Five Terror Suspects Transferred to Federal Court: This is a Good Day

People involved in the bombing of the USS Cole and the 9/11 planning have been transferred to federal court in New York and will be tried like everyone else. This is good news, contrary to the reactions that have been coming out on TV.

The military commissions are part of the Bush Administration’s star-chamber justice policy that makes a mockery of the American justice system, and denies the writ of habeas corpus to everyone, as the United States is sworn to observe as a charter member of the United Nations. In fact, the U.S. and Britain pushed for this writ to be included in the United Nations charter when it was being written.

The Obama Administration now has two choices: go after these guys in federal court with every shred of evidence that they have, or run the risk of them getting off and being released back into the wild. In other words, put up or shut up. They’d better put up.

I’ve long spoken out against the government’s policy of keeping people locked up for years without trial, and without legal representation, and the Obama Administration’s decision to maintain the Bush policies was a very disappointing one. Then a federal judge ordered the Administration to either charge them with crimes, or release them, which precipitated this move into federal court.

And for those who are worried about them in civilian prisons, not to worry. Our prisons are good enough to hold former soliders; they can hold onto a small handful of 12th century barbarians.

Wall Street Should Fend for Itself: They Made That Bed, Now They Should Sleep in It

I am now opposed to bailing Wall Street out of it's "toxic debt" problem that it alone is responsible for. The American taxpayer should NOT be made to pay for Wall Street's Folly, beyond what has already been agreed to.

In my opinion, the bailouts of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and Bear Sterns were correct, because of their interconnecting relationships to the U.S. and global currency markets. The damage from the collapse of those companies would not have been confined to Wall Street. Lehman Brothers was not bailed out because it was self-contained, as many of the other companies who stand to benefit from this $700 billion mistake-in-progress are.

The standard that the Bush Administration followed before should be the standard that is used now in deciding which companies to save, and which ones to allow to go by the wayside.

The other companies who have "toxic debt" need to get on a payment plan and pay off their debt. If the government wants to help, they should negotiate and set a fair interest rate with the creditors, which will allow the companies to clean up their own friggin' mess. People have to do the same thing; why should it be different for a company that goes into deep debt?

This is entirely appropriate for a system that cheers when blue-collar workers lose their jobs and pensions, while the system sees it's stock value soar. Why then, should blue collar taxpayers be stuck with the company's bill?

SHAME on Wall Street!

And the government needs to come up with a better plan.

Presidential Candidates Need to Get the Hell Out of Dodge: Their Presence at White House Didn't Help Matters

Talks aimed at alleviating the U.S. financial crisis ended in failure, with both sides blaming the other. And the presence of the presidential candidates didn't aid the summit in finding a solution to Wall Street's Folly.

They need to get OUT of Washington and put some distance between themselves and the ongoing fiasco at the White House. And McCain needs to get it in gear and quit wasting time on pointless political gestures. He needs to show up at that debate tomorrow night and give Obama what-for, or risk becoming a has-been former presidential candidate.

What a stupid stunt!

Pakistan Orders It's Army to Open Fire on American Troops on Strike Missions Into Pakistani Territory: American Side Needs to Back Off

Pakistan is getting fed up with American troops crossing the border into their territory to destroy Taliban and al-Qaeda targets and has ordered it's army to open fire on American and coalition forces that they encounter inside Pakistan. This is not a healthy turn of events.

An American admiral went to Pakistan to talk to their new government about smoothing things over, but each time an American strike happens inside Pakistan and civilians get killed by American bombs and missiles, it destabilizes Pakistan's fragile government and increases the risk of an anti-American government coming to power in Islamabad. This is not a good way of keeping Pakistan on our side.

I don't think this is a correct course of action to take; we don't need to get into a shooting war with Pakistan over this. I think President Bush and the Pentagon need to decide if Pakistan is still our ally or if it's a nation that we intend to invade next. We're not acting like good friends to Pakistan.

No good can come of this.

