The Kentucky senate race serves as a prime example. The Democratic candidate, Jack Conway, is currently Kentucky's attorney general. Conway is also currently prosecuting a nursing home for allegedly covering up the sexual abuse of one of its residents.
But that nursing home is owned by Terry Forcht, a millionaire who gives prodigiously to right-wing causes. He poured money into Karl Rove's organization, American Crossroads GPS, which ran ads backing Conway's Republican opponent, Rand Paul. Guess who came away with the victory last night?
As Holland emphasizes, the mid-term elections are just how the first phase of the justice system's corruption plays out. Eventually the mere threat of attack ads could be enough to prevent needed prosecutions. Corporate bigwigs could literally get away with murder, and pay for it only through attack ads.
Think this is bad? Just wait for 2012
As David Corn details for Mother Jones, the Supreme Court's ruling has put American democracy in grave danger. This year's big spending is just a warm-up for the 2012 presidential election. Karl Rove has already pledged to keep running attack ads after the mid-terms, and there's no doubt that he'll make good on that. As Corn emphasizes, this issue doesn't just affect how campaigns are financed-it will permanently reshape the very nature of American elections.
The permanent, neverending campaign will become even more permanent and neverending. These big-and-secret-money groups will be working 24/7, opposing and discrediting President Barack Obama and the Democrats in the so-called off-year and then revving up for the 2012 presidential and congressional elections. The negative ads never have to stop.
That, ultimately, is the major take-away from last night's elections. Not the number of seats Republicans picked up in the House, or the Tea Party's ability to infiltrate the Senate, but the formal incorporation of American politics. With literally no limits on the amount of money they can spend to influence elections, corporations and secret billionaires are going to be tipping the democratic scales wherever they smell profit.
That's how Lawrence O'Donnell pitched this segment on his special show yesterday. And it makes a fair amount of sense. California Democrats have some pretty strong younger statewide candidates, and Kamala Harris is definitely a stand-out:
But here's the thing O'Donnell didn't look at that I think he should have: the rather blatant hypocritical record of death penalty politics in California. Specifically, in 1986, an avalanche of conservative business interest poured money into the state to remove Chief Justice Rose Bird from the bench, along with associate justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin. The campaigns against them were based on their rulings against the death penalty... but it was almost six years after that before the first execution in California, and there have only been thirteen California executions altogether since then.
This a far cry from Texas, where they execute people by the truckload. There is no great bloodlust here in California on a regular basis, but it can be drummed up, with enough money, when the need arises. Afterward, however, no one at all seems to have any interest in try to sustain it. It's about as transparently phoney as death penalty politics gets anywhere in the US.
And that's what Karl Rove is trying to use in this race.
There seems to be a growing sense of buyer's remorse among both members of the Tea Party Movement and Republican Party regulars surrounding the primary win of Christine O'Donnell. Buyer's remorse is a condition that arises after people have bought something or bought into something with a feeling of personal comfort that then disappears after the purchase. The buyer is then left with a sense of remorse over having made the purchase in the first place. Questions surrounding O'Donnell's ability to get elected and her past personal history have caught the attention of prominent Republicans like the head of the Delaware GOP, Tom Ross, Karl Rove, or Congressman Mike Pence, (R-IN). Pence recently said that while a verdict on O'Donnell's political future is up to the voters in Delaware, he also said that she has an obligation to explain past public statements. One should not be too surprised by the fact that more and more Republicans are uncomfortable with O'Donnell considering the controversy stirred up within the G.O.P. regarding how to accommodate the Tea Party Movement. Republicans officer holders and the G.O.P. leadership may pay lip service to the fact that is up to the Delaware voters to decide who will be their next Senator, but don't fool yourself in thinking they would not have preferred Mike Castle and along with him a chance at retaking the Senate.
