced minority voting strength in violation of the Voting Rights Act. A memo reveals that their concerns were overridden by a political appointee who was more concerned with assisting Republicans than enforcing civil rights laws.

Alberto Gonzales yesterday defended that decision-making process as a mere disagreement among professionals. Yet, as Last Night in Little Rock reported here, career professionals in that Division have been bailing out of their Justice Department jobs precisely because their commitment to enforcing civil rights laws is frequently undermined by “disagreement” with appointed officials who put politics first.

The right wing news site Insight reports through anonymous sources that Bush has relieved Cheney of national security duties. It would be great news, if true, but given the source, I'm suspect. [Via Raw Story.]

This paragraph is the most intriguing:

Mr. Bush is not expected to replace Mr. Cheney unless the vice president follows the fate of his former chief of staff. The sources also said Mr. Rumsfeld is expected to remain in his post until U.S. troops are withdrawn from Iraq.

Is Cheney really in jeopardy from Fitz's investigation?

Josh Marshall has a good explanation of why the "bi-partisan" scandal meme is wrong:

The Duke Cunningham scandal is a Republican scandal, which we'll soon see spreads into the Rumsfeld Defense Department. The Abramoff scandal tracks into the Interior Department and the GSA.

Then there's Tom DeLay, remember him, former House Majority Leader, now under indictment in Texas. Set aside that he's also implicated in the Abramoff scandal and quite probably the Duke Cunningham scandal as well. And then in the other body you've got Sen. Bill Frist who is at the center of a criminal investigation into his stock sales. ....
Two Republican members of Congress are under indictment.

by TChris

The Washington Post reports that the Jack Abramoff inquiry has morphed into an investigation of corruption in Congress and the Bush administration. The most immediate target is Rep. Robert Ney. (TalkLeft background on the Ney investigation is collected here.)

Ney's lawyers have been denying that Ney is a target of the investigation, but the Post's sources disagree.

[T]he sources said that during the third week of October prosecutors told Ney and his former chief of staff, Neil Volz, that they were preparing a bribery case based in part on activities that occurred in October 2000. Abramoff and another business partner, Adam Kidan, were also told that they are targets in that case, the sources said.

The five-year statute of limitations for filing charges based on those events expired last month; the prosecutors sought and received a waiver of the deadline from all four men while they continue their investigation, the sources said. Prosecutors are often able to obtain such waivers by giving the targets a choice of being indicted right away or granting more time to see if information might surface that exonerates them.

Also under scrutiny are Tom DeLay (are you surprised?), Sen. Conrad Burns, and Rep. John Doolittle.