Presidential Signing Statements: President Bush Has Exceeded His Authority

In the history of the U.S. presidency, every President since George Washington has added comments to bills that they just signed; in many instances, it's to thank people who were instrumental in passing the legislation through the House and Senate; other times it's to voice displeasure with parts of the bill, or why they're supporting it, or other reasons.

President Bush has done something new.

In his presidential signing statements, he announces which parts of the bill he won't enforce. On a bill he just signed. What is the point in signing a bill if he isn't going to enforce it in it's entirety? Why didn't he veto it instead?

But that's not the worst of it. He's done this 500 times now, citing his interpretation of the Constitution and "national security." Since he's been so busy shredding parts of the Constitution that he doesn't like, perhaps he needs to re-read Article I Section 7.

The long and the short of Article I, Section 7: if the President signs a bill, it becomes law, and the President's branch of government oversees it's execution.

These 500 signing statements have impacted nearly 750 laws in all.

And it nearly equals the number of signing statements by all his predecessors--combined.

Every President has had legislation come across his desk that he didn't like, but forty-two of them were big enough to tell Congress to publicly "stick it where the sun don't shine" by vetoing an objectionable bill and forcing Congress to try an override, or signing it and living with it. But President Bush and his obsession with national security and secrecy decided to not enforce parts of dozens of laws, behind closed doors and out of the spotlight.

He should have been vetoing bills left and right, and if Congress overrode a bill he considered "unconstitutional" or imposing on presidential power, he should have filed suit in court.

This is nothing short of an all-out assault on the separation of powers. I don't like it, and some major judicial reviews need to happen to shrink presidential powers back to a more reasonable level.

The current administration is lucky that we're not midway through their term in office; Congress might have taken these five hundred presidential signing statements and turn them into parts of articles of impeachment. I don't know how the government will deal with this now, if at all.

I think after the Bush Administration leaves office, the full extent of what they've been doing will come into the light, and we'll be shocked beyond belief at what's been really going on. I'm more disappointed in this Administration than I was in the last one. I don't make that statement lightly.

What a mess.

Conspiracy Theorists Believe Bush Will Cancel 2008 Presidential Elections: NONSENSE!

Ahhh, more conspiracy notions to dispel!

The topic is NSPD-51, an Executive Order which ensures the continuation of the federal government in the event of a catastrophic attack or natural disaster. It calls for the President to take charge of government operations in the event that something really bad happens.

Some with very active imaginations have taken this to mean that President Bush will declare martial law and cancel the elections on a whim to begin his "reign" as dictator.

That's nonsense.

Let's imagine one scenario that this Executive Order is truly designed to deal with:

Washington is destroyed by a terrorist nuclear bomb while the government is in session, and most members of the House and Senate are killed. Also, the President, Vice President, most of the Joint Chiefs and many of the Cabinet members are dead.

In this hypothetical situation, the Presidency passes to...oh, the Secretary of Energy, who is twelfth in line of succession and overseas on business. He/she flies home and is sworn in somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.

The new President is going to be pretty busy, trying to figure things out and wondering where to start.

Where the conspiracy theorists are going crazy is the discussion over whether to reconstitute the Congress immediately or not. The Constitution stipulates that in the event of the death or incapacitation of a member of Congress that an election is held for the seat.

But what would happen if all 535 members of Congress were dead?

Consider this: it would take some time to organize elections in every state, and then designate a new national capitol for the reconstituted Congress to meet at. The directive gives the President emergency powers to manage the situation, and begin to get things in place for setting the government back up.

The reason that it does this is that if our government is decapitated, it assumes that the Executive Branch will recover first. It's easier to swear in a duly appointed Cabinet member as President than it is to organize an election, have candidates campaign, stage the election, get them to the capitol and swear them in. That's how the law is written.

Of course, the governors might appoint the new slate of Representatives and Senators. But even then, where would they meet? Someone would have to coordinate that.

