Small wonder Bush and Cheney want the CIA exempt from rules limiting torture. Aren’t you the least

surprised the CIA runs a prison system?

Will we recognize when we cross the line from “a strong executive” to a

dictatorship? mjh

CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
Debate Is Growing

Within Agency About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After 9/11
By Dana Priest, Washington Post Staff Writer

The

CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according

to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up

by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan

and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and

former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in

the CIA’s unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even

basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with

overseeing the CIA’s covert actions.

NOW. Transcript. October 28, 2005 | PBS

BRANCACCIO: Former

House Majority Leader Tom Delay wrote a letter yesterday to supporters. And he said it’s all linked, the allegations of financial

impropriety involving Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and the Fitzgerald investigation. His quote to his constituents, “We are

witnessing the criminalization of conservative politics.” What do you make of that?

CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN: I would

respectfully disagree. I think we’re looking at when you do something illegal you get caught. And this is what’s

happened with Scooter Libby, at least, the allegation.

There’s enough there that the prosecutor feels that he can make a case and

from all that we’ve seen in the notes that– that Scooter Libby took that tell one thing whereas his– testimony at the grand jury was

something different which is kind of mind-boggling in the first place. That tells you that there’s something real here. And that’s

about illegal activity. …

I can’t imagine a thought process that said to Scooter Libby, “Go ahead and say to the grand jury

that you heard about Valerie Plame first from the press when you have your own notes that you know are being turned over under discovery

that show that you heard it from the Vice-President.” I don’t understand the thinking the went into that. It’s going to be very

interesting to see how they handle this and what the Vice-President does. Because this is his right hand person. And clearly he didn’t

act without– the Vice-President being very involved in whatever he did.

What the ‘Shield’ Covered Up By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Has anyone

noticed that the coverup worked?

In his impressive presentation of the indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby last week,

Patrick Fitzgerald expressed the wish that witnesses had testified when subpoenas were issued in August 2004, and “we would have been

here in October 2004 instead of October 2005.”

Note the significance of the two dates: October 2004, before President Bush was

reelected, and October 2005, after the president was reelected. Those dates make clear why Libby threw sand in the eyes of prosecutors,

in the special counsel’s apt metaphor, and helped drag out the investigation.

As long as Bush still faced the voters, the White

House wanted Americans to think that officials such as Libby, Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney had nothing to do with the leak

campaign to discredit its arch-critic on Iraq, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.

And Libby, the good soldier, pursued a brilliant

strategy to slow the inquiry down. …

Bush and his disciples would like everyone to assume that Libby was some kind of lone

operator who, for this one time in his life, abandoned his usual caution. …

What exactly transpired in the meetings between

Libby and Cheney on the Wilson case? It is inconceivable that an aide as careful and loyal as Libby was a rogue official. Did Cheney set

these events in motion? This is a question about good government at least as much as it is a legal matter.

Democrats

in the Senate did what they had to do to get their Republican colleagues to act responsibly. Boo-hoo for poor Dr Frist and his hurt

feelings. He lashes out like a dittohead.

GOP Angered by Closed Senate Session
Meeting Reopened After

Two Hours By Charles Babington and Dafna Linzer, Washington Post Staff Writers

Democrats forced the Senate into a rare closed-door

session yesterday, infuriating Republicans but extracting from them a promise to speed up an inquiry into the Bush

administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s weapons in the run-up to the war.

With no warning in the mid-

afternoon, the Senate’s top Democrat invoked the little-used Rule 21, which forced aides to turn off the chamber’s cameras and close

its massive doors after evicting all visitors, reporters and most staffers. …

Republicans condemned the Democrats’ maneuver,

which marked the first time in more than 25 years that one party had insisted on a closed session without consulting the other party.

But within two hours, Republicans appointed a bipartisan panel to report on the progress of a Senate intelligence committee

report on prewar intelligence, which Democrats say has been delayed for nearly a year. …

The usually unflappable

majority leader, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), was searching for words to express his outrage to reporters a few minutes later. The Senate “has

been hijacked by the Democratic leadership,” he said. “They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no

ideas.” Never before had he been “slapped in the face with such an affront,” he said, adding: “For the next year and a half, I

can’t trust Senator Reid.”

“They have no ideas”? How about the idea of pursuing the Bush administration

with one tenth the zeal they showed in attacking Clinton? How about some spine and ethics instead of party-only loyalty. mjh

Reid said he was forced to seek the closed session to spur action on the investigation. “The

only way we’ve been able to get their attention is to spend 3 1/2 hours in a closed session,” he said. “It’s a slap in the face

to the American people that this investigation has been stymied.”