Likewise her election has given rise to anxiety within the organization of the Tea Party Movement. The discomfort within the movement is evident in the commentary of heavy weights like Dick Armey right down to the level of rank and file operatives. While it's not surprising that established Republican office holders and operatives would be dismayed and at odds with the Tea Party movement, what is interesting to note is the degree of controversy that Ms. O'Donnell has created within the movement itself. Tea Party money man, Dick Armey, former House Minority Leader and head of FreedomWorks, the powerhouse advocacy group which has poured millions into the campaigns of Tea Party candidates declined to back O'Donnell and has yet to endorse her. Armey was reluctant to support O'Donnell in the primary, "largely because of concerns over her electability. Armey has been leery of social conservatives like O'Donnell, who is far more Christian Coalition than tea party. In fact, he has spent the past few years bashing social conservatives for trying to use government to impose their moral agenda on the rest of the country." according to Stephanie Mencimer of Mother Jones.The remorse over O'Donnell's election is more than evident among many of the movement's foot soldiers as well as the following representative quote shows: "Andrew Ian Dodge is the Maine state coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, one of the largest tea party umbrella groups. TPP doesn't endorse candidates, but that hasn't stopped Dodge from expressing his own opinion about O'Donnell. He thinks she's a bit of a nutter. "Everything I've seen about her has made me laugh my ass off," he says. "What the hell do you say? First you have Alvin Green, and now you have her." His concern is that if she loses in the general election to Democrat Chris Coons, the defeat will be widely regarded as a reflection on the tea party movement-and he doesn't want that....Dodge also takes issue with O'Donnell's status as an "outsider." He explains: "Alvin Green is an outsider. Carl Paladino, who has never run for anything, is an outsider." O'Donnell has run four times for national office and lost. "She's not an outsider," he says. "She's a loser." Dodge notes that while it hasn't made national headlines, there is a reasonable and healthy discussion inside the tea party movement about whether O'Donnell deserves national support...There's video of her saying masturbation leads to AIDS. O'Donnell is on record attacking masturbation as sinful, decrying the costs of AIDS prevention and research, and criticizing the "lifestyle which brings about this disease." Further examples of rank and file discontent with the O'Donnell election can be found in the sources below.
Much is made about the fact that the Tea Party Movement is so decentralized, that it is a truly grass roots "peoples movement", this being the explanation given for the wide variations in the quality of the candidates that the movement produces. Whether or not the movement is truly "grass roots is debatable, but herein rests an essential question: If the Tea Party Movement is to morph into a viable component of, or a replacement for the GOP, can it do so given its current diffuse method of organization, operation and candidate selection? To what extent is the movement undermining its own credibility and emerging "brand name" by allowing candidates of dubious and questionable quality to represent it in high profile races such as the ones in Delaware and Nevada. If its candidates are seen as too extreme, to bizarre or just plain farcical, who will take the movement seriously outside of its own rank and file? And based on the polling from the conservative Rasmussen Reports; the number of voters who identify as Tea Party members is still relatively small. Rasmussen's August poll showed: "national telephone survey finds that 13% of voters say they themselves are Tea Party members. Thirteen percent (13%) more say they have close friends or family members who are part of the Tea Party movement... Sixty percent (60%) say they have no ties to the movement, but that's down nine points from late May." Fourteen percent (14%) are not sure. Prior polling by Rasmussen had shown identification with the Tea Party to be higher at 24%. That said the real challenge for the Tea Party Movement is to convince the independent voters that their candidates are worth voting for. There is more than ample polling to show that independents view the Tea Party in a less than negative light, but I suspect that most of that polling represents the proverbial generic and generalized type of question, one in which the respondent does not have to voice an opinion about a particular candidate that holds specific positions that the respondent may or may not endorse. And therein lays the root of all of the consternation surrounding the primary win for Ms. O'Donnell. She is the product of a system that has no apparent quality control and that lack of control has produced a candidate that raises more questions than answers as to whether or not she is fit for the office of U.S. Senator. The byproduct of this controversy is a host of questions as to the inherent logic, or lack thereof, of the present form of organization of the Tea Party Movement and its overall staying power on the American political scene. Is it as Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently said: "a fad" or is it an emergent political force to be reckoned with? Only time will tell. In the interest of full disclosure I have twelve members of my own extended family who are active in the Tea Party Movement.
Christine O'Donnell's Candidacy Leaving Some Tea Party Members With Buyer's Remorse?
