Justice Unbound: A Rant In Four Parts

[McCamy Taylor]

(Warning! Another super long McCamy Taylor post. Abandon hope all ye that enter here for at least fifteen minutes! Longer if you click on the links.)



Of all the crimes committed by the Bush-Cheney selected-not-elected administration, those of the Justice Department continue to inspire a special kind of outrage, because a democracy is only as strong as its laws. Declare martial law, and you crush a democratic government. Subvert the federal law enforcement agency---but tell no one that you are doing it---and you have declared martial law without the public outcry that would ensue.

For those who are not familiar with Shelley’s epic poem Prometheus Unbound , it is an allegory about the tyrant Jupiter, who chained the Titan Prometheus to a mountain for the crime of attempting to liberate human beings from fear---the fear which Jupiter used to keep humans enslaved.

Strange, savage, ghastly, dark and execrable,
Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;
And which the nations, panic-stricken, served
With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love
Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,
And slain amid men's unreclaiming tears,
Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate.

Prometheus Unbound Shelley
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/prometheus.html

Part I. The War Criminal Kissinger

Bush, Cheney, Rove are a three headed Jovian figure. In a very literal way, they have used fear and panic and intimidation in order to consolidate their power. But they did not do it alone. Those who remember the Nixon/Ford administrations will recognize the fingerprints of the great war criminal, Henry Kissinger all over this administration’s foreign policy. You can almost think of him as the tail on a three headed Cerberus, to change the metaphor slightly. Though he has tried hard to hide his complicity, I have no doubt that Dr. K has been the tail wagging the dog when it comes to war crimes abroad and at home.

I curse thee! let a sufferer's curse
Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse;
Till thine Infinity shall be
A robe of envenomed agony;
And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,
To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain.
Prometheus Unbound

The nation owes Bob Woodward two debts of gratitude, the second for revealing that Kissinger was working with the White House all through the invasion of Iraq and the occupation. Those of us who remember the illegal incursions into Laos, Cambodia, the assassination of Allende and the instillation of the tyrant Pinochet, as well as the excesses of dictators like Suharto can now understand why things went so terribly wrong. Kissinger’s expertise was always in colonial expansionism of the 19th and early 20th century variety. His job has always been to think of ways to get the U.S. embroiled into as many foreign quagmires as possible, make himself seem indispensable and allow U.S. business plenty of opportunity for plunder abroad.

Those who do not know about Kissinger’s crimes, here is a place you can start, from the film The Trial of Henry Kissinger , go to the end of the first link and continue onto the second link to hear about how Dr. K. conspired with the Nixon team in 1968 to stop the peace deal which President Johnson was brokering (remember, this was why he decided not to run again, so that he could concentrate on ending the war) by persuading the South Vietnamese that President Nixon would get them a better deal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRmkQOo7Inw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr-RPvAvaac&feature=related

What Kissinger got South Vietnam and the United States was four more years of war, more deaths, illegal incursions into two more countries, the Killing Fields of Cambodia and the Nixon Administration with its many crimes including Watergate.

And you thought that the 1980 hostages for votes deal was the first time foreign policy was manipulated by the Republicans in order to steal an election.

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
Henry Kissinger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger

First we do the unconstitutional to noncitizens.



Then, we do it to a citizen of this country.

Miami - Jose Padilla had no history of mental illness when President Bush ordered him detained in 2002 as a suspected Al Qaeda operative. But he does now.
The Muslim convert was subjected to prison conditions and interrogation techniques that took him past the breaking point, mental health experts say.
Two psychiatrists and a psychologist who conducted detailed personal examinations of Mr. Padilla on behalf of his defense lawyers say his extended detention and interrogation at the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., left him with severe mental disabilities. All three say he may never recover.
Padilla's psychological condition is important because his situation marks the first time an enemy combatant in the war on terror is in a position to present a verifiable claim of abuse at the hands of US interrogators. Padilla's mental health itself is a form of evidence, mental-health experts say, and it strongly suggests that – at least in Padilla's case – the government's harsh interrogation and confinement tactics went too far.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0813/p01s03-usju.html

There outta be a law.

