It's the Law, Baby

I've not done nearly my proper share of lawyer-bashing, but I've done some. But then I commuted to Texas for a decade or so back in the '80's, and consequently was exposed to the truly crude, mean underbelly of 'Murican humor - so maybe my standards are a bit distorted.

The "counsel" I have encountered in the workplace have run the gammut from ideological and totally egomaniacal to loosy-goosy Deadheads, with a couple sensible, reality-connected sorts in between. In general, probably not unlike the general populace, I tend to distain lawyers more than I favor 'em. But I do have a piece of paper with "ACLU" on it sitting on the shelf here. And I have at least a couple close friends with law degrees (though majority are not practicing).

But it is a fascinating thing this business of laws and lawyers in the US of A these days. No doubt there are occasions when high-percentage legal fees on some sort of settlement are wholly out of line, as well as instances of lawyer-shylocks who are only in it for themselves. And don't get me started on the prevalence of law degrees in the incestuous political culture, never mind that sick sycophantic corporation-before-people world of the lobbyists. Let's just say that is a train wreck when it comes to our civil liberties and the democracy we pretend to be.

In a nutshell, I'm conflicted when it comes to lawyers. Reiterating for the record, I on rare occasions make jokes about them but know it is right more than ever to support the ACLU.

But we seem to be at some sort of unusual planetary conjunction right now for the legal profession. If you're reading this you are likely in the elite in terms of attending to news rather than lazily hoping it will come to you (during commercials on Survivor, CSI, the SuperBowl, or some sitcom??). I would hope you are at least at times surfing the web - not only will you learn things earlier there (e.g. I learned of Ehren Watada's mistrial on-line hours before most newspapers and networks had it), but you can also find commentary pro and con.

At the very least, as a starter, I encourage you to bookmark these sites, fonts of great insight:

Latest Breaking News at Democratic Underground (lots more at that site is worthy of attention, including in particular the editorials and opinion category)

Truthout

Common Dreams

A few snippets to back up my assertion above regarding odd planetary lawyerly conjunction. I was reminded today, courtesy of the fantastic live blogposting being done at the Firedoglake site - the best single source of info on this critical trial available, including all mainstream media - that Tim Russert, of all people, has a law degree, though he's never practiced. He does encapsulate in his currently-crutched form a curmudgeonly style that I can't help despising as his present media role should involve a strong pro-citizen bias but instead reeks of insider and gaming the system. He is the key to the likely Libby conviction, yet it is increasingly hard to admire or even tolerate him. Hell, I have to work at not despising him - but that's just for the moment, my natural sentiments will be unleashed once trial is over. I couldn't help but cherish the scathing cross-exam. He's gotten it from two barrels in this trial, given the shaming he ought to have felt (if capable) last week when he was more or less characterized by White House press folks as the most easily shilled of all the news talk shows.

Down with Tyranny has a fine update on the executive branch's attempts to cherry-pick attorneys, firing even some they appointed due to an unfortunate habit of applying the law to the administration's cronies. Lawyers with principles. Sheesh. What next?

I hope you've been following the stories about how the rogue Bush Regime has been firing U.S. Attorneys-- each one a Republican appointed by Bush himself-- under dubious circumstances and for dubious reasons (like successfully prosecuting Bush cronies for bribery). Today the Senate Judiciary Committee, with wide-- though certainly not complete-- bipartisan support moved a bill forward to curb the Justice Department's assumed power to replace federal prosecutors. So far Gonzales has knocked off seven. The vote, on a bill sponsored by Dianne Feinstein, was 13-6 with Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) joining the Democrats and voting the interests of the American people for a change-- instead of rubber-stamping Bush Regime neo-fascism. The neo-fascist side was led by Jon Kyl (R-AZ).

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And over at Anonymous Liberal, they've been attending to the outrageous behavior of the Defense Dept dipshit (lawyer) who went ballistic recently that American lawyers were defending Gitmo defendants. Pro bono. There must be a crime there! This post is mostly on the hysterical right-wing reaction to the appropriate firestorm the numb-nuts idiot (what matchbook law school was that again?) from the Pentagon set off, leading to his precipitous departure. I think I remember he had some actual "responsibility" related to the illegally detained folks - just the sort of sympatico-fruitcake George might have gotten stoked with in some strip club in Georgia when his "job" actually involved showing up and flying planes in Texas so he could avoid combat. The reaction seems to fit the crime in this case - howling and other primitive behavior when the lawless rightwing thugs are called out. Our marching orders are clear. More Call-outs!