Rasmussen Reports August / 2010: 26% Say They're Part of Tea Party Movement Or Know Someone Who Ishttp://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/august_2010/26_say_they_re_part_of_tea_party_movement_or_know_someone_who_is
Rasmussen Reports June / 2010 :46% Say Tea Party Good for America, 31% Disagreehttp://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/may_2010/46_say_tea_party_good_for_america_31_disagree
As expected the Republicans in the Senate said no to those whose livelihoods they gutted when they controlled Washington. Forget the fact that men like Mitch McConnell and yes, Ben Nelson who is a Republican and should get out of our party soaked up huge salaries while soaking the middle-class with policies that decimated them while enriching Corporate fatcats and the Chinese Communists. Of course the whole Republican Party, Mitch McConnell and Ben Nelson want you to forget. What they do not want is to bear any of the responsibility of their actions both in the past and now as working Americans who paid the price from Republicans and Corporate Democrats and the robber-barons in Corporate America getting fat, crashing the economy, and getting bailed out.
Media manipulation by the right-wing to influence public perception has been a decade-long tactic to undermine voter registration in America. While the current media frenzy surrounding the community organization ACORN is only partly related to voter registration efforts, it is important to note that the attacks have been built on a foundation of misinformation and media manipulation by the right-wing over several years, largely surrounding the myth of "voter fraud."
Health care is a struggle. I get it. But getting rid of Karl Rove's DOJ hit squad? C'mon!
Don Siegelman-the most high-profile victim of Rove's skullduggery-has launched a campaign to do just that. Of course, it goes without saying that there shouldn't have to be such a campaign. It's ludicrous that Obama didn't fire the whole lot of GOP political appointees in the DOJ on day one. But he didn't. So now it falls to us to pressure him to do the right thing.
Earlier this month, I was fortunate to join many friends from here and all around the country at Netroots Nation and discuss some of the victories we have achieved together.
Specifically, I mentioned the success we had seen in urging the House Committee on the Judiciary to force Karl Rove to testify and admit his role in the firing of U.S. Attorneys while issuing "non-denial-denials" about his role in my prosecution.
That's something we never could have achieved without the support of the netroots and the Daily Kos community. I can't thank you enough for your steadfast support. But, this fight is not over; not for me, not for Karl Rove, and not for our democracy.
That's why, at my Netroots Nation panel, I launched a new campaign, www.FireRovesProsecutors.com, dedicated to seeing those Rove-vetted U.S. Attorneys and appointees still poisoning the Department of Justice removed from their positions - ending their ability to threaten our democracy.
When he wrote the diary, over 5,000 people had already sent email messages to the White House demanding the removal of Rove's prosecutors. We need to do our bit to raise those numbers.
The news today in New Jersey is that the former top aide to Chris Christie while he was in the U.S. Attorney's office- Michele Brown- resigned amid revelations that she was still paying off a $46,000 personal loan to him. Brown was serving in the U.S. Attorney's office after Christie became a candidate raising questions about whether she owed him favors and would carry out investigations/indictments on his behalf.
On top of it, acting U.S. Attorney, Ralph Marra- who replaced Christie upon his resignation to run for Governor- complained that Gov. Jon Corzine's campaign successfully targeted the office with a Freedom of Information request for Christie's records on no-bid contracts he awarded during his tenure, among other incidents. He's also in some trouble of his own.
Marra, in the e-mail obtained by The Star-Ledger, confirmed he is facing an internal ethics inquiry over public comments he made last month. Justice Department officials are looking into whether Marra's statements during a news conference after a corruption sweep may have helped Christie's campaign for governor.
Maybe it's the original Rove connection, but something about this feels like another version of Fitzmas is coming, and like Joe says, that there's more to this sleazebag Christie coming down the pipe.
Jon Corzine is on the OpenLeft/BlogPAC Better Democrats page. Here's another few shekels to him for pure smarts on the FOIA request. And another couple to keep Christie out of the Governor's mansion.
Amid all the health care reform goings-on in the last few weeks, it has been fun to take a break from that and watch the walls (hopefully) closing in on Karl Rove. Today it's reported in all the major outlets that he was much more deeply involved in the U.S. Attorneys' firings than he said he was, and even Harriet Miers is pointing fingers at him. Whether or not this means Fitzmas or something close to it again, I am unsure, but he may finally be getting what's coming to him, even if it takes many more months.