There is a law.

http://www.constitution.org/billofr_.htm

Article V. No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Article VI. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Kissinger was correct. They had to break the smaller laws, like those of the Voting Rights Act which said that every vote would be counted, before they could violate Constitutional rights.

Can we finally bring the worst mass murderer this country has ever produced to justice? Pretty please? Millions of dead around the world will not rest in peace until they have had their say.

Part II. Rove-Rasputin and the Politicized Department of (In)Justice.



Karl Rove set the tone for the current administration by deliberately posing as a modern day Rasputin, someone who would deliver payback with interest----just look at what he did to the author of Fortunate Son James H. Hatfield

http://www.barbelith.com/cgi-bin/articles/00000058.shtml

Scary, huh? Imagine that you were an aspiring writer who just got a hot scoop, and then your “scoop” stabbed you in the back, and all your work turned to liquid shit before your eyes? Just so that Rove could use your downfall as an object lesson to dissuade any journalist who might contemplate writing about the same story.

Now, imagine that you were the best known and trusted television anchor in America, and Karl Rove told your boss that if he did not nail you to a cross, your company was going to have to liquidate a bunch of its holdings? Your crime? You had too much integrity and your reputation was too damn impeccable. That is what Rove did to Dan Rather. He had to make sure that no one in the press would dare to touch the Bush AWOL story in 2004 when decorated war hero John Kerry was running.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3539083

Double scary!

I did this illustrated version of the state of the American psyche sometime between 2004’s Grand Theft Election Ohio and 2006’s Democratic Congressional Victory. It was called Fear .

http://www.grandtheftelectionohio.com/051007.htm

However, the scariest thing that Turd Blossom ever did was fire federal prosecutors who would not enforce the law the way that he wanted it enforced and hire a bunch of Bible college losers to run a partisan Department of Justice. That is why Georgia Thompson had to rot in jail while waiting for an appeals court to rule that her conviction was a farce.

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/4/10/02412/1436

"I have to say it strikes me that your evidence is beyond thin," federal Appeals Judge Diane Wood told prosecutors. "I'm not sure what your actual theory in this case is."

That is why we are now witnessing our own version of the Dreyfus Affair

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair

revolving around ex-Governor of Alabama, Don Seigelman, imprisoned for doing absolutely nothing wrong except daring to be a popular Democratic politician in the state of Alabama.

Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned
In brief Omnipotence: secure are they:
For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down
Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs,
Too much avenged by those who err. I wait,
Enduring thus, the retributive hour
Which since we spake is even nearer now.
Prometheus Unbound

The latest revelations in the case include

The documents — whose authenticity is not in dispute — include e-mails written by Canary, long after her recusal, offering legal advice to subordinates handling the case. At the time Canary wrote the e-mails, her husband — Alabama GOP operative William J. Canary — was a vocal booster of the state's Republican governor, Bob Riley, who had defeated Siegelman for the office and against whom Siegelman was preparing to run again. Canary also received tens of thousands of dollars in fees from other political opponents of Siegelman.
In one of Leura Canary's e-mails, dated September 19, 2005, she forwards senior prosecutors on the Siegelman case a three-page political commentary by Siegelman. Canary highlighted a single passage which, she told her subordinates, "Ya'll need to read, because he refers to a 'survey' which allegedly shows that 67% of Alabamans believe the investigation of him to be politically motivated." Canary then suggests: "Perhaps grounds not to let discuss court activities in the media!"
Prosecutors in the case seem to have followed Canary's advice. A few months later they petitioned the court to prevent Siegelman from arguing that politics had any bearing on the case against him. After trial, they persuaded the judge to use Siegelman's public statements about political bias — like the one Canary had flagged in her e-mail — as grounds for increasing his prison sentence. The judge's action is now one target of next month's appeal.

And then there is the juror who had a “romantic” attachment to one of the prosecutors, and the juror who received advice on career and other personal matters from the prosecutors and the juror who was coached by the prosecutors before being questioned by the judge about a possible conflict of interest. Makes you wonder why Karl Rove did not just send the jurors big fat checks for their services.

