What's at stake

It's easy to forget that it's just the soul of the country at stake here.

First in a WaPo series into the 4th branch of government under Cheney:

The command center of "the president's program," as Addington usually called it, was not in the White House. Its controlling documents, which gave strategic direction to the nation's largest spy agency, lived in a vault across an alley from the West Wing [7] -- in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, on the east side of the second floor, where the vice president headquartered his staff.

The vault was in EEOB 268, Addington's office. Cheney's lawyer held the documents, physical and electronic, because he was the one who wrote them. New forms of domestic espionage were created and developed over time in presidential authorizations that Addington typed on a Tempest-shielded computer across from his desk [8].

It is unlikely that the history of U.S. intelligence includes another operation conceived and supervised by the office of the vice president. White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. had "no idea," he said, that the presidential orders were held in a vice presidential safe. An authoritative source said the staff secretariat, which kept a comprehensive inventory of presidential papers, classified and unclassified, possessed no record of these. [emphasis added]

Get it? The Office of the President had NO RECORD of a Presidential Order authorizing the most sweeping expansion of domestic surveillance authority in history.

This is the danger of electing Presidents who are essentially tools of the neocons and wingnuts who wield them. Dick Cheney was, for all intents and purposes, the 43rd President of the United States.

Even the Supreme Court didn't choose him.

[UPDATE]

McJoan at DKos reviews a new book by James Pfiffiner with more on the subject of this dramatic expansion of Executive authority, and why it so threatens our Constitution:

--He created military commissions entirely within the executive branch and in doing so ignored U.S. laws that provided authority and procedures for establishing military commissions;

--He used the term "enemy combatant" to exempt the government from granting persons so labeled legal and constitutional rights;

--He denied the writ of habeas corpus to U.S. citizens as well as other detainees suspected of terrorism;

--He suspended the Geneva Conventions, which, because they were agreed to in a treaty, are the "supreme Law of the Land," according to Article VI of the Constitution;

--He authorized the interrogation of detainees using techniques that most of the world considers torture, and which violate the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law;

--He ordered the National Security Agency to monitor the communications of Americans without a warrant as required by FISA; and

--He asserted the sweeping right to ignore more than 1,000 provisions of public law because he deemed them to be in conflict with his authority as president.

Despicable

I have no words left that can adequately describe the depravity of the Bush administration. Everytime I think I can no longer be shocked, I am.

This is a must read from Kevin Drum, digging deeper into Seymour Hirsch's reporting on how intent Cheney is on starting a war with Iran. So intent that there was at least some consideration given to having U.S. soldiers kill other U.S. soldiers (themselves masquerading as Iranian gunboats) in order to gain U.S. public support for a strike. And the fact that they didn't go through with it is beside the point. That their minds could even conceive of it and discuss it as a plausible option tells us everything we need to know about how important it is that these people be held to some kind of accountability. They simply must not be allowed to populate the government ever again.

While the Press Faints Cheney Keeps Maneuvering on Iran

One simply cannot rely upon the MSM to tell us what is important. Today, they are all aghast and atwitter over Wes Clark’s comment on Face the Nation, and have deliberately clipped, twisted, and mischaracterized his words as an attack on McCain’s war record. The Columbia Journalism Review has the original quote and a good article.

Appearing as a surrogate for Barack Obama on CBS’s “Face the Nation”, Clark, in reference to John McCain, said: I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war…But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded—that wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall.

When moderator Bob Schieffer interjected that “Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences, either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down”,
Clark responded: “Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”

A perfectly reasonable observation to make, it seems to me, not an assault on either McCain’s war record or his patriotism. Too bad Obama threw him under the bus so quickly. I guess Clark’s audition for VP is over.

And while they clutch their hearts at this unbearable assault on their hero, St. McCain, other things are going on that real reporters used to cover.

Terry Gross had Sy Hersch on her NPR show today to deliver his latest bombshell, it seems that the fourth branch of government, located in Dick Cheney’s office, is not about to let up on it’s pursuit of conflict with Iran. This coincides with stories that have been murmuring elsewhere (h/t TPM) about the Administration’s haste in anticipation of an Obama victory.

Emptywheel has the best systhesis I’ve seen of why Hersch’s reporting is important.

These people are nuts.