White House E-mail Scandal Widens

Spamicles alerts us to a report just issued (PDF) by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. At least 88 White House officials used Republican National Committee email accounts for government business. The RNC has destroyed at least some of the emails from 51 of those officials. Law requires emails sent by officials to be stored or recorded. There is evidence that White House lawyers and the (current) Attorney General knew of this but did not act to stop it. From the article: "These e-mail accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies... Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC e-mail accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing e-mails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive."

Comments

Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Just how obvious does the corruption in the White House have to be before you demand a change of government?

Judging by the number of people still defending this administration on slashdot, it would seem the parade scandals, lies, coverups & half-truths aren't enough. What will it take to convince you people? Does Cheney have to visit each house in the US personally, pry open the door with his shotgun, be caught shitting in your pillowcase while installing a keylogger on your PC?

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[sheldon]

Bush could have a live press conference where he bites the heads off kittens, and nobody would care. The 28% who still support him would claim he was showing true leadership by biting heads off kittens. The news media would report both sides of the story as if they had real credibility.

I don't know if this was planned, or just accidental, but basically after all the false scandal coverage during the Clinton years people have learned to just tune this shit out.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[wytcld]

Something like 70% of Americans do demand a change in government. A majority have favored impeachment for some many months now. When the new Congress came in it had broad support, but then failed to either end the war or impeach. Now its popularity rating has dropped below even Bush's.

The problem in America isn't the people. We get it. The problem is the politicians still listen more to television commentators than to the people. And the talking heads mostly don't get it at all; don't see how corruption matters if that corruption just amounts to their friends in business and government going about their business "as usual." Of course, the networks overwhelmingly favor commentators who are of the right or center. The corporations that own them know very well who their friends are. This is too bad, since other parts of corporate America are far to the left, socially, of General Electric, Disney and whoever-the-hell-owns NBC now. We won't mention Fox.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just how obvious does the corruption in the White House have to be before you demand a change of government?

And get a free trip to Guantanamo?

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[i_b_don]

The problem is that the current administration and their supporters have done a very good job of turning everything into "us vs them" and 1/3 of the american public has fallen for it. Politics becomes like a sports team where you always root for "your side" and while you think you're rooting or your side you're really screwing yourself and the country because politics becomes not about doing what your constituents want but about whipping your partisan crowd into a frenzy.

Look at what's happened... nearly everything that I would have listed as to why our country was great BEFORE bush came along has been tainted or flat out ruined. From not torturing "enemies", to due process, to "checks and balances", to freedom of the press, to NOT spying on your own damn citizens, to NOT doing wars of agression, and on and on and on.

If you would have asked a run of the mill republican before back in 1999 if these were good things I believe they would have said "no". But now inch by inch they've traded their ideals for support of their team . but at least 20% of them have had enough balls and intelligence to quit drinking bush's cool-ade. I personally don't think you can ever pry the cool-ade out of the fingers of the rest because they're in too deep and they can't face a reality beyond what Rush or Fox has told them.

d

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Elemenope]

I'll give you seasoned and intelligent, but that buys her nothing (most everyone who is in national Presidential level politics is both of those things, regardless of popular images to the contrary); principled is a laugh, and party 'lines' are one ginat blurry smudge when it comes to issues of actual governance. Hillary would make, IMO, a mediocre president; one who does not lead but rather follows slavishly the polls and bends with the wind as a pseudo-populist centrist who cares less about constitution than 'keeping America safe', and less about proper governmental restraint than about 'raising our children' for us.

Truly a cynical idealist would be better than the messianic wacko we have now, but only just, and there are better in the field on both sides.

e.g. B. Obama and R. Paul.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Tablizer]

We're more concerned with rising taxes than we are with the erosion of those freedoms that previous generations fought to protect.