One troubling thing that is giving the theorists ammunition are the secret annexes to this Presidential Order. Only the Administration knows what's in the various annexes, and this is driving the conspiracy discussion along. There are rumors of martial law being declared (possibly) for the purpose of making the President a dictator (highly unlikely).

That's the spirit of this Presidential order as I read it. If President Bush has one obsession (and a flaw), it's national security and protecting the country.

Bush isn't going to stop the elections due to terrorism. Other nations have held elections in the wake of deadly terrorist attacks, such as Spain in 2004.

Here's what will likely happen in October/November/December of this year:

• There will be no terrorism before the election. If there is, it'll be small-scale.
  
• Washington, DC, will not fall into the Atlantic Ocean.
• An asteroid will not strike Capitol Hill and level all of Washington.
  
• The election will be held, a winner will be decided.
• The transition will begin.
• President Bush and VP Cheney will leave office on January 20th, 2009, on time and without strings attached.
  
• The 44th President will take office on the same day.
• The conspiracy theorists will look silly again.

That's my two cents.

Here's the complete list of Executive Orders from the National Archives dating back to 1937.

Pelosi Declares a Surge a Total Failure, Despite Major Progress

Looks like Nancy Pelosi is getting ready to own defeat in Iraq again, pronouncing the highly successful surge a "failure" on high.

The surge did what it was supposed to: give the Iraqi government some breathing room to accomplish their political objectives, which, I might add, were imposed upon them by the U.S. Imperial Congress in another flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty.

For Speaker Pelosi to try to take success away from our troops is, quite frankly, appalling and disingenuous.

For all this talk from the politicians that there's "no military solution in Iraq, only a political one," I haven't seen any mindboggling political solutions to getting Iraq on it's feet and our troops out of there any faster. All I've seen are political deadlines from American politicians directed at their Iraqi counterparts in Baghdad; to which the Iraqi politicians take great delight in thumbing their nose right back at the U.S. Congress.

I'm not sure what's funnier: America's politicians attempting to tell the Iraqis what to do, or the Iraqi practice of ignoring the American deadlines and doing what they want regardless of political pressure coming from Washington. It's more pathetic than funny.

Pelosi has no legs to stand on; she can't get her own party to listen to her; the Administration isn't listening, and the Iraqis sure aren't either. What's she going to do about it?

It's just more of the same coming from Washington.

Bush Goes After Congressional Earmarks: FINALLY!

President Bush is set to sign an Executive Order, directing federal agencies to ignore funding projects that have not been debated or voted on by the Congress.

This is a step in the right direction. Congressional irresponsibility on funding is a major problem that was long overdue for a fix. Promises made by Congress to reign in pork barrel spending have been broken, and the time is right to force the issue.

In addition, President Bush has promised to veto any funding bills that do not reduce under-the-radar additions by half. I suspect that if he holds his ground, there will be some bills being volleyed back and forth between Capitol Hill and the White House.

We'll see if this plan holds water or not. I do wish he had started this at the beginning of his second term, not the end.

Democrats Are Using Back Door to De-Fund Iraq War: $50 Billion Funding Bill Stalls in Senate Until January

It appears that the anticipated de-funding of the Iraq War by the Democrats is currently underway. But they're not taking the direct approach as was predicted by analysts.

Instead, they're guaranteeing that their legislation on war funding either doesn't make it to the President's desk, or if it does that he is certain to veto it. All the Democrats have to do is insert a clause that calls for withdrawal from Iraq to doom the legislation.

They have effectively de-funded the war, without drawing attention to the fact that this is/was their goal. They can publicly claim that they won't de-fund the Iraq War and will continue to put forth bills with terms and conditions that the Republicans find indigestible and will move to block.

The other tactic being employed is that the Democrats are ignoring the President's war funding requests for months at a time. Congress has already passed the Pentagon's $471 billion budget but stripped war funding from that bill. President Bush asked for $192 billion more in supplemental spending for the wars since mid-February; Congress is getting around to that request now, in mid-November.

The war bill passed by the House and rejected by the Senate would have provided $50 billion for the wars, and set the end of 2008 as a withdrawal date of troops from Iraq.

