Bustednuckles @ 107

I watched the Frontline show last night.
Yoo and Addington= Constitution shredders.

You know the thing that really gets me about Yoo? he doesn’t seem to feel any sense of responsiblity for what he has done. he seems so disconnected from it.

Also, after his work has been so thoroughly discredited, I am astounded that law students are still willing ot be taught by him. He has amply demonstrated that he has no clue whathe Constitution actually menas and so many people of statur e have said that his scholarship was crap.
Yet he’s till a professor. This isn’t an academic freedom issue, this is an academic competence issue.

I don’t know if Yoo actually teaches anyone. GHe may sit as an advisor to a few students Committees, but I suspect he has an option to “buy back” his teaching hours, and does so using moneys from Neo-Conservative Foundations.

Anyone from Berkeley that can get a set of course schedules to check up on his teaching assignments over the past few years?

jeffnar @ 113

breaking: the story of Susan Lindauer

By Michael Collins
“Scoop” Independent News
Washington, D.C.

“Above all, you must realize that if you go ahead with this invasion, Osama bin Laden will triumph, rising from his grave or seclusion. His network will be swollen with fresh recruits, and other charismatic individuals will seek to build upon his model, multiplying those networks. And the United States will have delivered the death blow to itself. Using your own act of war, Osama and his cohort will irrevocably divide the hearts and minds of the Arab Street from moderate governments in Islamic countries that have been holding back the tide. Power to the people, what we call “democracy,” will secure the rise of fundamentalists.” – Susan Lindauer’s last letter to Andrew Card, January 6, 2003*
…

the really telling things about Susan Lindauer are:
1) She had been recruited by US intelligence and had worked for back channel contacts for years.
…

Read the whole story – just infuriates the hell out of me.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/10495

The full Bush backstabbing!

This story is every bit as horrendous as the outing of Valerie Plame except they did it to someone who is blood related to a Bushie.

Disgusting people.

…
Gerald Ford’s great gift to this country was his willingness and abilty not to be seduced by power. He deserves more credit than he got.

I used to be very friendly with one of the agents from his protective detail and they all keep in touch with one another and have dinners and things. Like an alumn group. They used to carp about how “their” president, gave the country back to the people and no one said thank you.

His administration receives little attention compared to some others. It was a very mixed bag. Ford got us out of Vietnam and put us past Watergate and Nixon, but also gave us Rumsfeld and Cheney and one might say, the Crazies, the Neocons. History might sort it out in his favor, but somebody will have to be interested in actually researching that.

Aside from that I don’t think many presidencies get a great big smooch or ‘thank you’ from the public.

So why don’t the voters see that there’s a problem here?

Voters aren’t informed by the media (it’s up to us) and they’re pressed with their own lives.

Broken Military:

According to Pentagon figures, 29 soldiers died in August for non-hostile reasons, and another 23 died of non-combat causes in September. Shockingly, this compares with seven in August last year and 11 in September 2006.

link

Sounds like the Military is trying to cover up a suicide epidemic in Iraq.

Depending on how many of those troops are involved in auditing financial matters concerning mercenary firms in Iraq those “suicides” like that of Ted Westhusing might fall into a more sinister category.

Not just that, but also once you have a dept riddled with Monica Goodlings in career positions, and THEN you insulate the Dept from WH control and pressure – - – what do you have?

So you do what you have to do to insulate the Dept from politicization after 8 years of a politicized career process. And after 8 years of DOJ seeing that they can do anything – include solicit, and even sign off on deportation documents intitiating, the specific torture of a specific innocent person – - and never suffer one consequence.

You simply cannot have a person with incentive to coverup wrongdoing within their own department, in a position to control that department’s watchdog.

And with the President, all Dept are theirs and the DOJ defers to the Pres as “boss” of their dept as to his/her ultimate position on what “the law means.”

The IG offices , like DOJ have bee descimated at the middle to upper management level. There just aren’t enough qulaity grownups left to go around and all kinds of people are doing their boss’s boss’s job on an ad hoc basis. Working out of title. It’s crazy.

As an employee of one of the IGs, I can tell you that there’s a nifty little phrase in every Federal employee’s job description that allows this to happen: “Employee will perform other duties as assigned.”

It means the work gets done, and they don’t have to pay you more for duties that are above your current grade level.

rita @ 180

To follow up on Sparkles at 171:

Grassley announced to the Senate that he had done his ow investigation of the GSA contract with Sun Microsystem and was not mincing words. He came down squarely on the side of GSA IG and against Doan and Williams. Before he lobbed that grenade he debunked the Repub talking points on SCHIP.

wow. great.

I believe the child beneficiary to receive the most government services and assistance has been George W. Bush…

Damn refreshing!