Falling for the Same Old Line

There are probably 57 different reasons why 16 Democratic Senators (including Jim Webb! - my heart's broken) and 41 Democratic Representatives voted to gut the Fourth Amendment and give The Usurper dictatorial powers.

But if the primary reason was that those 57 dems actually fell - AGAIN - for Rovian fear-mongering, Glenn Greenwald in Salon demolishes that excuse.

Read the whole thing, but here's a taste:

We do not need to wonder or speculate about what might happen if Democrats obstruct warrantless eavesdropping legislation and Republicans are then able to make an issue of it politically. That already happened in 2006. That was Rove's whole strategy. It failed miserably, across the board. And yet the Democratic leadership just permitted, and many Democrats supported, a wild expansion of George Bush's warrantless eavesdropping powers based on a jittery fear of this already-failed tactic, if not based on actual support for these increased eavesdropping powers.

In this post and this one Glenn also makes the point that the 57th Retreating Dems aren't as big a problem as the Democratic "leadership" in both houses, which could have put a stop to the disaster by simply rejecting Smirky's order to pass the law or else.

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For Mandarin: Why We Do What We Do

I didn't know Mandarin well, being a newcomer to this blog. But I thought of him today reading the comments on Glenn Greenwald's Salon post about MSM hysteria over bloggers.

Glenn made a remark about bloggers' growing self-sufficiency, and commenter paradox_left_coaster objected, writing:

Sorry, this self-sufficiency meme is just completely wrong--in money terms Glenn is correct that blogging is just beginning to break out of total reliance for reporting (far as I know, only 2 do it, FDL and TPM), but to state that blogs are self-sufficient as complete entities is flatly wrong.

Only a few make money. I don't know what happened, really, but when Steve Gilliard died something snapped in me, God how undignified it was. Steve deserved a hell of a lot better to have the cup passed around at his death. I hated it, just hated it that somehow even in death our best bloggers are still left begging.

Mike Stark was at Kos's place last night just on this topic, we've got to find better and new revenue streams for our writers. Does anyone think they can keep this up for another 20 years? For nothing?

My hope was that, is that, someone (anyone!) wake up in the Democratic party and get some revenue out there to their best writers. Jesus is sticks in my craw, how many tens of millions did we raise for the party? What do they do for appreciation or sustainability, heya? Not a god damn thing. Fucking Democrats, I'm surprised they put their clothes on in the morning most days.

We are still in infancy, and a long, long way from true sustained growth that rewards our people. I pray for it and work for it every day, but we are a not there yet.

SomeNYguy, a regular Glenn commenter who never disappoints, responded thus:

Not for nothing. For our country. For our Constitution. For our humanity. For our souls.

I get paid to do a job other people want me to do. I would love to get paid for doing what I believe is the right thing to do, but I'd also like to eat chocolate ice cream day and night yet remain slim and healthy. That's simply an unrealistic expectation.

If you want to support yourself and your family in comfort, you don't join the Peace Corps.

It's awfully nice when you can earn a decent living doing the right thing, but it's the rare exception to the rule.

Those of us who have jobs and blog in our spare time may envy those who get to do it all day and all night, but we forget that for many of them, their blogs are their jobs, their readership their source of income.

If you have just one blog that you really love, one that by virtue of its newsworthiness, or its trenchant analysis, or its humor, makes the world a better place, help it out. If it accepts contributions, send it some money today. If it depends on ad income, publicize it to all your friends, relatives, co-workers and strangers on the street.

As Glenn and others make clear daily, a political and cultural Dark Ages is looming, and progressive bloggers are the last line of resistance. Help arm them for the good fight.

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Freedom Isn't Free - Up Off Your Duffs!

If you haven't discovered Glenn Greenwald's blog on Salon, stop reading this post and go there right now this minute.

Greenwald's June 13 post is a brilliant, passionate dissection of this maladministration's destruction of the rule of law.

I won't say more except to read it and send it to everyone you know, but I will repost one wonderful comment.

For you children who don't remember the Free Speech movement at Berkely, a tiny history lesson: Mario Savio was a student at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 when, during a student protest that was being put down by police in Gestapo style, he jumped up on to the roof of a police car (after politely removing his shoes) and delivered a passionate plea for freedom and democracy. He is remembered as the founder of the Free Speech movement.

And no, he was not a communist. He was an American patriot. And he lived Edward Abbey's admonition that "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government."

Here's Lish's profound comment:

The reality is that it will take the sacrifice of people who are willing to put themselves on the line to block and disrupt the lawless actions of a corrupt and criminal government. It will require many acts of defiant conscience and civil disobediance before the deadly enterprise of war profiteering can no longer proceed with business as usual. It's either that, or resigned and bitter complacency.

We've been up against this wall before, and the words that need to be spoken have been said over and over again. The ones that I recall most vividly are those of Mario Savio from 1964:

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

Amen, Hallelujah, and May the Flying Spaghetti Monster Touch You With His Noodly Appendage.

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What Do We Do Now, Fred?

In her excellent post entitled What Will It Take To Put Impeachment Back On The Table BlueGirl quotes an editorial in The Washington Post at length. The Post published another editorial yesterday entitled The Gonzales Coverup pretty much on the same subject.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon has some questions for Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post Editorial Board. He notes that the Post's May 17, editorial begins

WHY IS IT only now that the disturbing story of the Bush administration's willingness to override the legal advice of its own Justice Department is emerging? The chief reason is that the administration, in the person of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, stonewalled congressional inquiries and did its best to ensure that the shameful episode never came to light.

Greenwald points out that basically all the necessary information has been out there for years. Then he answers the question:

(T)he Beltway establishment, led by the likes of Hiatt, decided that the President's lawbreaking was really nothing to be too bothered by, that those who objected to it were shrill and hysterical, and they found justification, or at least sufficient mitigation, to look the other way and acquiesce to the notion that the Bush administration could break the law at will and that there ought to be no real consequences arising from that behavior.

He concludes

Hiatt-like protests are welcome (even if inexcusably belated), but they must be accompanied by genuine and relentless demands for follow-up and accountability otherwise they will amount to nothing more than inconsequential rhetoric. The Attorney General lied continuously, and the administration concealed pervasive criminality at the highest levels of our government. Even Fred Hiatt says so. So now what?

Fred, Tim, and all of you inside the beltway establishment types, by turning a blind eye to the president's lawless actions you have been enablers.

What are the results of your handiwork? We now have a completely politicized Department of Justice led by a serial liar, a man utterly without integrity. We are bogged down in an optional war against the wrong people. Thousands have died for little or no reason other than some neo-con dream of empire. Our government engages in torture which our Attorney General and President euphemistically call "enhanced interrogation techniques." Nine of the ten Republican presidential hopefuls endorse torture. The only one who doesn't is the only one who knows anything about it. We have repealed habeas corpus, one of the bed rocks of our democracy. Our very democracy is threatened. Did I mention that Osama Bin Ladin and his gang still run free.

Our President openly and notoriously violated the law, and you all turned a blind eye. There is only one "industry" specifically protected by the Constitution--the press. It isn't protected because you had great lobbyists. It is protected because the founders knew there would be Presidents like George Bush. They protected your business to check official lawlessness. What do we do now boys? "What will be done about James Comey's revelations?"

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