There's a time-crunch in play here; the current war funding will run out in February, and the military will have to divert money out of it's new $471 billion budget--money needed for repairing battle-damaged equipment or replacing it, beefing up V.A. hospitals, building mine-resistant vehicles, providing care for our wounded warriors, and purchasing new weapons platforms--to pay for the wars.

They've already signaled that they're diverting $4 billion immediately.

And the military is planning to make deep cuts when the designated war-fighting funding runs out in February. And it probably will; the only war funding bill on the table and on the horizon has been KO'ed.

Another mess.

Executive Privilege vs. Congressional Subpoenas: Separation of Powers Weakens Every Time Congress and President Clash Over This

Watching the President and Congress clash over subpoenas and Executive Privilege is like watching a chess match. Move. Counter move. Counter-counter move. Check. Counter move.

The firings of eight U.S. attorneys set off this high-stakes game of chess. It goes thus:

Attorney General Gonzales fires eight federal attorneys; no reason is given. Congress demands explanations; Justice declines; Congress subpoenas documents and people; White House asserts Executive Privilege; Congress threatens contempt of Congress charges against anyone refusing to testify; White House says "so?"; Congress again threatens contempt charges; White House orders federal prosecutors not to comply with Congressional contempt citations; Congress threatens to charge Gonzales with perjury.

There seems to be a great deal of confusion as to where Congressional authority ends and Presidential authority begins--and vice versa.

And we have a sitting Congress and President who don't mind intruding on one another's territory, which makes this question even more difficult to resolve. And they've both tried to shred parts of the Constitution that deals with the other.

This is not the first time that a President and Congress have clashed over Executive Privilege; Nixon asserted ExecPriv over his Watergate recordings; the Supreme Court ruled against him. A lower Federal court also ruled against Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal when his aides were ordered to testify before the Starr commission.

Presidents need to pick and choose which battles need to be fought to preserve the separation of powers, not to cover their behinds. And Congress needs to pick and choose which fights really need to be fought and make sure that they're not crossing the line between Congressional powers and Presidential ones.

We are not a parliamentary democracy. The President is NOT a member of Congress as the British Prime Minister is of the British Parliament (as are most of his/her ministers). We are a federal republic with three branches of government, complete with a system of checks and balances to prevent one branch from gaining supremacy over all others.

President Bush and Congress are trying to gain supremacy over the other, and the third branch may be required to step in to put a stop to it. It's only a matter of time now before this is referred to the courts. They've locked us into this course.

What a sorry state of affairs.

Government Should Take Steps to Reduce Heavy Debt Load: $9 Trillion and Rising

The Bush Administration's rationale for debt spending during wartime is unnecessary and unwise. The price tag that came along with this decision is a staggering $9 trillion. That's too much for any one nation to carry.

Congressional pork barrel projects aren't helping either. They are a percentage of the overall budget, but they are adding more to the problem and not to the solution, especially since the government is already overspending. Congress adds insult to injury every time they use federal money to pay for peanut storage in their home states. Or other stupid earmarks.

A $9 trillion debt is the pinnacle of absurdity.

That debt should be paid down 10% every four years until it's a fraction of the federal budget, with no new additions to the debt. Every Administration--starting with the new one that will take office in January 2009--until the debt is nearly retired around the year 2058.

If the government can't fit a program into a balanced budget, then the program should be postponed or canceled.

The military does this all the time. If a weapons system is no longer cost-effective, or is too expensive to build, or is obsolete, they put it out to pasture. The rest of the government should be made to do the same thing.

I think that the government should have the ability to exceed it's budget, but that ability should be used ONLY in times of dire national emergencies, not in everyday situations, as the nation currently is. Yes, the country is at war, but not total war as it was during World War II.

Radical changes need to be made in Washington, and soon. Otherwise, the debt will get so huge that we'll never be able to pay it down.

Gallup Poll Shows Congressional Job Approval Rating Falling to 14%; President Bush's is at 25%: Who's the Lame Duck Now?