Over the last two days, the regulars over at the National Review's blog, The Corner, have been leaping to the defense of Cully Stimson, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, who suggested in an interview a few weeks ago that businesses should refuse to hire law firms that do legal work on behalf of Guantanamo detainees. He also suggested, somewhat cryptically, that these firms were getting paid to do this work by shady foreign entities. These comments were sharply criticized by people from across the political spectrum. The Washington Post issued a stinging editorial:

[I]t's offensive -- shocking, to use his word -- that Mr. Stimson, a lawyer, would argue that law firms are doing anything other than upholding the highest ethical traditions of the bar by taking on the most unpopular of defendants. It's shocking that he would seemingly encourage the firms' corporate clients to pressure them to drop this work. And it's shocking -- though perhaps not surprising -- that this is the person the administration has chosen to oversee detainee policy at Guantanamo.Not surprisingly, Stimson was forced to apologize and later resigned. But his resignation seems to have touched a nerve among the writers at the National Review, and their reaction provides a window into the authoritarian mindset that has gripped the GOP in the post-9/11 era.

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And No Quarter gives us a hint on one possible bit of lawyerly news tomorrow - the long-delayed IG report on pre-war "intelligence work." I'm betting there's nada in this that will help any in the administration with their pending MENSA applications. But I also doubt, given the parties involved, that Fox A will be telling us a lot of news about Fox B. This isn't the way actual useful information on our government's limitations is uncovered. That would be for one thing that sorry old, to-some outmoded system of checks and balances, where Congress actually shows up for more than 20 hours a week and growls occasionally. Not to mention the concept of an actual aggressive, unintimidated band of unruly irrascible journalists. But we'll see.

U.S. Attorneys, and a CIA Honcho, On The Way Down

By SusanUnPC ... It is a heavy news day, even if CNNMSNBCFOX are wall-to-wall Anna Nicole (thank god for BBC World Service radio). There are titillating details from the Libby trial (Russert's testimony went on and on and on, with even the jury members questioning him, and Mary Matalin got hit with hard questions from, uh, Don Imus) ... and, by the way, the prosecution has rested ... plus the news that the eagerly awaited Pentagon's Inspector General's report will say that the Pentagon's pre-war intelligence work (Doug Feith) "was inappropriate but not illegal." The Senate will hear from the IG on Friday. I bet Sen. Carl Levin is NOT a happy camper about the IG's wishy-washy report. And the word "inappropriate" sounds like adolescent pyschology babble.

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George, Tom, and Ben et al Were Not Birthing a Nation of Fools

There is a truly depressing sound that resembles drumbeating off in the distance, evoking memories of 2002 and early 2003. This was a time when a significant minority of Americans - generally those actually alert, paying attention, and possibly even aggressively foraging for news - were highly skeptical of the claims of the warmongers in the white house and elsewhere - disgustingly parroted by owned or unthinking major media - that a preemptive invasion of Iraq was justified, never mind sensible.

Well, glory be, that minority has now swelled to the point where it seems plausible there are a majority of citizens who have realized for one reason or another that the Bush War is an absolute freaking disaster. It is obvious the outcome of the uncalled for invasion is chaos of the first order, and equally obvious it was purposely sold in bad faith with faked, forged, and corrupt attempted justifications. It is a disaster on almost every level as a mere military/political operation in isolation from the rest of the world, but of course that is just the start of it.

If you are in the school actively managing your own get-the-news-instead-of-the-glitz program these days (e.g., via FireDogLake's fantastic Libby Trial coverage - I strongly recommend no less than daily check-ins), you are getting all the confirmation a thinker (activist?!?) needs that this administration is even more aggressive and criminal in operation than was Dirty Dick's operation in invoking secrecy and taking no prisoners when it comes to their sleazy crimes being revealed. It needs to be said again and again that "national security" and "executive privilege" are terms used by this administration almost exclusively to cover their own criminality. They have far less interest in actually pursuing terrorism or "keeping the country safe" than in planting fake news, mongering fear, and otherwise milking the sad state of mainstream media to goose the unthinking in-denial now-minority into being unwilling to question whether they have something going on there.

It's not working like it once did.

Besides the white house-managed war-crimes program that made the invasion happen, of course, the total incompetence of the Rumsfeld/Cheney apparatchik in focusing everything on the glorious floral displays and love-fest that would inevitably be showered on the Mother of All Invaders was absolutely key to the bush debacle. The idea that the planning would emphasize maximizing PR exploitation of this re-creation of the Summer of Love in the Tigris-Euphrates region (no doubt missed in the original and everlastingly regretted by Don, Dick, and George, et al) rather than any meaningful program for managing the aftermath is still flabbergasting. I predict this will become one of the textbook examples of Accountability Denial.

