From Tom Dispatch
By Tom Engelhardt

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, Wasting Away.
– the Beatles, “When I’m 64″

I set foot, so to speak, on this planet on July 20, 1944, not perhaps the best day of the century. It was, in fact, the day of the failed German officers’ plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

My mother was a cartoonist. She was known in those years as “New York’s girl caricaturist,” or so she’s called in a newspaper ad I still have, part of a war-bond drive in which your sizeable bond purchase was to buy her sketch of you. She had, sometime in the months before my birth, traveled by train, alone, the breadth of a mobilized but still peaceable American continent to visit Hollywood on assignment for some magazine to sketch the stars. I still have, on my wall, a photo of her in that year on the “deck” of a “pirate ship” on a Hollywood lot drawing one of those gloriously handsome matinee idols. Since I was then inside her, this is not exactly part of my memory bank. But that photo does tell me that, like him, she, too, was worth a sketch.

Certainly, it was appropriate that she drew the card announcing my birth. There I am in that announcement, barely born and already caricatured, a boy baby in nothing but diapers – except that, on my head, I’m wearing my father’s dress military hat, the one I still have in the back of my closet, and, of course, I’m saluting. “A Big Hello — From Thomas Moore Engelhardt,” the card says. And thus was I officially recorded entering a world at war.

By then, my father, a major in the U.S. Army Air Corps and operations officer for the 1st Air Commando Group in Burma, had, I believe, been reassigned to the Pentagon. Normally a voluble man, for the rest of his life he remained remarkably silent on his wartime experiences.

Read more War of Denial

From True Blue Liberal
By Sherwood Ross

If it hasn’t gone the way of Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, it sure is teetering on the brink. America is a nation in deepening crisis, a nation whose leaders repeatedly plunge their citizens into, and make them pay for, serial wars abroad, while stealing their liberties at home. USA has become a country that trashes its citizens(New Orleans), tortures its enemies(Abu Ghraib), threatens other nations with nuclear fire(Iran), flouts international treaties(UN Charter re Iraq), and spies on(FISA), and intimidates, its critics(No Fly). Americans that can clearly see the totalitarian machinations of Vladimir Putin in Russia and Hu Jintao in China are blind to the fascism threatening to envelop them as well.

Webster’s defines fascism as “a totalitarian governmental system led by a dictator and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism, militarism, and often racism.” A comparison of 20th century fascist and communist regimes with President Bush’s USA indicates the machinery for a full-blown totalitarian takeover is now in place, even if no coup has occurred. As Naomi Wolf writes in “The End of America”(Chelsea Green)the 2007 Defense Authorization Bill’s Section 333 allows the president “to declare martial law and take charge of the National Guard troops without the permission of a governor when ‘public order’ has been lost…” and to “send the guard into our streets during a public health emergency, terrorist attack or ‘other condition.’”

The enabling crowbar was the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It gives the president authority to set up his own system for bringing alien combatants to trial while denying them protection of the Geneva Conventions. “The president and his lawyers now claim the authority to designate any American citizen he chooses as being an ‘enemy combatant,’” Wolf writes of power usurpation that characterized the post-World War One epoch in Europe and Asia.

Thus, Congress has empowered Bush just as Germany’s Reichstag empowered Hitler, Wolf writes, recalling Hitler’s boast, “Democracy will be overthrown with the tools of democracy.” Hitler’s Interior Minister issued Clause 2 that gave police the power to hold people in custody indefinitely and without a court order, powers the U.S. Congress today has conferred upon “The Decider” in the White House. Mussolini’s used the less grandiose “Il Duce” or “The Leader.” Read the rest of this entry »

From CrossLeft
By Jim Ramelis

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa wants the U. S. out of its airbase in Manta in Ecuador. The U.S. had a ten year lease with the Ecuadorian government and it ends in 2009. Monitoring and intercepting the cocaine trade was to be the base’s purpose but it is suspected operations are conducted out of the base to support our Columbian ally in its fight against leftist rebels. It is also suspected that Latin American communications are monitored from the base. Depending on the source, there 300 to 475 American troops on the base. Officially there can be up to 500 troops per the contract.