Rove thinks he has a get out of jail free card on this and all other crimes he and his little helpers in the DOJ have committed, but there is no presidential pardon that will protect the law licenses of Canary and Co., none of whom should ever practice law in this country again. . Nor, can Bush keep a federal judge from being impeached if he abused his position. And Rove can always be sued in civil court if Ms. Canary starts singing like one before Congress, where she can not lie unless she does not mind going to jail for perjury.

Conyers and the members of his committee have made it clear that they intend to see justice done in the case of the Department of (In) Justice vs. Siegelman.

The letter to Mukasey is a signal that Democrats intend to probe what critics call the "dark side" of the Bush Administration even after it leaves office, according to congressional sources. Besides the Siegelman prosecution, such investigations could focus on the authorization of harsh interrogation methods, and the role of the former White House aides Karl Rove and Harriet E. Miers in the firing of U.S. attorneys.

Rove and his people will orchestrate a right wing chorus that will go something like PARTISAN WITCH HUNT (partisan witch hunts being something they know so much about). However, Conyer’s Judicial Committee investigation is an act of love and reconciliation. For close to eight years, Americans have lived in fear of capricious, partisan prosecution for “crimes” against Karl Rove and George W. Bush. Like Shelley’s Prometheus, we will only break our chains when we learn not to fear the federal government including the Department of Justice which exists to serve and protect, not to oppress. And we will do that when we shine a bright light on it so that we can uncover the maggots which have corrupted it.

See a disenchanted nation
Springs like day from desolation.
Prometheus Unbound

Part III. Darth Cheney

Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind,
All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do;
Foul Tyrant both of Gods and Human-kind,
One only being shalt thou not subdue.
Prometheus Unbound

If Cheney did not exist, they would have had to create him. He is the scapegoat for everything that everyone has done in the current administration. He is the fearsome bogeyman. Who wiretapped your phone? Cheney did it! Who ordered the illegal rendition and torture? Dick Cheney, he’s the one! Who outed Valerie Plame? We know who, though none dare speak his name.


What can I say about Cheney that has not been said already? He can not be impeached or indicted, because if that were to happen, he would have chest pain, and then people would say You fiends! You gave the Vice President a heart attack! . He is W.’s impeachment insurance, because the two most feared words in the English language are President Cheney. His response to any request for accountability is a resounding



Resist the urge to lay the blame for everything that has happened in the last eight years at Cheney’s doorstep. He did not buy the nails used to affix Jesus to the Cross, even though he has been paid well to pretend that he did. Cheney is not scary. The fact that Cheney could persuade Americans to carry out the sick and twisted schemes that he and his corporate masters dreamed up---- that is scary.

From another Romantic poet, William Blake



Which, like many of the Songs of Experience forms a counterpoint with a Song of Innocence

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
From The Divine Image
William Blake

Yes, even Dick Cheney has a human heart beating somewhere inside his Darth Vader armor. Want proof? Here he is with his wife and his grandson by his daughter, Mary.



There are no villains. That would be too easy. And none of us are innocent. If we were innocent, we would have laid down our lives before we allowed our government to do what it has done to Iraq----millions displaced, civil war, infrastructure in chaos and yet the Iraq quagmire was the number one concern for only 9% of voters. Our own health care insurance problems are so much more pressing than the little refugee problem we have inflicted upon families over there. .

There is an (in)famous scientific experiment in which students were asked to participate in a research project. They were given a knob and told that it controlled the flow of electrical current flowing into another test subject. In fact, the second “subject” was actually a researcher and there was no electricity. The scientist supervising the test would tell the subject to begin administering electric shocks and not to stop even if the second subject started to complain, cry or ask to stop the research project. The goal of the study was to see how many subjects would continue the “research study”.

When Hunter S. Thompson wrote that the nation needed to impeach Richard Nixon for the same reason that Germany needed the Nuremberg Trials, this is what he was talking about. Everyone has the potential to do some sort of evil to other people if the right trigger—respect for authority, fear of personal harm, greed for material possessions, personal prejudice----is activated. Cheney is not an evil other . He is an American businessman, an American imperialist, an American politician.