This is Anti-Woodstock times a thousand (or more). That contrast just came to me and may deserve more pondered attention, but here and now, recall that Woodstock involved hundreds of thousands of folks. They descended on a fully cooperative farmer's field. Traffic and security planning could definitely have been better. Weather was flat-out uncooperative. Supplies, transportation, health care, and equipment were not always available in adequate quantity or quality (e.g., recall outhouse limitations, rumors about "brown acid" not being so good, etc.). Many if not most of the neighbors were hostile - and that resonated with the media and citizenry, a bit horrified at this chaotic "thing" that was evolving in unpredictable fashion and possibly even attracting their offspring.

But that event is now a cultural watershed; we'll never have even a minor good memory, individually or as a nation, of Bush's War. Time will not heal, never mind erase Bush's War. This war has permanently sullied and scarred us collectively, both to ourselves and in the view of the world, and there is nothing we, never mind he can do to alter that.

The Bush War will obviously also be central in the now inevitably pathetic dual george bush legacies. That's right - corrupt, cynical, and anti-American as underking george the first's lifestory truly was, there seemed a chance those still rapturously licking the smegma of Reagan (another draft-dodging chickenhawk faker!) would have been able to cobble together a Stalinesque bio for him. It will now be written far more darkly as a result of his failure to exert any positive influence on his evil spawn. Why oh why were you so slow to learn of the possibilities of birth control, Barb (and George I)? Why were you too good for abstinence when it would so clearly have been the single truly Patriotic act of your weasily little existences? (Actually, fyi, a public acknowledgement of that misguided binge involving unprotected lapse of abstinence - and flicker of affection? - might help offset the destruction of what little positive rep you have left at this point - think on it. No - on further thought even I am too squeamish to want any potential for images of the mingling haunting me.)

Another scary thing here, given the above, is that were george II to pull his head out of whatever orifice it has been in he might conclude he truly has nothing to lose. What a state of mind for a supposed chief of state! Especially one with an egomaniacal streak and on increasingly strong evidence actually more or less a puppet to a truly demented self-appointed VP.

That is the sabers a-rattle context for the intro here.

I direct your attention to Dan Froomkin at his secondary venue (Nieman Watch). He is appropriately lecturing the mainstream media in this post. It iw well established now that these folks unquestioningly printed flat-out administration propaganda and rarely asked critical questions or offered opinions that might be considered to contradict (or offend, heaven forbid!) the administration in the shared admininstration/corporate-owned-media charade runup to the Iraq invasion. You're probably well aware if you are reading this that our mainstream media failed us.

Froomkin imho should have been more scathing - even the NY Times and WA Post, never mind the obviously sycophantic WSJ and truly obsequious WA Times, NY Post, and Fox "news" are probably reasonable candidates for lawsuits or at least loss of credentials for their pathetic warmongering in particular, but also the cowardly subservience and near-forfeiture of any semblance of consistent truly independent journalistic outlook. They have all become mouthpieces for criminals, to varying degrees. Alas, poor Gray Lady for the company you have been keeping.

Lessons we thought had been learned from Vietnam were forgotten in the rush to invade Iraq. And now, as we cover President Bush’s ratcheting up of the rhetoric against Iran, it’s looking like the lessons we should have learned from Iraq may not have been learned at all. So at the risk of stating the obvious, here are some thoughts about what those lessons were. (Feel free to add more in comments.)

You Can’t Be Too Skeptical of Authority

Don’t assume anything administration officials tell you is true. In fact, you are probably better off assuming anything they tell you is a lie.

Demand proof for their every assertion. Assume the proof is a lie. Demand that they prove that their proof is accurate.

Just because they say it, doesn’t mean it should be make the headlines. The absence of supporting evidence for their assertion -- or a preponderance of evidence that contradicts the assertion -- may be more newsworthy than the assertion itself.

Don’t print anonymous assertions. Demand that sources make themselves accountable for what they insist is true.

Provocation Alone Does Not Justify War

War is so serious that even proving the existence of a casus belli isn’t enough. Make officials prove to the public that going to war will make things better.

Demand to know what happens if the war (or tactical strike) doesn’t go as planned?

Demand to know what happens if it does? What happens after “victory”?

Ask them: Isn’t it possible this will make things worse, rather than better?

Be Particularly Skeptical of Secrecy

Don’t assume that these officials, with their access to secret intelligence, know more than you do.

Alternately, assume that they do indeed know more than you do – and are trying to keep intelligence that would undermine their arguments secret.

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