President Correa is part of the Latin American “pink tide”. They are Latin America leaders elected in the last decade or so whose primary allegiance is to their own countrymen and its problems, putting their own interests above those of the mostly American based multi-national corporations. These new leaders are often sympathetic to Hugo Chavez . For the most part it is a very democratic movement and includes indigenous peoples too. They are resisting our attempts at economic colonization and our decided favoritism to white dictators that keep their own people beaten down, hungry, and in servitude in feudal like conditions to large landowners and multi-national corporations. These new Latin American leaders are wise to organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO), The International Monetary Fund (IMF), and USAID. They understand that their loans mean bondage, servitude, and economic colonization.

President Correa told the U.S. that they could keep their base if he would be allowed to open up an Ecuadorian army base in Miami . Touché. Needless to say, he was not taken up on this offer. His suggestion does bring home our worldwide position though. We have 700 sites with American military personnel stationed on them worldwide. We are more than Babylon, Rome, and the British Empire and other European powers ever were. We are the global cops for the multi-national corporation. We are in every corner of the globe, poised for action , ready to defend the profit margins of the multi-nationals against the interests and welfare of people everywhere. We can have bases in other people’s countries because we are Americans and they are not. They need to do as we say or we will kill them, literally, or with trade embargoes and other capital linked punishments. Read the rest of this entry »

From TruthOut
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

Like the largesse he spread so bountifully to members of Congress and the White House staff - countless fancy meals, skybox tickets to basketball games and U2 concerts, golfing sprees in Scotland - Jack Abramoff is the gift that keeps on giving.

The notorious lobbyist and his cohorts (including conservatives Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed) shook down Native American tribal councils and other clients for tens of millions of dollars, buying influence via a coalition of equally corrupt government officials and cronies dedicated to dismantling government by selling it off, making massive profits as they tore the principles of a representative democracy to shreds.

A report earlier this summer from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform builds on an earlier committee investigation that detailed some 485 contacts between Abramoff and the Bush administration. According to the new report, “Senior White House officials told the Committee that White House officials held Mr. Abramoff and members of his lobbying team in high regard and solicited recommendations from Mr. Abramoff and his colleagues on policy matters.”

Now Abramoff’s doing time in Maryland. He’s at a minimum-security federal prison, serving five years and ten months for unrelated, fraudulent business practices involving a fake wire transfer he and a partner fabricated to secure a loan to buy SunCruz Casinos. SunCruz, a line of Florida cruise ships, ferried high and low rollers into international waters to gamble. (The original owner of SunCruz Casinos, Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis, was gunned down, Mafia-style, in February 2001). But come September, Abramoff will be sentenced for his larger-than-life role in one of the biggest scandals in American history - a collection of outrages that has already sent one member of Congress to jail, others into retirement and dozens of accomplices running for cover.

Read more Capitol Crimes

From The Washington Post
By Dan Froomkin

A federal judge today flatly rejected one of the White House’s most audacious legal claims: that presidential advisers have absolute immunity from congressional oversight.

The House Judiciary Committee had asked the U.S. District Court to enforce its contempt of Congress ruling against Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and Joshua C. Bolten, the White House chief of staff, over their refusal to cooperate with an investigation into the politicization of the Justice Department, including the mass firings of U.S. attorneys in 2006.

In his opinion this morning, Judge John D. Bates noted that “[t]he heart of the controversy is whether senior presidential aides are absolutely immune from compelled congressional process” — which was the White House’s contention.

Bates called that assertion unprecedented and unsupported: “The Supreme Court has reserved absolute immunity for very narrow circumstances, involving the President’s personal exposure to suits for money damages based on his official conduct or concerning matters of national security or foreign affairs. The Executive’s current claim of absolute immunity from compelled congressional process for senior presidential aides is without any support in the case law.”

