Libertarian Leanings

Oh the humiliation!

Insolent slugs! How dare you not bow and scrape when a congresswoman passes!

The six-term congresswoman [Cynthia McKinney] apparently struck a Capitol Police officer when he tried to stop her from entering a House office building without going through a metal detector. Members of Congress wear identifying lapel pins and routinely are waved into buildings without undergoing security checks. The officer apparently did not recognize McKinney, she said in a statement.

[...]

Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday labeled it "a mistake, an unfortunate lack of recognition of a member of Congress."

Yes, how distressing for McKinney!  The degradation!  The humiliation of not being recognized!  Fortunately McKinney is well connected.

Channel 2 Action News has learned that Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-CA.) intervened when word got out Wednesday night that McKinney might be arrested.

She says she approached the House sergeant-at-arms to discuss the situation.

Millender-McDonald sits on the House committee that oversees the Capitol Hill police and the sergeant-at-arms' office.

Millender-McDonald does not believe what she did constitutes “intervention”, said spokeswoman Denise Mixon. “She simply wanted some questions answered,” Mixon said.

I'm confident that all will be resolved and that Millender-McDonald will teach Capitol Hill Police proper respect for their betters.  Via MacRanger.

Insight

This is harsh:

State presidents are usually caretakers, while Defense presidents are the only ones that get anything done. So it's no surprise that Clinton spent eight years diddling the interns, while Bush has spent five years overthrowing oppressive dictatorships, destroying giant, transnational terrorist groups, and bringing the country out of the recession left him by his predecessor.

• I think Roosevelt-32 was an exception to the rule: he seems to have made nearly every major decision himself, and neither his various Secretaries of State nor of War seem to have made much of an impression. Maybe one of each -- Cordell Hull (State until nearly the end) and Henry Stimson (the WWII War Secretary) -- are at least noticed and remembered; but everything from the New Deal to Yalta was run right out of the Oval Office.

During George W. Bush's Defense presidency, State's stalking horse, the CIA, has been doing everything possible to unseat him. During Clinton's State presidency, the Pentagon despised him.

So it goes.

Harsh, but it sounds about right.  I guess that's why it's harsh. (Emphasis in the original)

Via Whizbang.

Is this why Rove is still on the hook?

On the left they're salivating over prospects that Karl Rove will be indicted.  I'll be surprised if he is.  In a post on the topic from a couple of days ago Talkleft linked the transcript to a February 24th hearing in which Scooter Libby's lawyers seek to compel the Special Prosecutor to turn of grand jury materials to the defense. Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft promised there are "other juicy tidbits" in the transcript, and this one leaped out at me.  From the transcript:

17 MR. FITZGERALD: May I make a suggestion which I
18 think, Your Honor, is headed there any way but perhaps we could
19 submit next week a proposed redacted version that would become
20 public, that we tried to draw the line where the public could
21 see what's left of the redacted affidavit that doesn't
22 compromise grand jury interests the way we did in the appellate
23 opinion. We would serve a copy obviously with counsel for the
24 defense and the court. They could weigh in on whether they
25 thought there was anything else that needed to be removed or
00007
01 put back in. And we'll try to draw the lines the way we did
02 otherwise.
03 THE COURT: I think that would be acceptable. I
04 assume, Mr. Wells, as government counsel says, we don't want to
05 shut down the flow of information which conceivably happens if
06 we start to make everything public although I do agree that we
07 need to scrutinize very carefully exactly what remains under
08 seal.
09 MR. WELLS: Your Honor, under no event do I want to
10 shut down the flow of information, but at the same time, let's
11 take that paragraph 22. I am permitted now under the
12 protective order to take that information and use it to prepare
13 the defense.
14 That means since this case involves reporters, for
15 example, in theory I could go and have a conversation, attempt
16 to have a conversation with somebody say from NBC -- were you
17 aware of this information -- to try to forward my case.
18 I mean it seems to me that we are acting like there's
19 going to be a magical moment when the trial begins, that
20 suddenly okay none of this matters. I believe the magical
21 moment occurs when the indictment is returned. Once a
22 prosecutor returns an indict, it is implicit, inherent in the
23 system that the materials in the grand jury are going to come
24 our during the normal phases of the case and to the public.
25 THE COURT: I would agree with you if this was a
00008
01 closed investigation. My concern is that there is an open
02 investigation. We don't know exactly what's going to happen to
03 reference to that investigation.
04 It seems to me fundamentally unfair to start to
05 reveal the information about people who may be subject to a
06 case and their name is tarnished in the public for no good
07 reason.
08 So I would agree with you, if this were a closed
09 investigation and we knew that the case wasn't going anywhere
10 other than Mr. Libby, I would agree. But I guess I have a
11 problem because of the nature and the status of the
12 investigation at this point in buying full-heartedly on what
13 you suggest.
14 What I'm going to do at this point, because I want
15 there to be an open proceeding, is to require that an
16 additional redacted version for public dissemination be
17 proposed. To the extent that the government believes that the
18 information in the current redacted affidavit still needs to be
19 maintained under seal, counsel will need to articulate, as you
20 just did, why you believe that this true. Then I'll make the
21 call.
22 MR. WELLS: Fair enough.

The continued investigation of Karl Rove has been Fitzgerald's rationale for resisting defense requests for grand jury material.  Are we going to find in the end that this was Fitzgerald's only reason for keeping the Rove investigation going?

Thanks go to Talkleft for putting the transcript where we can get at it.  Via JustOneMinute.

The FBI and Moussaoui

A Jeff Taylor column in Reason Magazine has harsh things to say about FBI handling of Zacarias Moussaoui in the months leading up to September 11, 2001.