Most polls i've seen have not put lower taxes as a priority. Republicans keep yammering about such, but even when heavily advertized as an issue, most Americans don't give it much attention in any poll I've seen. I think partly because wealth is relative: people want more than the jones', and changing tax levels simply moves both them and the jones' up or down a roughly even amount. This is why I don't buy the argument that heavier taxes on the wealthy removes incentives: humans are by nature social comparers. Bill Gates and Warren Buffect cannot even spend their own money fast enough on personal stuff because they have so much. A 300 room mansion is merely a status symbol because they get lost in their own house if they actually try to use such rooms.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[biggerboy]

N MSN survey has (at the moment I looked at it) 88% out of 482424 respondents saying Bush should be impeached.

Citing an Internet survey as a real poll says more of the person citing it than anything else.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Scutter]

Your concerns are valid, and here's the answer: The average American doesn't give a shit.

It's not that we don't give a shit, it's that after 200+ years we've come to the conclusion that we're screwed no matter what we do. It's like the Futurama parody where the only two candidates are Jack Johnson or John Jackson.

Ok, so we somehow manage to boot the existing leaders out. Now what? We get a new set of leaders that are just as self-serving and corrupt. It doesn't matter what we do, we'll always be ruled by an aristocracy comprised of corporations, special-interest groups and the wealthy.

We live in a two-party system where one side says "We'll take all your money and give it to the welfare programs, prisons, and the poor" and the other side says "We'll take all your money and give it to the oil companies, airlines, and the telecoms". Either way, they've taken all your money.

You wonder why Americans are apathetic about their government? Why more people vote for this week's American Idol than for the President? It's because nothing ever changes. The rich continue to get richer, the poor continue to get poorer, and the majority in the middle continue to get screwed by both. At least with American Idol, you get to see someone get yelled at for singing off-key.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[speaker of the truth]

She's principled So what if she's principled if her principles don't match mine?

seasoned Which just means she's been a politician. Given many don't trust politicians this isn't necessarily a good thing.

intelligent That means nothing if she uses her intelligence to do things I don't want.

capable of working across party lines. Which either means she can embody the best of Democrats or Republicans or the worst, or a mixture. From what I've seen, she's a mixture with tendencies towards combining the worst elements.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Kadin2048]

You'd never get a supermajority in the Senate to do that.

I mean, it's stretching the bounds of credibility to imagine that the Senate would ever vote to impeach G.W. -- short of catching him in the act of sodomizing another man, there are a lot of Senators who are just not going to vote that way. Imagining that they'd vote to impeach both Bush and Cheney, and hand the Presidency over to the Speaker of the House ... it's beyond ridiculous. It doesn't matter what he did, he's a Republican and that means there are always going to be Republicans who are going to favor him over a Democrat, because they see Democrats as some sort of alien species, a sort of talking vermin. (And there are Democrats who feel the same way, let's be clear.)

Now, I could see, under certain circumstances, Cheney being impeached and Bush staying in power -- basically Cheney taking "one for the team" and retiring to his house next to Rumsfield's. But it's still not realistic, after the way the immigration debacle is playing out, there is a significant block of Republicans who dislike Bush (but not to the point where they'd trade him for Pelosi) and don't want to remove the foil that they believe Cheney represents against his "liberal" domestic agenda.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[antic]

(Non-American here.)

How many people on either side of the main political line in the US simply argue points to favour their bias like they're barracking for sports teams? That's one of the perceptions I get, and something that can definitely be true here in Australia as well.

The same goes for console fanboys or ice cream flavours or cats vs dogs. And in politics more than almost anywhere else, it shouldn't be how things are thought of and done. Why is anyone a "card-carrying" anything? Why don't they assess each issue and position as it arises regardless of which party is presenting it?

Maybe that's just too much of an ideal scenario?

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Doc Ruby]

50M Americans voted for Bush twice, knowing either beforehand or pretty soon after that he was a disaster. But they were so stupid and evil to vote for him that they can't resist taking the easy way out and just pretend he's "almost gone".