Congress's job approval rating continues to slide, and has fallen below President Bush's record low approval rating, 14% vs. 25% respectively. And the mainstream media continues to ignore the shockingly low approval numbers for Congress, while blasting President Bush over his low standing.

Big deal. The media's approval rating (according to the same Gallup Poll) is at 23%, which is also lower than President Bush's, so they're a bunch of hypocrites too.

According to the same poll, public schools stand at 33%, the Supreme Court is at 34%, banks are at 41%, religion is at 46%, the police are at 54%, and the military is at 69%.

How the mighty have fallen.

Howard Dean is Reading the Signs Correctly; If Democrats Don't Get Their Act Together, They'll Lose Control of Congress

Howard Dean is reading warning signs in the American voting public correctly. If Democrats don't end their divisions over the Iraq War and put an end to it, the voting public will end Democratic control of Congress. Left unsaid was that that it is very likely that control of one or both houses will likely go back and forth for at least the next several elections.

Dean used the Democratic radio address to send out his warning to Congressional Democrats to do what the American people elected them to do, or risk being run out of Congress.

I think he's right in this instance. 79% of voters in a recent poll indicated that they felt the Democrats had already turned their backs on the voters that helped to get them elected. And Congress's approval numbers (39%) are only marginally better than President Bush's (35%).

The Democrats are already in big trouble, and Dean sees the writing on the wall, while his Congressional colleagues don't. They will, soon enough.

Tenet's New Book: Telling Everyone What He Should Have Said When He Was CIA Director

Former CIA Director George Tenet went on a media blitz over the weekend, promoting his new book which blasts the Bush Administration of how it handled 9/11, and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It looks like an exercise in shifting blame to others; most notably Vice-President Cheney.

For instance, he was very aggressive in his book and on his media blitz about his "slam dunk" comment being taken out of context with regards to Saddam Hussein's possessing chemical and biological weapons.

For someone in such an important position, such as the directorship of the Central Intelligence Agency, he should have been very wary about using a term like "slam dunk" in ANY context.

He had the ear of the President from 9/11 to the end of his tenure at CIA, and he should have gone after the incorrect political interpretation of his agency's intelligence data. But instead he played it safe and went with the flow, which helped to lock our nation's future with an Iraq that may not hold together. And by saying "went with the flow" I meant he didn't do enough to get around administrative roadblocks that were there.

And now he has a book deal, and is telling everyone what he should have been SCREAMING at Cheney, Rove, and the other hawks during those meetings. Too little, too late.

What a shame.

Congress Keeps Overstepping It's Constitutional Boundaries: Pelosi Trip Was Most Recent Example

The shredding of the Constitution continues.

Now that the Bush Administration has been forced to stop doing it, Congress has started doing it themselves.

Congress needs to be reminded that the White House is in charge of day-to-day diplomacy with foreign nations. There is one branch of government that carries on diplomacy with other nations--not two with 536 Presidents (535 in Congress plus the real one in the White House).

Congress can ratify or reject treaties, vote on foreign aid appropriations and regulate commerce with other governments. There is no provision in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution for Congress to conduct foreign relations.

Article 2 Section 3 of the Constitution provides for the President to receive Ambassadors of foreign nations (and to conduct diplomacy) on behalf of the entire nation.

Pelosi's trip violated the spirit of the Constitution; but all it really did was showcase her grandstanding. If the Democrats want their foreign policy to be paramount, they have to win the Presidency in an election first. Not before.

Democrats Rule By Opinion Poll: This is Worse Than Trying to Replace Something With Nothing

The Democrats appear to be heading in an unprecedented direction in their control of both houses of Congress. And many Republicans are following their example. And it's going to come around and bite them when they least expect it.

I speak of opinion polls. Many in Congress are bending like reeds in the wind when they hear what the latest opinion polls are. John Kerry was notorious for this during the 2004 Presidential election, refusing to say where he stood on issues until he saw which direction the wind was blowing first.