The more immediate impact is on the NJ-Gov race, where progressive governor Jon Corzine has been trailing Chris Christie recently. There hasn't been much discussion at OpenLeft about the race, but Chris Christie is this supposedly apolitical U.S. Attorney who engineered prosecutions and convictions of many high-profile NJ politicians, Dems and Republicans alike. Well, as Sam Stein reports today, he wasn't really all that apolitical. Rove has been advising Christie on making connections to start his run at the governor's mansion.
In an on-the-record interview with the House Judiciary Committee on July 7, 2009, the former Bush strategist acknowledged that he had held several conversations with current GOP candidate Chris Christie over the course of several years regarding the possibility of running for the governor's chair.
Christie, Rove said, was interested in mounting a bid and "asked me questions about who -- who were good people that knew about running for governor that he could talk to."
This damning news sure as hell raises a lot of Nixonian questions about Christie (per the Corzine camp's ad), including how his gubernatorial strategy was linked to who he decided to prosecute. If even Harriet Miers says Rove called New Mexico Attorney David Iglesias a "serious problem" and that he wanted "something done" about it, what direction did Rove give Christie on who should have been prosecuted in NJ?
isn't the point that whatever he did, whether misdemeanor or felony or a slap on the wrist subject, it's almost beside the point when there's misconduct like this in a democratic system of justice? There's no choice, right? You don't withhold evidence from the defense, no matter what."
DAngelus is certainly right that there's more to the issue than just the prosecutorial misconduct. There is still the matter of Stevens being a crook. But what's the bigger issue here, particularly given the scope of prosecutorial misconduct over the last 8 years?
"There seems to be substantial evidence of prosecutorial and other misconduct in my case, that would dwarf the allegations in the Stevens case," the former Alabama governor told TPMmuckraker in an interview moments ago....
And, as he has before, Siegelman framed his case as part of a wider effort to get to truth about politicization of the Justice Department during the Bush years. "Who at the Department of Justice abused their power, and why?" he asked. "Was Karl Rove directing the show?"
Even bigger than the issue of prosecutorial misconduct, however, is the over-arching issue of restoring the rule of law. As in holding Bush Administration officials accountable for torture, and other criminal policies.
I supported Wesley Clark and Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic primaries, and for bloggers driven by ideology and idiots on Daily Kos intoxicated by TV charisma, this pairing was more or less incomprehensible, but for anyone looking around for an honest candidate, it was obvious. Kucinich and Clark were the only honest Democrats in the race.
Did it really matter?
Suppose there's a candidate (like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton) who bullshits almost constantly (like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton), but promises low taxes, world peace, free medicine, cheap gas, new frontiers in renewable energy, tolerance for gays, more jobs, better jobs, better schools, a huge defense establishment, and ... did I mention low taxes?
Doesn't it make sense to vote for a candidate who promises you a package of wonders for cheap, in the hope that the laws of physics and economics and even the axioms of mathematics will undergo a miraculous transmogrification immediately after election day, and our elected Messiah will transform five loaves and two fishes into a feast for everybody?
No.
It makes about as much sense to elect Obama or Clinton or Bush or McCain or that other Clinton or Reagan or that other Bush as it makes to award the Nobel Prize in Physics to a candidate who promises to simplify the laws of physics into one easy-to-remember formula that any idiot can understand, on the basis of mathematics that everybody knows is bullshit.
The Presidency of the United States really is a job for a rocket scientist, meaning somebody outstandingly more intelligent than you and me, and if we can't find anybody more intelligent than you, at least we have to try, and the obviousness of this maxim for almost everybody is convincingly demonstrated by the fact that we haven't elected a President without an Ivy-League diploma since 1984.
So almost everybody more or less accepts the fact that we live in a monstrously complicated world, and nobody but a genius can sort out all the conflicting advice that constantly rains down on every President, and somehow maintain the equilibrium of our monstrously complicated nation. But genius expresses itself in an infinite number of categories, and because we are weak, foolish creatures, we keep electing geniuses in the category of bullshit.