Rockefeller said Democratic requests for information

related to the investigation are routinely denied or ignored, and he suggested that the Senate Republican leadership was under orders

from the Bush administration not to cooperate.

“Any time the intelligence committee pursued a line of inquiry that brought us

close to the role of the White House in all of this in the use of intelligence prior to the war, our efforts have been thwarted

time and time again,” Rockefeller said. “The very independence of the United States Congress as a separate and coequal

branch of the government has been called into question.”

I think it is vital that a defendant have confidence he can get a fair

trial.

However, note what The Hammer is doing here. He is saying that no one can judge a Republican but another

Republican. He is demanding a separate and unequal judicial system. It’s not just a jury of one’s peers now, it is a judge, as

well. This is part of the corrossive influence of that strange paranoia of the Right Wing that there is uncontrollable bias everywhere.

Why didn’t all the Republicans recuse themselves during Clinton’s impeachment? Oh, of course, because they are holier than thou.

I’ll be sure to ask the next cop to stop me what his party affiliation is. Let’s see how that stands up in court. mjh

Defense Wins New Judge in DeLay Case By Sylvia Moreno, Washington

Post Staff Writer

DeLay’s lawyers argued that Perkins’s impartiality appears to be compromised by his contributing money to

national and local Democratic candidates, as well as to MoveOn.org, a group that has targeted DeLay’s defeat in national fundraising

efforts.

DeLay Loath

to Doff His Leadership Hat
Active Role Divides House Republicans
By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post Staff Writer

Former House majority leader Tom DeLay’s efforts to retain power despite his indictment have angered some rank-and-file Republicans,

many of whom say his ethical problems and uncertain status are staining them and destabilizing GOP unity.

Although he was forced

to relinquish his leadership post Sept. 28, after the first of two indictments for alleged involvement in money laundering related to the

2002 Texas election, DeLay continues to use an office in the leadership suite, occasionally presides over private meetings with

committee chairmen and lobbies members during key floor votes.

It is a remarkable sign of the times that within hours of the nomination of Alito we can read a kind

of point-counterpoint in which he references O’Connor in a decision and she references that decision in a later rejection. There is no

doubt: he’s no O’Connor. mjh

Samuel A. Alito Jr. Profile

Samuel A. Alito Jr., 55, is a jurist in the

mold of Justice Antonin Scalia. Nicknamed “Scalito,” or “little Scalia,” by some lawyers, the federal appeals court judge is a frequent

dissenter with a reputation for having one of the sharpest conservative minds in the country. …

In 1991, he was the lone

dissenter in a 3rd Circuit decision striking down a Pennsylvania law’s requirement that women tell their husbands before having an

abortion.

Bush Selects Alito for Supreme Court

Citing previous opinions of

O’Connor, Alito wrote that an abortion regulation is unconstitutional only if it imposes an undue burden on a woman’s access to the

procedure. The spousal notification provision, he wrote, does not constitute such a burden and must therefore only meet the requirement

that it be rationally related to some legitimate government purpose. …

“In addition,” he wrote, “the legislature could have

reasonably concluded that Section 3209 [the spousal provision] would lead to such discussion and thereby properly further a husband’s

interests in the fetus in a sufficient percentage of the affected cases to justify enactment of this measure. . . . The Pennsylvania

legislature presumably decided that the law on balance would be beneficial. We have no authority to overrule that legislative judgment

even if we deem it “unwise” or worse.”

The case ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which upheld the appeals court decision,

disagreed with Alito and used the case to reaffirm its support for Roe v. Wade , the 1973 decision legalizing abortion.

On the

spousal notification provision, O’Connor wrote for the court that it did indeed constitute an obstacle. The “spousal notification

requirement is . . . likely to prevent a significant number of women from obtaining an abortion,” she wrote.

“It does not merely

make abortions a little more difficult or expensive to obtain; for many women, it will impose a substantial obstacle. We must not blind

ourselves to the fact that the significant number of women who fear for their safety and the safety of their children are likely to be

deterred from procuring an abortion as surely as if the Commonwealth had outlawed abortion in all cases,” she said.

Plus, it

“embodies a view of marriage consonant with the common law status of married women, but repugnant to our present understanding of

marriage and of the nature of the rights secured by the Constitution. Women do not lose their constitutionally protected liberty when

they marry, ” she said.