Many other Democrats did this too, refusing to say where they stood until they figured out which direction their voters were leaning, then all of a sudden coming up with all kinds of sound bites that their people wanted to hear.

Politicians are well aware of this, but the public needs to learn that opinion polls reflect the feelings of people based on the information that they've been made aware of. In other words, it's stuff on the surface. Imagine a lake:

Nice and calm on the surface. Just what we like to see.
But when it gets nasty, this is all that we see:

Waves, turbulence, and uncertainty.
Yet look at what's happening underneath the surface:

My point is that information coming out of Iraq is like a lake. We don't see everything except what is presented to us by the media (the surface information). We don't hear stories of what's happening in other parts of Iraq where there is no insurgency, or the situation is vastly different (the information underneath the surface) than Baghdad or the Anbar province, where most of our casualties have happened.

It's a vicious cycle. The Democrats came to power with help from the liberal-media complex that steered the conversation toward what was happening in four of eighteen Iraqi provinces. They don't dare go into any depth on the rest of Iraq that returning soldiers continue to tell stories about. Good news in Iraq is bad for the anti-war people in Congress.

Leaders should develop their platforms based on their beliefs, then lead the nation in that direction, not base their leadership decisions on opinion polls that are reflective of the surface situation that any idiot with a TV set can see. Leaders should LEAD.

And sooner or later, politicians who don't lead will be Kerry-ized, with the same result as the Bush-Kerry campaign. Based on that point, I don't think we've seen the end of tumultuous turnovers in Congressional power. I think power in Congress is going to change hands a lot in the future.

Iraq War Limits Our Options Against North Korea, Iran and Sudan: Shortsightedness in Political Planning of Iraq War Is Biting Us Now

The U.S. involvement in Iraq is having a detrimental impact on America's foreign policy objectives and more attention needs to be paid to keeping order in America's other foreign endeavors.

Six-party talks with North Korea ended without agreement yesterday. On the agenda for the five powers talking to North Korea this Friday is whether to continue the six-party negotiating format, or to go over to something else. They're waiting to find out what impact last month's U.S. elections will have on America's foreign policy.

Sudan has until December 31st to accept a U.S.-brokered deadline to admit United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur or else face "consequences." But we don't have an ambassador at the U.N. right now to keep up the pressure. Stronger resolutions were opposed by some of the other veto-wielding nations on the Security Council.

Iran faces a weak U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an end to their nuclear enrichment program, or other (undefined) steps will be taken, leaving Iran free to do what it wants. The same powers (Russia and China) also threatened to veto the entire resolution if it wasn't watered down.

Political mistakes and manipulations by the Bush Administration in the Iraq War are backfiring big time right now. When January comes around President Bush needs to have a master plan to deal with all of these critical foreign policy situations. And this should not include unilateral military approaches to dealing with the issues.

For instance, when December 31st comes and goes, the U.S. shouldn't announce that it alone is imposing a no-fly zone over Darfur to force compliance with the U.N.'s wishes when the Sudan tells the international body what to go do with itself. And Sudan is going to do exactly that.

It also shouldn't abandon the talks in favor of unilateral miliary action against Iran or North Korea. We have one major war going on, one smaller war, and not enough available ground troops to handle much more. At this stage of the game, we won't be able to help South Korea with sizable U.S. ground forces if North Korea decides on one final gamble to settle the score with South Korea. All of our heavy divisions are tied up elsewhere.

And if Washington chooses to settle the Iran question with force of arms, it's likely that U.S. forces in the region will be fighting the Revolutionary Guards in Iraqi and Afghan cities as well as the insurgency, al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

America's enemies are taking full advantage of the fact that the Iraq War is a tar baby and the U.S. military's strongest arm is already stuck. This perceived weakness is what is driving Iran and North Korea to be sure.

All of these problems can be dealt with if we have a cohesive strategy for Iraq, followed by a withdrawal and retooling of the U.S. military to put Iran and North Korea in their places.