Meanwhile, they're making it easy for the next president, probably a Democrat, to abuse all the Bush powers he created. Without taking blame for a perpetual (and profitable, to the "right" generous donors) Iraq, or any other obvious catastrophes. In other words, a "functional" tyranny that won't even have the talk we do now of impeachment.

And many Democratic voters think they shouldn't "rock the boat" because they're so sure the next president will be a Democrat whose Democratic Congress will make their own wildest dreams come true.

Meanwhile, party affiliation is headed for the biggest fraction to be nonpartisan by 2008. But more of those independents don't vote, without a party promotion machine or a media that reports on nonpartisan politics. However, by 2012, voting independents will likely have the power. And then we might actually impeach someone, if they piss off both parties enough.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Elemenope]

No, it's more like everyone is sour on pretty much everyone (except the fanboy wingnuts). The average American thinks that Republicans are soulless plutocrats, and Democrats are pansy socialists. For those that have heard of them, they think that the Libertarians are batshit crazy, and the Greens...well, the Greens endorsed a career product liability reformer for President not so long ago. It's not so much cheerleading as it is simply 'no way out'. The only people with a lower approval rating than the President is Congress, and they are controlled by opposing parties.

People hold on to parties because it gives them a shadow of an identity. It lets them identify with their parents or their parents' generation, to connect with the past and to meaningful political legacies. After all one party freed the slaves, another delivered on civil rights. They belong to parties because it is so damn inconvenient having to explain ones own political idiosyncrasies every time they meet someone new. They join to pretend that issues can be simplified, or marginalized, or shunted into more comfortable sizes and spaces. They join to have something to fight. Sometimes, they join because there is fresh coffee.

And the way I understand it, it isn't a whole lot different in most other voting republics.

BTW, Xbox, Maple Walnut, and Cats FTW. Everyone else is simply crazy. (Ironically, I AM a card-carrying member of the ACLU.)

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[pugugly]

Ron Paul?

Sorry, didn't impress me during the debates. He doesn't seem to me to know what he's talking about.
"Inflation is caused by printing too much money"

Well, yeah, if you're in a limited economy in which printed money is the majority of the money supply. Currency is a relatively small percentage of the money supply in the U.S.

Which wouldn't bother me if he was presenting it as some simplified picture for purposes of debate, but every impression I've gotten off him is that he thinks he knew exactly what he was talking about.

Ignorant and aware of I'm fine with - Ignorant and sure he knows what he's talking about - not so much.

Pug

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[tobiasly]

Vote Giant Douche in 2008!

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[StellarFury]

Yes, well done, Slashdotters. Let's dodge the initial problem of "Corruption in the White House" and "what does it take to convince you about this administration" by screaming OMG HILLARY SUCKS over and over until no one remembers what the original argument was about. As for the OP's original question - I think you have your answer. They'd rather ignore the scandal and the implications it has and go back to partisan squabbling on the internet. Go ahead. Mod me down. I dare you.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[omeomi]

Vote Giant Douche in 2008!

Like hell! I'm voting for Turd Sandwich!

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that we don't give a shit, it's that after 200+ years we've come to the conclusion that we're screwed no matter what we do.

I disagree: too many young people have reached that conclusion.

The seems to be a correlation between the decline of civics teaching in public schools over the last 20-30 years and the increase in this sort of nihilistic attitude toward politics you so clearly epitomize. I propose that the decline in political socialization and education is responsible for the decline in respect for political processes and institutions. Then, since fewer people understand how things are supposed to work it may be easier to exploit their ignorance. Of course it's much more complicated than that (everything is more complicated than most people think), but I do believe the correlation is meaningful.

A recent Harris poll showed more than 1/3 of respondents didn't know the three branches of government, with 16% responding "local, state, federal" and 18% responding "Republican, Democrat and Independent." Other polls have recorded similarly dismal responses. That's not a trend conducive to the well being of our political system.

Remember that disengaging from politics, throwing up your arms in disgust and walking, away makes it that much easier for an ambitious bureaucrat.