“The Constitution protects all individuals, male or female, married or unmarried, from the abuse of

governmental power, even where that power is employed for the supposed benefit of a member of the individual’s family.”

Newsday.com: Alito provoked no controversy at confirmation hearing 15 years ago By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press

Writer

WASHINGTON — Fifteen years ago, Samuel Alito told senators at his confirmation hearing that judges shouldn’t “step over

the line” into lawmaking or “try to pigeonhole the case or to import a judge’s own view of the law into the law,” records showed Monday.

…

Alito’s confirmation to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was noncontroversial, with the full Senate approving his

nomination on April 27, 1990, by unanimous consent, which meant that there was no opposition among the 100 senators. Nominated on Feb.

20, Alito was rated well qualified by the American Bar Association.

Transcript: Sen. Schumer’s

Remarks on Alito Nomination

A preliminary review of his record raises real questions about Judge Alito’s judicial philosophy

and his commitment to civil rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, the rights of average Americans which the courts have always

looked out for.

Now, it’s sad that the president felt he had to pick a nominee likely to divide America instead of choosing a

nominee in the mold of Sandra Day O’Connor who would unify us.

America needs unity now. America needs reaching out to one another

more than ever. But the president seems to want to hunker down in his bunker and is more concerned about smoothing the ruffled feathers

of the extreme wing of his party than about governing all of America and changing history for the better.

SCHUMER: This

controversial nominee, who would make the court less diverse and far more conservative, will get very careful scrutiny from the Senate

and the American people.

The president had an opportunity to nominate someone in the mold of Sandra Day O’Connor, a mainstream,

albeit conservative, who would unite the country, not further decide us. At first blush, Judge Alito does not appear to be a Sandra Day

O’Connor.

It is an immutable law of history that when a president tries to govern from the extreme, his presidency and the

country end up losing. Democrats learned this when we governed from the far left. President Bush will learn this as well. …

QUESTION: Why do you think the president nominated Judge Alito?

SCHUMER: Well, as I said, I think that the president received so

much criticism from the extreme wing of his party that he felt, in his position right now, that he couldn’t afford to alienate them

further. And they demanded fidelity to their viewpoint.

Remember that Duhbya was

going to restore dignity and honor to the White House, at the same time he united the country. Missions unaccomplished. mjh

White House Ethics, Honesty Questioned
55% in Survey Say Libby Case Signals

Broader Problems
By Richard Morin and Claudia Deane, Washington Post Staff Writers

A majority of Americans say the indictment

of senior White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby signals broader ethical problems in the Bush administration, and nearly half say the

overall level of honesty and ethics in the federal government has fallen since President Bush took office, according to a new Washington

Post-ABC News survey.

The poll, conducted Friday night and yesterday, found that 55 percent of the public believes the Libby case

indicates wider problems “with ethical wrongdoing” in the White House, while 41 percent believes it was an “isolated incident.” And by a

3 to 1 ratio, 46 percent to 15 percent, Americans say the level of honesty and ethics in the government has declined rather than risen

under Bush.

In the aftermath of the latest crisis to confront the White House, Bush’s overall job approval rating has fallen to

39 percent, the lowest of his presidency in Post-ABC polls. Barely a third of Americans — 34 percent — think Bush is doing a

good job ensuring high ethics in government, which is slightly lower than President Bill Clinton’s standing on this issue when he left

office. …

The survey of 600 randomly selected Americans represents a snapshot of initial reactions to the Libby

indictment.

Criminalizing politics by Robert

Novak [Yes, THE Robert Novak]

In today’s polarized climate, both parties have contributed to the criminalization of politics.

But Democrats, losers in both elections and the world of ideas, have turned to using the criminal process over the last two decades. …

Big of Novak, whose central role in the “Plame Affair” is still undercover, to allow that “both parties”

have had a role in something he despises the Democrats for doing. Yes, indicting Scooby (sic) Libby for perjury is the same as impeaching

the President. mjh

The Criminalization of Criminals by James Moore

Leaking the names of CIA agents is not politics; it is

a crime. Lying to congress about evidence for a war is not politics; it is a crime. Failing to tell a grand jury that you met

with a reporter and talked about the CIA agent is not forgetfulness; it is a crime. Deceiving your entire nation and frightening children

and adults with images of nuclear explosions in order to get them to support a bloody invasion of another country is not politics; it is

a crime. Anyone other than Karl Rove and Lewis Libby and Tom Delay who does not get this, please raise your hand. The three of you will

need to stay after class for further instruction in civics.