Part IV. Overly Privileged Executive Bush

Resist not the weakness,
Such strength is in meekness
Prometheus Unbound

Democrats are going to be tempted to allow the new president, Obama to retain lots of enhanced executive powers, “in order to make his job easier.” So he can undo the damage that the last president did. So that we do not have to waste time while Congress passes laws---nope, we will just let the executive branch keep legislating by administrative decree, the way it has been doing for the last eight years. That will be mighty convenient.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081110/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama

And dangerous. The administration after Obama’s could well be another Ronald Reagan administration or another George W. Bush administration. Unless Congress acts to check the power of the executive branch, the business community will bide its time. They made out like bandits these last eight years. As soon as we, the tax payers, have paid off the debt with which the banks and oil companies have saddled us, America’s biggest companies will find themselves another figurehead president and stage another coup, so that they can raid the federal coffers again, the way that they did in the 1980s and then in the 2000s. You can take that to the bank. Once the Democrats get us back to economic prosperity, right wing political forces working for the business community can switch the nation’s focus back to bullshit divisive social issues, as they have done time and again, and then it will be just a matter getting the right stuffed suit into the White House.

We can not afford to have the next lackey of the rich and powerful have the unchecked authority of Bush. Executive branch weakness ensures the strength of our democracy. Congress exists to write laws. The executive exists to enforce the laws and deal with foreign powers. If Obama is a true Democrat, he understands that and he will be the first to demand that presidential powers be limited during his administration.

Not everyone will agree.

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19730920.htm

But reverence for the Presidency is far too potent an opiate for the masses to be diminished by a credible threat of impeachment. Such an effective device for stifling dissent, class consciousness, or even critical thought will not be lightly abandoned.

That was written back in 1972, but Chomsky summed up both Reagan and Bush Jr. pretty well. The two figurehead presidents fooled the working class into believing in them, even though their policies favored the rich. Bush sold a war for oil and Reagan’s whole administration was one big give away to special interests. To speak out against either man was to be labeled a traitor, un-American, unpatriotic.

Compare their presidencies with that of Bill Clinton, who did not demand that people worship the ground he walked upon. Democrats bitched and moaned that he did not have enough gravitas , that he fooled around with an intern, that he was not respectable enough. Maybe they did not notice that he was not sending murder squads to El Salvador or strip mining our national parks. Maybe they saw him allowing his political enemies to speak out, and they thought that was a sign of a weak president, when in fact it was a sign of a strong democracy.

We do not need our own W. or our own Reagan to tell us what to do. We need our own Thomas Jefferson, someone who believes in the ability of the voters to govern themselves.

A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to it's true principles. It is true that in the mean time we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war & long oppressions of enormous public debt…

Thomas Jefferson letter to John Taylor June 4, 1798

After seven years of Bush, people finally got their sight back. They finally stopped being afraid and started being fed up. Now, we just need to convince ourselves that we are the ones best able to run our own country, and we do that through our elected representatives in Congress, who were chosen to speak for us, because they are closest to us and they answer to us every two years. Meanwhile the executive branch will select the first real honest to god Attorney General this country has had in almost a decade to enforce our laws, and the administrative agencies will enact our laws, too and President Obama will represent our nation.

Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace,
When they struggle to increase,
Are to us as soft winds be
To shepherd boys, the prophecy
Which begins and ends in thee
Prometheus Unbound

[JDPriestly]

1. Thanks. Your post has an impact on both the heart and the mind.

That is unusual here. Thanks so much. Your post is an experience, not just a statement.

[tom_paine]

2. Whew! Nicely done. K & R. Investigate, Prosecute, Convict, Incarcerate.

n/t

[D-Lee]

3. Terrific and thoughtful post with great use of art and literature

Thanks!

[LongTomH]

4. A brilliant and moving post.

I'm going to have to go back and reread this again - and send a link to my friends.

I've also got to finally take time to read Prometheus Unbound and William Blake. I've been promising myself for years to take time to read some great poetry.