On the other hand, if what you say is true then the conclusion is simple: our system of government simply doesn't work. That's a pretty profound conclusion and I'd be most fascinated to hear how you think it should be replaced. Or does your extend so far that you think it just doesn't matter how we're governed because "we're screwed no matter what?"

I'd rather try to give people the tools to fix the present system, and I'd start in the schools by teaching civics.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[sabernet]

This reminds me of the late Tommy Douglas'(Canadian politician) Mouseland story.

Source: http://www.saskndp.com/history/mouseland.html


It's the story of a place called Mouseland. Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played, were born and died. And they lived much the same as you and I do.

They even had a Parliament. And every four years they had an election. Used to walk to the polls and cast their ballots. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. And got a ride for the next four years afterwards too. Just like you and me. And every time on election day all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big, fat, black cats.

Now if you think it strange that mice should elect a government made up of cats, you just look at the history of Canada for last 90 years and maybe you'll see that they weren't any stupider than we are.

Now I'm not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with dignity. They passed good laws--that is, laws that were good for cats. But the laws that were good for cats weren't very good for mice. One of the laws said that mouseholes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another law said that mice could only travel at certain speeds--so that a cat could get his breakfast without too much effort.

All the laws were good laws. For cats. But, oh, they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn't put up with it any more, they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse to the polls. They voted the black cats out. They put in the white cats.

Now the white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said: "All that Mouseland needs is more vision." They said:"The trouble with Mouseland is those round mouseholes we got. If you put us in we'll establish square mouseholes." And they did. And the square mouseholes were twice as big as the round mouseholes, and now the cat could get both his paws in. And life was tougher than ever.

And when they couldn't take that anymore, they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. Then they went back to the white cats. Then to the black cats. They even tried half black cats and half white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got one government made up of cats with spots on them: they were cats that tried to make a noise like a mouse but ate like a cat.

You see, my friends, the trouble wasn't with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after cats instead of mice.

Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea. And he said to the other mice, "Look fellows, why do we keep on electing a government made up of cats? Why don't we elect a government made up of mice?" "Oh," they said, "he's a Bolshevik. Lock him up!" So they put him in jail.

But I want to remind you: that you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can't lock up an idea.
The Moral of the Story

"Mouseland" is a political fable, originally told by Clare Gillis, a friend of Tommy Douglas. Tommy has used this story many times to show in a humorous way how Canadians fail to recognize that neither the Liberals or Conservatives are truly interested in what matters to ordinary citizens; yet Canadians continue to vote for them.

The story cleverly deals with the false assumption by some people that CCF'ers (NDP'ers) are Communists. The ending shows Tommy Douglas has faith that someday socialism, which recognizes human rights and dignity, will win over capitalism and the mere pursuit of wealth and power.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[vought]

ninety seconds isn't enough time to articulate any sort of monetary policy more complicated than "we print too much money".

And that's whose fault?

I am wondering when the right will startt o realize that painting the press as something it's not - left-leaning - will backfire on them. I mean, you have one network that plays to balance while repeating right-wing pablum, and three others that play lip service to "balance" by simply repeating what each side of a given issue have to say within the golden 30 seconds. You and I both know that's not enough time to inform.

The press today cares for only one thing - money. Everything derives from that.

As Jay Bulworth said, "Give them free airtime, they won't have to play!"

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Has he done incorrect thing? Yeah, but he's doing what he believes is right.

So did Hitler. Having your heart in the right place doesn't count for much when you have the blood of thousands on your hands.

The same way we had interment camps in the 1940s. It wasn't the best course of action, but it was better than ignoring the problem completely.

Hitler found a final solution to that problem.

Hitler '08!

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[i_b_don]

I am not and have never been a patrotic chest thumper. I don't want to fill myself up with pride over false things. However I did believe in some of the ideals that where instilled (brainwashed) into be growing up in the US.

"[Nixon and other presidents spied on the us too!]"