It gets worse.
As recently as 1996, we could still find a genius-bullshitter who was also appealing enough on TV to get himself elected, but no such individual appeared in 2000, and the era of Siamese Presidents was inaugurated by the mutant-hybrid Howdy-Doody-and-the-Devil frontman-puppetmaster combination of George W. Bush and Karl Rove, now replaced in the Oval Office by David Axelrod and Barack Obama.
These new twinsies have already managed to dump trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars into black holes only thinly disguised as stimuli and bailouts, with no end in sight, and nothing like an honest explanation of any of it even expected by anybody except a few out-and-out drool-buckets at the very bottom of the category of idiots who elected the current monstrosity-hybrid of a bullshit genius.
I also like voting for geniuses, as long as they're honest, and only a few months before the beginning of the Democratic primary season, I still had two to choose from, although the Rhodes Scholar Wesley Clark fit a lot more obviously into that high-falutin' category than the indomitable little ex-mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, but Dennis Kucinich is so honest, and his honesty keeps so much bullshit from getting in his way, that now his incredible clairvoyance about the many boondoggle-bailouts looks infinitely more like genius than the bullshit-twin-geniuses we foolishly installed in the Presidency, along with all their fumbling, bumbling Ivy-League assistants.
The appeals court ruling that upheld most of the charges against former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman has drawn critical commentary from Scott Horton at Harpers and emptywheel at FireDogLake, both worth reading in their entirety.
In particular, Scott notes:
nearly all the disclosures that undermined confidence in the fairness of the Siegelman trial occurred after the trial record was closed-and none of these disclosures were examined by the Court of Appeals. Even though the appeals court looked into jury misconduct, it did not have before it the much more powerful evidence of misconduct that a whistleblowing member of the prosecution team subsequently disclosed to the Justice Department-because the Bush Justice Department, in violation of its plain ethical duties, chose to keep all of that secret. So although an appeal has been taken and resolved, not one of the truly significant issues with the Siegelman case was ever briefed or argued. That remains for the future.
emptywheel is more specific:
But note, in particular, the centrality of Nick Bailey's testimony in the Court's decision to uphold most of the convictions.
That's important because--as 60 Minutes reported on its piece on Siegelman--there are allegations Prosecutors coached Bailey's testimony and then did not turn over notes from that coaching to Siegelman's defense team to use to impeach Bailey
And then goes on to quote from a previous post by Horton back in last July. The upshot is that this ruling has barely scratched the surface of the wrongdoing alleged in this case.
Karl Rove testifying before the House Judiciary Committee under penalty of perjury is one of those things you always wish for and work toward, but never quite imagine actually happening until you see the headline. A pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming moment along the lines of Barack Obama becoming President or the Philadelphia Phillies winning the World Series. Well, Obama is firmly in the White House and the Phils are reigning champs, so why the hell shouldn't Rove be under the spotlight of congressional scrutiny?
After all, we've been pushing for months to Send Karl Rove to Jail. Last summer, I went down to DC and delivered a petition with over 127,000 signatures to Rep. Linda Sanchez, a House Judiciary Committee (HJC) member who has led the charge against Rove. That petition helped persuade the HJC to hold Rove in contempt for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena. Now, that push has finally resulted in Rove testifying before the HJC about his involvement in the US attorneys scandal and the wrongful prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman.
Imagine being about to interrogate someone as diabolically deceitful as Rove for the role he played in the politicization of the Justice Department. Imagine being able to pore over the five boxes of internal White House memos and e-mails that the HJC will finally get to examine. Keep in mind this is the same scandal that already was a huge black eye for the Bush administration when it ruined Alberto Gonzales' career. Who knows what justice Congress now has in store for Rove!
Rep. John Conyers has subpoenaed Karl Rove again to testify about White House influence on the prosecution of Don Siegelman, but Rove's lawyer claims that executive privilege invoked by President Bush still applies, and Obama is bound by his oath of office to maintain Constitutional separation of powers by endorsing Rove's immunity and instructing the Attorney General to resist the Congressional subpoena. So...
