Loyalty is a great quality. Probably part of the reason that Americans own so many dogs. Still while tail wagging loyalty and obedience are good qualities in a dog they can be disastrous qualities in an attorney general. We’ve all heard about the history of attorney generals over the last few days and we have to go all the way back to John N. Mitchell to find one as corrupt as Alberto Gonzales. Internal Affairs – Aborted DOJ Probe Probably Would Have Targeted Gonzales
Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration’s warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews.
Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.
Unka Karl was at the top of the loop on the U.S. attorney purge. That darn e-mail and the “internets”. Ht to CorrenteWire for this column by Paul Krugman who looks at the flip side of the scandal. Alberto – BushCo was purging people based on their willingness to march to the tune of the Whitehouse rather then being ethical – you know like dude putting the law above politics. So the people that were retained must have possessed the ideological zeal that passed muster by Alberto-Karl-George. So what did the U.S. A’s do or didn’t do that made them ideological favorite sons,
Another big loose end involves what U.S. attorneys who weren’t fired did to please their employers. As I pointed out last week, the numbers show that since the Bush administration came to power, federal prosecutors have investigated far more Democrats than Republicans.
But the numbers can tell only part of the story. What we really need — and it will take a lot of legwork — is a portrait of the actual behavior of prosecutors across the country. Did they launch spurious investigations of Democrats, as I suggested last week may have happened in New Jersey? Did they slow-walk investigations of Republican scandals, like the phone-jamming case in New Hampshire?
Lecture 10 – The Age of Totalitarianism: Stalin and Hitler
In the end, totalitarianism meant a “permanent revolution,” an unfinished revolution in which rapid and profound change imposed from above simply went on forever. Of course, a permanent revolution also means that the revolution is never over. The individual is constantly striving for a goal which has been placed just a hair out of reach. In this way, society always remains mobilized for continual effort. The first example of such a permanent revolution the “revolution from above,” instituted by Joseph Stalin in 1927 and 1928. After having suppressed his enemies on both the left and the right, as well as the center, Stalin issued the “general party line.”
We probably will not get over the labels Left and Right in my lifetime. It is unfortunate in a way, while I take no exception to being called left of center, what I am is a liberal. Liberals are and have been for some time the dreaded enemy of the far left and the far right. That is because ultimately when you go far enough to the left or the right you end up with an intractable authoritarian government and a mindset that will not tolerant deviance from the party line. The neocons have managed to blend qualities of the far right and the far left ( thus my unease with those old labels) they have created a corrupt relationship between business and government that is classically right-wing ( see the Right’s changes to Medicare and the relation to pharmaceutical and heath care companies – and Halliburton). At the same time their corporate giveaways have elements of socialism. Still their zeal in purging, punishing, smearing and generally demonizing anyone ( including the fired Republican U.S. attorneys) that disagrees with them is incredibly Stalinesque. Today’s conservatives are constantly trying to rewrite history, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t learned from it. While nationalism plays a large role in the conservative movement as it did in the growth of communism and German Nazism they have also been happy to exploit religion for their own ends, The president receives “lessons” from his neoconservative tutors
The President, concluded Stelzer with great satisfaction, “worries less about his ‘legacy’ than about his standing with the Almighty.” And as a result of this luncheon, the President’s standing with the Almightys in the neoconservative circle was as secure as ever. Another luncheon is likely planned soon, since Stelzer also noted that “Bush has circulated copies of Natan Sharansky’s The Case for Democracy to his staff, and recommended Mark Steyn’s America Alone.”Irving Kristol (Himmelfarb’s husband) has written in the past about the need to exploit religious and moral concepts in order to manipulate the masses, and his intellectual North Star, Leo Strauss, has advocated — as Strauss scholar Shadia Drury documented — that “those in power must invent noble lies and pious frauds to keep the people in the stupor for which they are supremely fit” — a view Kristol has endorsed. One can see that dynamic powerfully at work in the interaction between these neoconservatives and the President. They have seized upon the President’s evangelical fervor and equated his “calling” to wage war for Good in the world with the neoconservative agenda of endless wars in the Middle East.
Whether some of the neocons are true believers while others are not doesn’t matter all that much. They are more then willing to exploit religion for their own ends just as much as Bin Laden and his ideological sympathizers are.
While I was over at Salon snipping part of Glenn Greenwald’s long post on the neocons he had put up this post on the recent Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessions, Support for al-Qaida plots on large right-wing blog. Where the same right-wing nuts that expressed outrage that a few commenters over at HuffPo wouldn’t mind if Dick Cheney bit the dust (they were wrong to go that far) are now aligning themselves with al-Qaida in their desire to see former president and still a Christian minister Jimmy Carter assassinated.
Not a single LGF commenter in that discussion condemned this support for Al Qaeda’s assassination plot, nor has a single right-wing blogger (that I’m aware of) said a single word about any of it.
I can’t put up an example of the Little Green Snot’s comments because Glenn has them up in little screen captures. Its funny that Charles Johnson of LGF has made it so that when you click through on Glenn’s links instead of the Carter assassination post you’re redirected to Google.
Sam Lowry: Excuse me, Dawson, can you put me through to Mr. Helpmann’s office?
Dawson: I’m afraid I can’t sir. You have to go through the proper channels.
Sam Lowry: And you can’t tell me what the proper channels are, because that’s classified information?
Dawson: I’m glad to see the Ministry’s continuing its tradition of recruiting the brightest and best, sir.
Sam Lowry: Thank you, Dawson.
from the movie Brazil (1985)
The Long Goodbye 