Nixon is the only "modern day" president on your list (sry, i'm only 30), and he got impeached by BOTH parties after a long and grueling coverup battle. Here bush is OPENLY spying on us and we don't seem to give a rats ass.

"How easily we forget that, after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. put Japanese Americans in concentration camps and confiscated all their property. What the Bush administration has done incarcerating people is pretty tame compared to that."

You know, I truely believe this is TAME compared to what bush is doing now. I'm sorry, but to compare taking away property with torture is just insane. There really is no comparison. Torture will scar you far longer than 4 or 5 years in prison.

The presidents that I've lived through... Regean, Bush I, Clinton, have all been pillors of virture compared to the current administration so you'll forgive me if I'm a bit more idealistic than I should be. But while I'm an idealist, I don't believe in wearing rose colored glasses. I've never "given the president a blank check" and I've never "cheered him on" so please remove me from your "we all did this to american" crap thank you very much. The blame should be place SQUARELY where it belongs and not diluted by saying "we've done this throughout history" or "the american people allowed this to happen". Aren't you a republican? (sry, assumption) Aren't republicans supposed to be the party that doesn't go for the "enabling" aregument when it comes to everyday criminals and yet somehow it's pulled up here in support of a yale-educated rich-kid president?

d

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Insulting the speaker seems to work for Bill O'Rielly, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter...right? Please, the Bush blathering is a little over the top...Concerned more about safety? Aside from attacking Iraq (not based in safety), what has been done that makes us more safe? Who did he appoint to lead FEMA? How about the dipshit medicare bill? How about the AG?...er AG's...er their religo facist staff? How about Libby? How about Cunningham? What about Enron? What about Vetran Benefits? What about Walter Reed? Stop Loss? Kevlar vests? How about the Executive order to repeal Clintons executive order that prohibited companies guilty of comitting fraud against the governement from continuing to do business with the goverment? Hey lets repeal the Min Corp tax to 1986!!! and give refunds. And please feel free to comment on the Republican blow job police's response to Clinton attempting to kill Bin Laden.

Now not all are directly his responsibility, but he is the boss and heavy is the head that wears the crown.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[speaker of the truth]

we can't stand politicians who are good at politics Mostly because by the time they reach any amount of power they define being a good politician as screwing people over. We wouldn't want "good" programmers who define good programming as breaking the law in order to establish and abuse an illegal monopoly. Or doctors who define it as doing the least amount possible to keep someone alive while reaping the best money, even if what they do is detrimental for the patient in the long term.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[iamdrscience]

When the new Congress came in it had broad support, but then failed to either end the war or impeach. Now its popularity rating has dropped below even Bush's.

Did you really expect them to be able to do either of those things? For the president to be removed from office by impeachment requires a 2/3rds majority vote in the Senate which would be almost impossible. Furthermore, even if the president were impeached, that would make Dick Cheney president -- not much different. Now, Cheney could also be impeached but besides being similarly unlikely, it would be a legal grey area because no vice president has ever been impeached before and the vice president is usually the one who presides over impeachment trials.

As for ending the war in Iraq, that was also extremely unlikely for pretty much the same reason -- the president said he would veto any bill that stated a timetable for troop withdrawel meaning the only way to get such a bill passed would be to override his veto requiring the same 2/3rds majority vote in congress.

In both cases, there was no way it was going to happen. Assuming all 49 Democratic senators and both independant senators in congress would vote in favor (which isn't certain, BTW) they would still need 15 Republican senators, almost a third of the party, to defect and also vote in favor.

Honestly, you're lucky the democrats even bothered trying to pass a bill with a timetable for withdrawal in it -- I think that's about the best you could hope for.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[jombeewoof]

Why change it when it can be so easily ignored.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[QuickFox]

What the US needs isn't a new administration, it's a new system.

The presidency is too powerful, too tempting, too corrupting. The Republican/Democrats more or less alternating in power makes it almost a one-party system where the one party has two wings. The US media are inciting and creating artificial conflict rather than debate. The media don't guard the guardians the way they should. The US war industry is keeping the nation perpetually at war.