Will Obama support executive privilege for Rove, or not?
Otherwise Obama has to give up his pipe-dreams of bipartisanship, and declare all-out war on Republicans by nullifying the claim of executive privilege and forcing Rove to testify, and it's war because the former President and Vice-President are only one step behind Rove as targets for prosecution. This would be the mythical equivalent of kidnapping Merlin from a Republican Camelot, and the boy-king Arthur W. Bush would be honor-bound to rally his knights in exile and storm the White House!
Or will Obama betray the credulous peasants who made him their king, and ally himself instead with the dark hordes of disorder and eternal sorrow?
Both alternatives are obviously impossible, and if Barack Obama is squeezed into the infinitesimal branch-point of this paradox, then the Universe will accordingly fall into a Logical Singularity where all known laws of physics and politics will be abrogated!
Our world will be swallowed by a black hole of Chaos and Unreason!
Bipartisanship is Obama, and Obama is bipartisanship, from his first real blip on the national radar at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, right through his otherwise incomprehensible and completely useless attempt to rally Republican support for his economic stimulus with humongous tax-cuts.
No entity can act in absolute opposition to its essence! Obama cannot abandon bipartisanship and declare war on Republicans by seizing their Merlin.
But not even the original Merlin could so mystify the rubes that they accept Obama's Department of Justice defending Karl Rove against a Congressional subpoena!
It's like biting the head off a chicken and screaming "Hail Satan!"
If Obama is rejected by his outraged base, his fragile identity would be undone, the mask of Barack Obama, Progressive Hero, would disappear, and only the original face of Little Orphan Obama would remain, abandoned by Dad and dumped on the grandparents by Ma Dunham, desperately cobbling together a credible persona in the lily-white paradise of a Hawaiian prep-school.
Obama cannot return to that nightmare of anomie! But he cannot make war on Republicans! Neither A or Not-A!
A logical apocalypse!
So anyone who wants our old familiar Universe to creep along through the next Great Depression that is already rolling down upon us, and anyone who wants a ring-side seat when either India and Pakistan or North and South Korea take that last little step into nuclear war and poison what's left of our already almost poisonous atmosphere...
Anyone who wants to survive for the next few years of our miserable future should call, write, or email John Conyers and tell him to stop squeezing Barack Obama into a paradoxical branch-point that will plunge our Universe into the nothingness of Singularity and Annihilation!
But there's obviously room for reasonable people to disagree on this issue, and maybe it's just as well to skip the last few chapters of humanity's absurd tragedy or sad farce, and let the whole thing disappear in one painless, illogical poof!
Here's Karl Rove, bragging about Bush's literary tastes.
Mr. Bush's 2006 reading list shows his literary tastes. The nonfiction ran from biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Babe Ruth, King Leopold, William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long, LBJ and Genghis Khan to Andrew Roberts's "A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900," James L. Swanson's "Manhunt," and Nathaniel Philbrick's "Mayflower." Besides eight Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald, Mr. Bush tackled Michael Crichton's "Next," Vince Flynn's "Executive Power," Stephen Hunter's "Point of Impact," and Albert Camus's "The Stranger," among others.
Turning to the Bush clan, we learn in Kitty Kelley's book The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty that New Yorker writer Brendan Gill was once a guest of George H.W. and Barbara Bush at their summer house in Kennebunkport, Maine. Stumbling through the place late at night in search of something to read, the only volume he could find was The Fart Book.
I sort of understand Rove's strategy of insisting that George W. Bush is an intellectual heavyweight, even though he's obviously just a dolt that loves fart jokes. Rove enjoys tweaking liberals by preying on their insecurities, which he used to do when he was powerful and the Bush administration was taken seriously by insisting that they were effete eggheads out of touch with the real America. Only, now, there's nothing whatsoever admirable about the Bush Presidency and no one really believes Rove is a political genius, and so Rove is reduced to pretending that Bush is some sort of bookworm. Take that, liberals! Or something like that.
I think someone should establish a musty hospice for the careers of dated political operatives, and stick Rove there. Oh wait, an embarrassing political attic already exists, and it's called Fox News.
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