AZ Politics

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Senator John McCain should get an award for his method acting.  He puts on his serious face and talks in measured words imbued with a solemn tone so that his base in the news media will think that he is saying something really important that they ought to report – while on the inside, he is laughing at them with derision at how easy it is for him to manipulate them into dutifully reporting every word he says, when he knows that he is LYING HIS ASS OFF!

The most recent example of this Kabuki theater was the McCain campaign getting the vapors and hyperventilating about Senator Barack Obama’s announcement that he will not participate in public financing in the general election campaign.  (There is something surreal about a Republican complaining that a Democrat will not spend the public’s money).

McCain’s base in the news media dutifully reported his campaign’s spin on Obama’s announcement like good little stenographers – "he broke his promise!" – without reporting that McCain has unclean hands, that he has violated the campaign finance law which ironically bears his name and FEC regulations for which several complaints are currently pending before the FEC.  I have addressed McCain’s campaign finance fraud at length in my earlier post Blog For Arizona: The Double Talk Express: McCain is a Fraud on Campaign Finance Reform.

Update: The DNC announced last week that it will refile a lawsuit previously dismissed on grounds it was premature this Tuesday. DNC TO FILE COMPLAINT AGAINST MCCAIN CAMPAIGN FOR FEC VIOLATIONS, HOLDING MCCAIN RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO.

The Democratic National Committee today announced that it will file a suit with the U.S. District Court in D.C. next week to compel the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to investigate John McCain’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from the FEC’s matching funds program despite using the program to financially benefit his campaign, which is clearly against the law. While John McCain talks about transparency and running a different kind of campaign, his actions and rhetoric clearly don’t square as he continues to skirt FEC law.

Let’s be clear. Obama did not "promise" to participate in public financing as McCain falsely asserted.  In completing a survey from a public interest organization, Obama checked a box for "yes" and added a detailed explanation that his participation was conditioned upon his ability to negotiate an agreement with the Republican nominee, if he were the Democratic nominee, to limit campaign spending to public financing, i.e., to limit the independent expenditures traditionally engaged in by the RNC and DNC, and attempt to limit spending from affiliated independent campaign committees.  McCain and the news media have focused only on the check off box, and disingenuously disregarded Obama’s detailed explanation to paint an inaccurate and misleading picture.

Lawyers for the two campaigns recently met but did not reach an agreement, i.e., the condition precedent that would give rise to a promise did not occur.  There was never any meeting of the minds that gave rise to a promise.  You don’t have to be a lawyer to understand this most basic legal concept.  (In reality, neither campaign really wanted such an agreement).

Fortunately, there are some in the news media who still do their job.  The fullest factually accurate discussion of this matter that I could find was this discussion between Keith Olbermann from Countdown and Howard Fineman from Newsweek.

See the video after the ‘Continue’…

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: The Democratic National Committee has put out this video which summarizes nicely several of the points I have made in earlier posts about Senator John McCain and his all too-cozy relationship with K Street lobbyists.  These people do not represent "good government" reform.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: You may have read several articles since last Wednesday when the GAO released an auditor’s report condemning the U.S. Air Force for its bid process on a new air tanker deal Audit Says Tanker Deal Is Flawed – NYTimes.com: The auditors, with the Government Accountability Office, agreed with Boeing that the Air … Read more

Greg over at Espresso Pundit is on the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) soapbox claiming that the current budget crunch in Arizona is not the result of the GOP majority constantly hacking away at our tax base and shifting it to more cyclical revenues (like sales tax, which is also more regressive), but due to … Read more

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The modern Republican Party is not your father’s GOP.  There was a time when the civil libertarian wing of the old Republican Party staunchly defended the civil liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.  And they firmly believed that not even a President of the United States was above the rule of law and the constraints on government power imposed by the U.S. Constitution. 

No longer.  Traditional Republicans have been turned out of the party by the radical Neoconservatives.

I remember when Arizona’s own Senator Barry Goldwater and Congressman John Rhodes walked to the White House to tell President Richard M. Nixon that he no longer had the support of Congress and he should resign.  They firmly believed in the Constitution and the rule of law.  But where are these Republican defenders of the Constitution and the rule of law today? 