Lots of countries have less corrupting systems.

The US needs to somehow divert its war industry to do something else, the citizens need to buy and subscribe to media that become forums for true debate and that truly guard the guardians, the elections system needs to allow five to seven different parties in position of strength vying for the people's trust and keeping an eye on each other, and there should be far less power at the very top so that it becomes less corrupting.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[WalksOnDirt]

On the other hand, if what you say is true then the conclusion is simple: our system of government simply doesn't work. That's a pretty profound conclusion and I'd be most fascinated to hear how you think it should be replaced.

Having just two parties was never part of the constitution, and forcing everyone to chose between only two complete ideologies leaves much of the populace feeling disenfranchised. Other countries manage to give minority parties some representation, and I think some change to make that happen here in the USA would be a massive help. Since this would benefit neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, who have a near complete monopoly on power at both the state and federal level, there seems to be little hope of it ever happening.

There are many other good ideas for improving the political process, but they all run into that one stumbling block: What is good for the voters is bad for the parties, and without the support of at least one party nothing can be done.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[LaCosaNostradamus]

That's a beautiful way to put it. I'm in the USA, but it applies equally well here than it does in Canada. Things are so bad that you find yourself reverting to sarcasm and funny anecdotes in order to make the obvious ... well, obviouser. How much more obvious does our slavery to the modern system have to get? Well, apparently more obviously, so we need Mouseland stories ... a LOT of Mouseland stories.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[gnalre]

As Douglas Adams put it

"if you don't vote for the Lizards the wrong Lizard might get in"

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[TheoMurpse]

The problem in America isn't the people. We get it. The problem is the politicians still listen more to television commentators than to the people.

The politicians are elected by the people. If the politicians do something wrong, it is the fault of the people who voted for them. Stop passing the buck.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[nido]

Clinton was just as much a traitor as was Bush I (evil), Reagan (pawn for Bush I, broke the unions), Bush II (dbl-spr-evil), and Johnson (helped kill JFK?). Perhaps Nixon & Ford were evil too, but nothing specific immediately comes to mind.

Clinton pushed implementation of Papa Bush's NAFTA agreement through the congress. NAFTA is, of course, the treaty that destroyed the economic livelihoods of millions of Mexican peasant farmers, who became Maquilladora workers or Economic Refugees in the U.S. (aka 'illegal immigrants').

Just 'cause the economy didn't collapse on his watch doesn't mean that he doesn't have a share in the slow-motion collapse.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Kjella]

No, it's more like everyone is sour on pretty much everyone (except the fanboy wingnuts). The average American thinks that Republicans are soulless plutocrats, and Democrats are pansy socialists. For those that have heard of them, they think that the Libertarians are batshit crazy, and the Greens...well, the Greens endorsed a career product liability reformer for President not so long ago.

Unfortunately, the only Liberitarian I've personally known is batshit crazy. When you're gathering people from the fringes, you get those that have fallen off the edge. He was very vocal about it, but he did more harm than good. In any case, I think 'pansy socialists' is mostly reserved for Europe or the UN, for those that have heard of them ;). The blessing and the curse of the US system is the system itself. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats will ever be pushed out of power because the system makes the "split" side in a three-party configuration weaker, and because people are always looking for greener pastures the ball will continue to go between the two. The downside is that bi-partisan power grabs happen without recourse.

Here in Europe, I can vote far left, far right, or one of the parties that go off on a different tangent, but it stlll counts for my side. If the Democrats had 45%, Republicans 45% and Liberitarians 10%, then whoever wants to be in government would have to cooperate with them, give their politics a liberitarian touch. In the US, they're nowhere. In fact, the one voter who left the liberitarians could decide on democrats vs republicans instead. Or if it was the Green party, then it'd have to be a red-green or blue-green government (not sure if the symbolism is right for the US). Even within your side you're not safe - take our last parliament election: Progress Party +7.4% to 22.1%, Conservative Party -7.1% to 14.1%. Both of those belong to the same block, so the grand effect was *gasp* 0.3%, but it sure means competition. There's no "safe" states or voters you can plain old ignore because they're in your core constituency.

