Drowning the EPA in a bathtub causes toxic blowback.

When Grover Norquist famously said "My goal is to cut government in half in 25 years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub." few thought to ask "who's half?"

The Washington Post: Extinct Sense : A troubling report from the Interior Department

According to numerous accounts collected in the inquiry, Ms. MacDonald has terrorized low-level biologists and other employees for years, often yelling and even swearing at them. One official characterized her as an "attack dog." Much of this bullying, the report suggests, was aimed at diluting the scientific conclusions and recommendations of government biologists and at favoring industry and land interests. Ms. MacDonald's subordinates said she has trenchantly resisted both designating new species as endangered and protecting imperiled animals' habitats. She defended her interventions in an interview with the inspector general's staff, saying that she kept Interior's scientists accountable, according to the report. But the evidence available suggests she was at the least too aggressive.

H. Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, recounted a battle he had with Ms. MacDonald over the Southwest willow flycatcher, an endangered bird. Biologists in the field concluded that the bird's nesting range, which determines how much land the government should protect as habitat for the species, was 2.1 miles. Mr. Hall claims that Ms. MacDonald insisted on lowering that to 1.8 miles so that the nesting range would not extend into California, where her husband maintained a family ranch. The inspector general noted that she has no formal training in biology.

Bush Appointee Said to Reject Advice on Endangered Species - washingtonpost.com

In a few instances, federal judges have overturned decisions that MacDonald had influenced. After she declared that the endangered Santa Barbara and Sonoma salamanders were no longer "distinct populations" entitled to protection, William Alsup, a judge on the U.S. District Court for Northern California, ruled that MacDonald had arbitrarily instructed Fish and Wildlife scientists to downgrade the two species even though an agency scientist concluded that "genetics state otherwise."

"This is not to suggest that the Secretary of Interior has no role in the ultimate decision," Alsup wrote. "If the Secretary wants to re-assess the evidence, he may choose to do so, but, in doing so, he must set forth a discernible rationale."

Discernible and defensible, I would add, as well as being an accurate statement of the genuine rationale. This is all oldish news for those who deal with EPA related concerns, but it parallels similar shenanigans at the FDA, The Justice Department and of course, the Department of Homeland Security.

In the most blunt and obvious ways, it has become clear that no amount of reality, scientific evidence, Constitutional checks or the legitimate concerns of constituents donating less than 50,000 dollars concerns this administration. It is all of a piece - a complete subversion of our government processes to serve the most selfish, vicious and predatory members of the far right - and in that, they have not just betrayed our nation, but the greatest value of Conservatism - prudence.

The widespread ideological dismissal of everything that has been set up to put checks upon greed, rash actions and intrusions upon the privacy and liberty of the people is - aside from unethical with scattered clouds of evil - imprudent.

And I mean, "Imprudent from the perspective of anyone wishing to ever serve at the pleasure of the American people, ever again."

I mean "Imprudent, if you wish to avoid civil liability if not actual criminal prosecution,"

I mean "Imprudent, if you wish to not bear the brunt of the outrage of a bitterly disappointed and betrayed American People.

For in their arrogance and contempt for all arms and aims of government that do not immediately and slavishly conform to their kleptocratic ideology, they have gone so far as to dismiss the idea that they can be held accountable for anything - even things that are not merely wrong, not just evil, not just expressly forbidden by law, treaty and constitution, but things that are explicitly treasonable;

Actual, mindful, deliberate betrayals of National Security Assets in the name of political payback. This is not a matter of opinion - it's a matter of established fact.

The CIA leak case is about the obsession and ideology that disrespects facts, and disrespects truth, and declares Mafia-like vendettas against those who make good faith and professional efforts to ascertain them. The CIA leak case is about using partisan and political pressure to distort and pervert the search for truth, which is what good intelligence is all about, and the CIA leak case is about what goes wrong when these cardinal principles, time honored for every intelligence service on earth, are violated.

I want to be very, very clear here. The American people are impatient. They are not willing to "wait and see" what investigations may bring, when there are already enough damning facts in evidence to warrant decisive action. There are more than enough reasons to impeach the president. Anyone, of any party in the House or Senate that wishes a political future had best adapt to that reality. For, if it becomes yet more clear that there is no circumstance in which the members of the House and Senate feel that Constitution and Law trump political advantage, there is no reason to continue paying their salaries.

For now, more than any time before in American history, the American people have the capacity to judge the issues for themselves and come to their own conclusions. If those conclusions are at substantial variance with their representatives, they WILL seek more faithful representation.