Today’s Republican Party views the Constitution and the rule of law as an inconvenience and impediment to executive power.  That is precisely what the Founding Fathers intended.  They had just fought a revolution against the tyrant King George III.

Today’s Republican Party, led by Senator John McCain, express contempt for the U.S. Supreme Court for its decision in Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. U.S., affirming that the ancient writ of habeas corpus is a fundamental right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. McCain stated "These are people who are not citizens. They do not and never have been given the rights that citizens in this country have." (Actually, senator, some of the prisoners at Guantanamo are American citizens).

McCain apparently believes that only U.S. citizens have rights presumably "given" to them by the government.  To the contrary, the rights and liberties recognized in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are natural rights possessed by man.  Rights are not "given" by any government, but people "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." (Declaration of Independence).  You know, that whole "democracy is on the march" thing George W. Bush used to talk about.

The writ of habeas corpus had its origins in the Magna Carta which was forced upon the tyrant King John by the Barons of England at Runnymeade in 1215.  The Magna Carta was the first document forced onto an English King by his subjects in an attempt to limit his powers by law.  It required the King to renounce certain rights, respect certain legal procedures and accept that his will could be bound by the law. It explicitly protected certain rights of the King’s subjects, most notably the writ of habeas corpus, allowing appeal against unlawful imprisonment.  The writ of habeas corpus has historically been an instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary government action.

The Magna Carta was the most significant early influence on the historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law today.  it influenced the development of the Anglo-American common law, and our own Constitution.

When the American colonies became a constitutional Republic in which the people are the sovereign ("We the People of these United States…"), any person, in the name of the people, acquired authority to initiate such writs.  The due process for such petitions incorporates the presumption of non-authority. The official who is the respondent has the burden to prove his authority to do or not do something. Failing this, the court must decide for the petitioner.

The U.S. Constitution expressly recognized the English common law procedure of habeas corpus in the Suspension Clause in Article 1, Section 9, strictly limiting the power of the government to suspend the right only under extraordinary circumstances:

"The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it."

Further, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case of Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) that:

"The guarantees of protection contained in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution extend to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, without regard to differences of race, of color, or of nationality."

Non-citizens within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States are thus afforded due process under the Constitution and our rule of law, because the United States is a nation of laws, not a transitory set of edicts issued at the whim of a malicious tyrant.

Now you may say "But wait – what about the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Ex Parte Quirin?" in which the court held that Nazi saboteurs could be denied habeas corpus and tried by a military commission, stating that:

"…the law of war draws a distinction between the armed forces and the peaceful populations of belligerent nations and also between those who are lawful and unlawful combatants. Lawful combatants are subject to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces. Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful."

This opinion is distinguishable on the grounds that it was decided upon the law of war during the exigency of World War II, and did not turn upon interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.  This was the same court which upheld the internment of Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps (including here in Arizona) during the exigency of World War II in Korematsu v. United States (1944), a decision which even uber-conservative columnist George Will ranks among the worst decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. George F. Will – Contempt Of Courts – washingtonpost.com

As Mr. Will correctly notes about the Boumediene decision, "None [prisoners] will be released by the court’s decision, which does not even guarantee a right to a hearing. Rather, it guarantees only a right to request a hearing. Courts retain considerable discretion regarding such requests."  And courts in their discretion may deny such requests.

Only the most despotic nations of the world do not have a writ of habeas corpus or similar judicial procedure.  Do Americans really want to emulate the most despotic nations of the world?

What exactly are the radical Neoconservatives frothing at the mouth over?  Why the dire predictions that "we will lose an American city" simply because a prisoner may now file a writ of habeas corpus, as Neoconservative acolyte Newt Gingrich stated?  (I would submit to you that if America suffers another terrorist attack, it will be due to the gross incompetence of this administration and our intelligence agencies, as it was on 9/11, not because of a pleading filed by a prisoner – likely under  court seal). 

Could it be that all this hysterical hyperventilating by radical Neoconservatives is really not about the writ of habeas corpus at all, but rather something much more near and dear to their malignant hearts?  (Read on)