But that doesn’t mean that Congress now will get all the White House testimony and documents it wants. The White House is sure to appeal the ruling and try to run out the clock. Furthermore, Bates left open the possibility that the aides could assert claims of executive privilege “in response to specific questions as appropriate.”

Read more Immune Deficiency

From Salon
By Glenn Greenwald

The Bush administration and its radical theories of executive power suffered yet another blow today from the judiciary, as a Federal District Judge, John D. Bates of the District of Columbia District Court — a Bush 43-appointed Judge, former Deputy Independent Counsel for the Whitewater investigation, and a generally very pro-administration judge — held in a 93-page ruling (.pdf) that Bush aides Harriet Miers (former White House counsel) and Josh Bolten (White House Chief of Staff) are not entitled to absolute immunity from Congressional subpoenas. The dispute arose out of the investigation by the House Judiciary Committee into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys who, in many cases, had either aggressively prosecuted GOP officials or had refused to prosecute Democrats or otherwise advance the GOP’s political interests.

As part of its investigation, the Judiciary Committee issued Subpoenas to Miers and Bolten in an effort to find out, among other things, who actually made the decision for those U.S. attorneys to be fired. The subpoenas ordered Miers to appear before the Committee in order to testify, and ordered both to produce documents to the Committee. Both Miers and Bolten refused to comply with the Subpoenas. Miers simply failed to show up for her hearing, while Bolten refused to produce the demanded documents. They did so in reliance on the Bush administration‘s claim that both of them, as top-level aides to the President, enjoyed absolute immunity from Congressional subpoenas. It was that extremist theory which the court today rejected — and rejected decisively and unequivocally.

In unusually strong language, the court pointed out that the President’s claim that his aides enjoyed absolute immunity from Congressional investigations was “unprecedented” and “without any support in case law” (p. 3). Like so many perverse claims of absolute presidential authority, this claim was plainly contrary to the core principles of how our country has long functioned: “Federal precedent dating as far back as 1807 contemplates that even the Executive is bound to comply with duly issued subpoenas” (p. 31). To underscore how frivolous the administration’s claim here was, the court emphasized (p. 78):

The Executive cannot identify a single judicial opinion that recognizes absolute immunity for senior presidential advisors in this or any other context. That simple but critical fact bears repeating: the asserted immunity claim here is entirely unsupported by case law. In fact, there is Supreme Court authority that is all but conclusive on this question and that powerfully suggests that such advisors to not enjoy absolute immunity.

Read more Executive Privilege

From This Can’t Be Happening
By Dave Lindorff

A federal district judge appointed by President George W. Bush to the bench has done the right thing, ruling definitively this morning that the President’s claim of absolute immunity for his advisors from Congressional oversight and subpoena is “entirely unsupported by existing case law.”

The ruling, by Judge John Bates, is as important as much because of who issued it as it is for its impact upon Congressional investigations into presidential wrongdoing.

Certainly the ruling will open the way for Democrats in Congress to move harder to investigate the abuses of the current administration, which have been stymied by administration refusal to provide witnesses, even to come in and plead the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

In the specific case under consideration here, the House Judiciary Committee had been attempting to force the appearance of Josh Bolton, the president’s former chief of staff, and Harriet Miers, former White House legal counsel, to testify about the White House role in the firing of a number of federal prosecutors around the country who were reportedly deemed insufficiently political in their unwillingness to “go after” Democratic elected officials, or to interfere with the election process.

Bush had asserted that all such aides have blanket immunity from Congressional inquiry under the concept of “executive privilege.”