If Congress will not execute it's Constitutional duties in such a manifest crisis of law and confidence, the people have every right to call a Constitutional Convention and establish a new Congress that will. The mechanisms for this are well understood by everyone involved, that "Government exists due to the will of the people."

This government - in particular, this Administration, but the list of offenses goes back at least fifty years - has come perilously close to becoming the "won't" of the people. That is a line that if crossed, cannot be uncrossed, nor is it a battle that the rich and powerful can win.

Never mind violent opposition; I'm speaking of widespread, general lack of co-operation. I'm speaking of entire states rejecting federal mandates. I'm speaking of entire law-enforcement bodies refusing to co-operate in any way with federal authorities, including the refusal to recognize credentials. I'm speaking of large numbers of individuals choosing to hold their savings in gold or offshore currencies, taking whatever means are needed to evade federal regulations and oversight of funds. I'm speaking of large numbers of people choosing to go "off the grid," with no visible credit, energy usage or "legitimate" jobs that require any reporting. I'm talking about a huge, passive refusal to comply with the control-freaks in DC.

In other words, I'm speaking of the internal collapse of The United States, because those in charge of maintaining it's unity cannot be trusted. The first signs of this are already clear. New York City has it's own Foreign Intelligence division, with it's own agents and foreign assets. That is what is known. I'd warrant that there's much in New York City that is unknown to the state or the federal government, and that is at the choice of the Mayor and responsible department heads.

I'd be stunned if California had not taken similar, subtle steps to ensure it's own security, particularly in the energy sector, after the state was nearly bankrupted by the manipulation of it's energy markets by the Bush Cronies at Enron. It's pretty clear that that no Blue states will get any priority in emergency or terrorist attacks when the Red gulf states were denied any real aid post Katrina.

All of this is more expensive than a working central government - but far LESS so than one that charges twice what it's worth, and does less than half of what it concienciously should. So the Federal Government should be on notice - and especially it's political leadership. You CAN be replaced. And if you are, you can fairly much assume that your career of public service is at an end. Indeed, the results might be more comprehensive than that; there was a reason for the large emigration of Tories to Canada after the Revolutionary war.

However, I do note that in this instance, Canada is less likely to welcome such refugees, save perhaps on behalf of The Hague.

tag: Civil Unrest, Civil Resistance, Treason, Impeach the President, Plamegate, CIA, FBI, Justice Department, Politicisation, EPA, FDA, DOE, Department of Education,

Speaking Wonklish

Mike the Mad Biologist snorts at the rightward idea that there is insufficient wonkishness in Left Blogastan. (And really, he should know.) He quotes Matt Stoller, as do I, because Matt goes to the heart of the issue.

To put it in context, Kevin Drum's column was written prior to the 2006 election, and was something of an "if we win, then what" sort of piece.

Matt Stoller writes about Kevin Drum's plea for more wonkiness in the lefty blogosphere (italics mine):

I'm not going to go into details, but wonkery is at this point counterproductive because the essence of wonkery is an assumption of good faith. If you write a policy in wonk-land, it's assumed it will be carried out, the law will be respected, the money will be appropriated, etc. The Bush administration has broken that basic compact. They lie. All the time. They approach arguments in utter bad faith from the get-go. They abuse the process, everything from budget battles to conference committees. If you approach people like this in good faith, you lose...

Now, I do want things from Congress. And there are great discussions about the policies that we want, from Effect Measure to Boingboing to The Washington Note. But I'm not going to pretend like any of these are feasible without working out the systemic rot that has infected our discourse and political system. I want to see the law be reestablished as law, policy battles return to good faith terrain, and facts established as the basis for policy-making - and then we can discuss policy. [Emphasis Mine - and I wish I could use the blink tag-BK]

So, that is my suggestion for a policy. A general housecleaning. A return to good faith discourse and good faith politics. THEN we can discuss and argue about things that are not immediately obvious necessities to those unblinded by the delusions of the radical Right.

I say "a return," because much of this situation evolved (heh) from the Dominionist Christian efforts to infiltrate the political process, and they are quite expressly trained, advised and counseled to conceal their intentions, which are frankly to turn this nation into a theocracy not unlike that of the Taliban.