One exchange from the Moussaoui trial makes clear what happened in the weeks running up to 9/11:

"You tried to move heaven and earth to get a search warrant to search this man's belongings and you were obstructed," MacMahon said to Samit.

"Yes sir, I was obstructed." Samit replied.

No disaster, it seems, can force reform on the Bureau. The same people are still manning the posts at the FBI and Main Justice. They are going to miss the next terror attack because they are dead-certain to stop the last one.

Mexican self interest

David Frum points out an economic impact of illegal immigration from the Mexican standpoint.

Follow the money: In 2005, Mexicans in the United States remitted some $20 billion home. That's 3% of Mexico's entire national income.

Remittances have surpassed tourism, oil, and the maquiladora assembly industry to emerge as the country's top single source of foreign exchange. For the 6% of Mexican households that receive remittances, these funds can mean the difference between extreme poverty and an income roughly in line with the Mexican average.

And as Mexico's economy has malperformed since 2000, remittances have become more essential than ever - not only economically, but politically.

Frum's conclusion, which seems right to me, is that the U.S. has been compensating for Mexico's failure to get its own political and economic house in order.

Today, almost one-fifth of all living Mexican-born people now make their homes in the United States. You have to go back to the Irish potato famine to find a parallel. But Mexico is not suffering famine: It is suffering from a comprehensive failure of political and economic leadership.

Mexico's problems are also America's problems, no getting around that. But an American president cannot agree that Mexico's problems should be made only America's problems.

How to force Mexico to straighten out their political mess, and by doing that clean up their economic mess, is a puzzle.   

A new phase

As you listen to the demands that U.S. troops leave Iraq because they only stir up the insurgency, keep this in mind:

Crime is seen as the biggest problem in the country. While many of the gangs insist their activities are political ("drive out the occupier"), not criminal, the ground truth is otherwise. The gangs will keep stealing and kidnapping until the police are able to take them out. Since some of the gangs do have political connections, there will be political and media blowback as some gangs are put down.

We are definitely watching a new phase unfold in Iraq.  Emphasis above is mine.

A winning WTC design

On display at Maggie's Farm is a World Trade Center design that seems to strike a balance with its utilitarian design and artistic theme.

Searching for identity

The Washington Times continues its coverage of the Democratic party's ongoing quest for an agenda.  Democratic leadership icons Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are reported to have been standing very close to firefighters, police, and veterans in hope that some patriotism and votes will rub off on them. 

Democrats yesterday stood with representatives of firefighter, police and veterans groups in a rally in which party leaders outlined their national security agenda.

Congressional Democrats said their plan would help rebuild the military and National Guard, help fight terrorism, promote increased use of alternative fuels, and fully fund veterans benefits as well as training and equipment for first responders.

Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina Republican succinctly describes their efforts.

"I'm surprised that after months of searching for an agenda, Democrats have finally rallied around the Republican plan for success in the war on terror," said first-term Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican.

It ought to be an interesting election year, perhaps a repeat of the John Kerry style electioneering where he accused Bush of gross incompetence and claiming that what Bush should really be doing was -- just what he was doing. 

Impeachment fantasies

Jonathan Last thinks the Democrats have pinned their election hopes on the impeachment of George W. Bush.

Feingold is running for president, and as he reaps political gains from the base by pushing for censure (with the possibility of impeachment), other Democratic contenders will gravitate toward his position. Remember that in 2003 the Democratic field was uniformly pro-war until Howard Dean made hay from the antiwar movement, causing the serious candidates to vacillate.

Impeachment is still in the distance, but make no mistake: Eventually the circus is coming to town.

Last may be right, but somehow I think there's enough residual sanity in the Democratic party to prevent a charge over the cliff in such an ill conceived move as an impeachment trial.

New York Times gets it wrong

Power Line reporting on New York Times reporting on the legality of the NSA terrorist surveillance:

It would seem that Lichtblau's preconceptions and biases prevented him from accurately reporting what happened in the Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday. His suggestion that the main thrust of the judges' testimony was to "voice skepticism about the president's constitutional authority" is simply wrong; in fact, I can't find a single line in more than 100 pages of transcript that supports Lichtblau's reporting. It's a sad thing when a once-respected newspaper can't be counted on for a straight account of a Congressional hearing.

Here's the bottom line on the testimony.

Senator Feinstein: Now I want to clear something up. Judge Kornblum spoke about Congress's power to pass laws to allow the President to carry out domestic electronic surveillance, and we know that FISA is the exclusive means of so doing. Is such a law, that provides both the authority and the rules for carrying out that authority, are those rules then binding on the President?

Judge Kornblum: No President has ever agreed to that. ***

Senator Feinstein: What do you think as a Judge?

Judge Kornblum: I think--as a Magistrate Judge, not a District Judge, that a President would be remiss in exercising his Constitutional authority to say that, "I surrender all of my power to a statute," and, frankly, I doubt that Congress, in a statute, can take away the President's authority, not his inherent authority, but his necessary and proper authority.

Senator Feinstein: I would like to go down the line if I could. *** Judge Baker?

Judge Baker: No, I do not believe that a President would say that.

Senator Feinstein: No. I am talking about FISA, and is a President bound by the rules and regulations of FISA?

Judge Baker: If it is held constitutional and it is passed, I suppose, just like everyone else, he is under the law too.

***

Senator Feinstein: Judge?

Judge Stafford: Everyone is bound by the law, but I do not believe, with all due respect, that even an act of Congress can limit the President's power under the Necessary and Proper Clause under the Constitution.

***

Chairman Specter: I think the thrust of what you are saying is the President is bound by statute like everyone else unless it impinges on his constitutional authority, and a statute cannot take away the President's constitutional authority. Anybody disagree with that?

[No response.]

Chairman Specter: Everybody agrees with that.