Read more News Flash

From The Raw Story
By Eric Brewer

It had been two days since the Department of Justice released a report accusing itself of illegally discriminating against political enemies in its hiring of supposedly independent judges and prosecutors, and no one in the White House press corps had bothered to ask the administration for its reaction. As usual, I’d been trying, but the press secretary rarely calls on me. Wednesday was going to be the last briefing in Washington for at least a couple of weeks, so I went in for one more try. The question I hoped to ask:

Any reaction to the Inspector General’s report that found that the Department of Justice illegally discriminated against Democrats in the hiring of non-political judges and prosecutors?

Followed up if necessary by:

Does the President take responsibility for the failed leadership that allowed the nation’s top law enforcement agency to break the law and abandon its long tradition of independence from politics?

I attended both the morning “gaggle” and the more formal, televised briefing in the early afternoon. The gaggle was sparsely attended. I was one of only six reporters sitting in the first two rows, so I thought my chances were pretty good. Dana Perino called on the other five—they asked about the housing bill, offshore drilling, and Iran’s defiant nuclear enrichment program—but then Perino abruptly ended the session after just 13 minutes.

A couple of hours later I went back for the briefing. The room was crowded, but again I got a good seat in the second row. This time, however, the second reporter called on—I believe it was Jim Axelrod of CBS—asked my question. Here’s his exchange with Ms. Perino:

Read more Absolute Power

From Think Progress
By Ali

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has made his complete reversal on offshore drilling a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, insisting that expanding offshore drilling into protected areas would lead to more oil supply on the market “within a matter of months” — regardless of the Energy Information Agency’s projection that oil would not reach the market for nearly a decade and “would not have a significant impact” on oil prices.

Though more drilling won’t help Americans save money at the gas pump, it has certainly helped McCain win massive campaign donations from Big Oil. A new report by Campaign Money Watch shows that contributions to McCain from Big Oil skyrocketed directly following his June speech in Houston, when he pledged his support of offshore drilling before an audience oil executives. The report notes:

In Texas alone, June oil and gas-connected donations to McCain’s Victory ’08 Fund, his hybrid fundraising venture with the RNC and state committees, reached $1,214,100.

Of that total, $881,450, or 73 percent, came after June 15. McCain announced his position in favor of offshore drilling on June 16.

The report notes that these enormous contributions represent a seven-fold increase in donations, compared to McCain’s 2000 campaign:

Read more Big Oil Donations

From AlterNet
By Joshua Holland

Stagflation in America? Well, unless you’re among the wealthiest, you’re soaking in it and have been for quite a while.

But you’re not likely to hear much about that story. Officially, the U.S. hasn’t experienced stagflation — a long period of rising prices amid sluggish economic growth — since the 1970s. The word conjures up images of gas lines snaking around corners, a weary Jimmy Carter looking droopy and forlorn in the Oval Office and the general sense of “malaise” that sunny old Ronald Reagan exploited so adroitly to give rise to the New Conservative movement.

But looking beyond the official numbers — the data on growth and inflation that most economic reporters bandy about –reveals a deeper truth about the American economy. The reality is that those who aren’t at the very top or the very bottom of America’s economic food chain have been mired in a long period of painful stagflation. Bit it’s a reality that’s obscured by the ways in which we measure our nation’s economic health.

So while anyone who draws a paycheck knows that prices are rising fast and salaries haven’t kept up for a long time, the S-word is never mentioned in our economic discourse. There are two reasons for that. First, a number of government benefits like Social Security payments are indexed to inflation, and since the dawn of the Reagan era, a series of changes were made to the way the government measures it, largely as a back-door way of keeping the growth of entitlements in check without pissing off veterans’ groups or the AARP.

Second, while our overall growth has outpaced inflation, America’s income has also become much more highly concentrated at the top — the paychecks of 9 out of 10 Americans have actually declined over the past three decades. It’s been Bill Gates and his set who have done extremely well during that time.

As a result of both of these shifts, there’s now a significant gap between the economy in which most Americans live and work and the one discussed in the business pages and on the cable news blab-fests.

Read more Stagflation