How George W. Bush became the head of the new
American Dominionist Church/State
by Katherine Yurica

Most Americans have been aware that religious right
Republicans have become extremely active politically
in the last twenty years. But because we're Americans
and we're mostly tolerant of other people's religious
beliefs, their rise to power hasn't really troubled us.
We should be troubled. There is now overwhelming
evidence that conservative Christians set out to
takeover the government of the United States and impose
their culture and values upon all Americans. This
article is not a theory--it is factual and historic.
The proof is in this essay. Dont miss this one.

Whatever dominionists say for public consumption, the real goal is what drives them. It's a policy that has brought them some success over the last 20 years, though it's unraveling as their actual agendas become obvious. But meanwhile, their tactics have obviously spread throughout the Right Wing, because in some senses, they have become the spiritual advisers to the Right - and because their tactics work.

For a while.

But as P.T. Barnum so famously observed, you can't fool all of the people, all of the time. The problem for the Right is just that - in order to continue all their overt and covert policies, they DO have to fool all of the people, all of the time. Worse yet, they have to start with themselves. This sort of willful suspension of a skeptical review of policy and ideological faith - and the loud derision of facts in evidence is bound to lead to a bruising collision with reality at some point.

In our case, we have Iraq, a president apparently willing to nuke Iran for reasons we can only speculate upon as his justifications are hardly worthy of the name, a looming energy crisis AND global warming, two linked issues that we should have started seriously addressing in the late seventies.

The right-wing "skepticism" about global warming is presented on the same intellectual level and possesses the same degree of intellectual honesty as it's "skepticism" about evolution and the human and environmental impact of - well, pretty much what any large corporate donor wishes to do.

The leaders of the various right wing factions - and there are many, with growing fissures between them - much prefer blind faith to measured and judicious support of their agendas based on skeptical discussion and review. It's a rather seductive proposition, it makes the job of wielding power ever so much easier and it creates a temporary illusion of juggernaut-like effectiveness.

But the problem of faith is that sooner or later that faith must be expressed in works. Faith - in God, in economic theory, in the merits of a military-industrial oligarchy - must bring a pudding to be proven.

And all we have gotten is repeated, rude figgings.

The cure for this starts with impeachment. Then it goes to a general cleansing of the government of "bushies," those who's success has depended more on loyalty and ideological purity than an honest day's work doing something related to their job description.

For instance, Homeland Security should have some relationship to actually securing our homes and our lands. And isn't that OUR job, Constitutionally speaking? Second Amendment? Well-Regulated Militia? (Volenteer fire departments are good examples of "well-regulated militias;" well-equipped and well-trained community members who are the "first responders" to many emergencies.

FEMA should manage emergencies that are too overwhelming for local responders. The Coast Guard should be guarding our coasts. Immigration and Naturalization should be doing things related to managing a coherent, fair and managable immigration policy. The FBI should investigate federal interstate crimes - which include both terrorism and treason. The CIA should centralize foreign intelligence. And we should have a foreign policy that does not make success in these efforts difficult to impossible to achieve.

This is common sense, of course - and since it is common sense, there's still a general reluctance to admit what a very, very poor job these agencies do when they do anything.

The only sane human reaction these days is to hide when a government agent approaches, for there can be no assumption of either good faith or the ability to do anything to make any human situation more bearable.

So let us start at the top, with impeachment. Then let us be rid of both those who are ideological incompetents and those who decided to play politics in preference to doing the right thing. In this I include many elected representatives of all parties who were in a position to know better, and either chose not to or were too focused on politics to remember that politics is a means, not an end in itself.

Let us restock our government with seasoned, apolitical professionals at the senior levels and task them with clearing out the underbrush.

The job of the government - first, last, always - is the regulation of the commons. Our common markets and our common access to them, our common resources, such as air, water, watersheds and green spaces that we all have an individual and equal survival-level interest in, regardless of wealth or position. Our common systems of transportation that make freedom of movement and access to markets more than just a fine-sounding pronouncement. This concept extends to some rather abstract-seeming things - like the broadcast spectrum, access to information, education and space exploration - but these are all things that we, as citizens of this nation, benefit or suffer from as individuals regardless of wealth, power or position.

Besides, even if you can buy access to power, bribe your way into markets denied the common man, it doesn't follow that you should have to, or that these "protected" markets are therefore superior in any way. Indeed, you've likely bought access to the shark pond, chum.

I have seen this situation coming since 1980. I've seen the promises, and I've seen the reality. This is a poorer nation than it was then, poorer intellectually, poorer financially, poorer spiritually and poorer in every other way relating to the graces and benefits of a civil and civilized society.

This nation has become greedy, mean-spirited, intolerant and - not to put too fine a point on it - stupefied.

The only policy that can be discussed is to rid ourselves of those who created those conditions and replace their policies with those that have been demonstrated to work in civilized nations, in accordance with our Constitution and with regard to it's enlightened intent of maximizing individual liberty.

I believe that a faith in things that work is the essence of Conservatism, and so I appeal to Congress; impeach. Impeach the President now. You are either with those of us who wish to live again in a decent, civilized nation that is well regarded by the world - or you are on the losing side, and the rest of us will be well-rid of you.

tag: Impeach the President, Impeach, Domestic Policy, Foreign Policy, Economic Policy, Wonks,

It's Lame Duck Season: Fiengold appeals to Huffpo readers for extra shells.

Sen. Fiengold warns:

There are a lot of bad bills that the Republicans may try to ram through, but here's the worst of the worst - a bill to legalize the President's warrantless wiretapping program. The White House is desperate to enact this bill, which allows the government to spy on American citizens, on American soil, without a warrant.

Other measures on the White House wish list that are likely to surface during the lame duck session include a number of unfunded tax cuts and questionable trade measures. Democrats have nothing to gain by allowing these measures to pass in the next few weeks, and everything to lose. Everything should wait until the new Congress, when Democrats will have a lot more say about how bills are put together and what gets passed.

I do wish he'd run in 2008, but you have to admit, it's a hell of a trade-off. There aren't so many working Senators that you can shrug off the loss as insignificant.

One thing I'd like to point out is that the wiretapping bill is retroactive; a pardon for the president on one of the most prosecutable impeachable offenses, and the only one that's completely indisputable.

So, aside from the fact that the law is itself impermissible - a fifth-amendment violation - it is also an attempt to forestall resolution of the Constitutional Crisis created by this Republican Congress and George Bush.

Memo to Pelosi: Fix Consitutional Crisis BEFORE '08

After Downing Street reminds us there are still a lot of issues unresolved.

The Perfect Storm of Citizen Revulsion
...even with the House and Senate in Democratic hands, we need to remember that the immense power of the presidency is still in the hands of Bushistas like Richard Cheney and Karl Rove and George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley and Alberto Gonzales.

Dude, I Tapped Your Mother

They have refashioned the Constitution to make Bush immune from obeying laws he doesn't like; they have invented theories that permit him to round up anyone, American citizen or not, and throw them into a military clink without access to lawyers; they have so bent the definition of "torture" as to make it unrecognizable (it now means that the government can do anything to you short of killing you or doing great injury to your internal organs); the president claims to be able to "pre-emptively" attack any foreign country and power regardless of whether they are an imminent threat to the U.S.; the security forces can now enter your home, search your house, peek into your private email and computer files, without you ever being informed and without you even knowing; the government can now violate the privacy of attorney/client privilege by listening in on all such conversations; the government can declare martial law whenever it so chooses; and on and on.

Let us not forget that the Executive branch still possesses these immense police-state powers, they've used them before against American citizens, and they have made it plain that they are quite prepared to keep using them. Among the issues that must be dealt with by the new Democratic-contolled Congress is to find a way to bring us back to judicial sanity and respect for the rights guaranteed to American citizens under our Constitution.

ADS points out the President still has these powers as the problem. I wish to point out that is not the worst possible case; the worst case would be something I consider fairly likely unless We Do Something Now: Democrats and Republicans together decide that they really kinda like the idea of the Presidency retaining those powers.

There's only one thing that frightens me more than George Bush holding the powers of the Unitary Executive, and that would be a more intelligent and better advised person in the oval office, of either party.

The idea of Al Gore, Hillary Clinton - or frankly, ANYONE, even me, having such power is terrifying. In a sense, the raw stupidity of George Bush and the ideological splits within his administration have been a blessing in disguise. Hes managed to sabotage and expose a 30 year plan to turn the United States into an Empire, with the vast majority of it's citizens made irrelevant to the political process.

An ironic round of applause is due for George and Karl.

But we have an edifice of power to dismantle, lest anyone better qualified to rule scale the heights. That would be pretty much anyone, of any party.

We all need to demand the process go forward. Investigation will officially reveal what is generally already known - and if that investigation does NOT verify and expand upon what is already public knowledge, we will know that the corruption spreads more widely than previously thought.

Remaining members of Congress - and particularly those members who seek re-election in 2008 - had better re-acquaint themselves with their oaths of office and their primary duties.