So what's the downside, apart from vastly reduced job safety for politicians? Well, with so many parties (seven in parliament now, three in goverment) you end up with a lot of negotiations. Voter promises generally get lost during coalition talks, and there's always a lot of in-fighting to get "their" politics through. In the US, there's never any doubt on who's running the country and who is to be blamed/praised. On the whole I don't like how the people are voting here either (we voted the Socialist Left into government, which are so far off the US political landscape as can be, all democratic but also all nannystate and naive) but at least here I'm fairly confident the people are at fault, not the system.

Things shift, and drasticly. Controversial issues show up in the polls, not as big landslides from one block to another but as shifts within them. Every party needs to fight for their right of life every day. The Labour Party, which has been the biggest party since before WWII with nearly a majority by itself at its height, fell over 10% to a horrible 24.3% in 2001 bleeding voters to all other social-democratic parties, but recovered considerably in 2005. In the US, have you got an option for "I like the politics, but your party is a disgrace"? No, it's either vote or sit at home in protest. We vote for the alternatives, because there are alternatives which make sense.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[stuntpope]

Yes, those southern Democrats, specifically Dixiecrats, who, beginning in the 70's, shifted the other way and now form a very large base of the modern Republican Party.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[kcbrown]

The politicians are elected by the people. If the politicians do something wrong, it is the fault of the people who voted for them. Stop passing the buck.

The people choose who they elect from a list of politicians not of their own choosing. The people who ultimately choose who gets onto the ballot from (at the very least) the two major parties are precisely the people to whom the politicians are loyal: those who run the big corporations.

And there's no "no confidence" option on the ballot, either.

Really, what do you expect the people to do in this situation? Wave their magic wands or something?

I'm sorry, but this situation has no peaceful solution. All the exits are covered by the bad guys.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[igb]

and the Greens...well, the Greens endorsed a career product liability reformer for President not so long ago

And the Greens votes for him, too, to `send a message to Gore'. How's that working out, by the way?

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[hey!]

Which just means she's been a politician. Given many don't trust politicians this isn't necessarily a good thing.

Haven't you noticed that many people who make a big deal about how untrustworthy politicians are ... politicians?

Haven't you noticed that many politicians who claim to be outsiders are actually insiders? (cough cough Thompson)

Maybe its a bad idea to elect politicians who are telling you to your face they think that elected office is a racket, not honorable public service.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[hey!]

That seems like a .... weird reason.

That's because part of the GP post is missing, it should read:

For me, it's just that she's TOO ambitious for a woman.

There, I fixed it. The right wing has never forgiven her for her unkind words about cookies.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[encoderer]

1. Those bombings of "factories in Africa" were blown SO OUT OF PROPORTION that it's laughable. First, I don't recall that there was ever any PROOF that the factories were EXCLUSIVELY baby-food factories and didn't also house the nefarious types that Clinton was targeting. Second, he said afterwards that there was an intelligence failure. Nobody could believe this. We have THE BEST intelligence. There are MILLIONS OF PAGES, fiction and non-fiction, written about the CIA. Surely the intelligence wasn't faulty, it was just clinton trying to distract from the Lewinsky mess, right? Right? Right?

Wrong. The "intelligence failure" looks a lot more plausible now after Iraq2.0, doesn't it?

2. By "to the right of Nixon" I assume you're talking about welfare reform and free trade? It should be noted that Clinton came into office at the heyday of free trade. He was sworn in while the ink was drying on the NAFTA bill. In hindsight he should've passed aid to help business and workers adjust, but that wasn't CW in 1993 like it is today. Yes, some were visionary on the subject (H.R. Perot) but I really doubt that Clinton thought it would be as damaging in the SHORT TERM to our economy as it was. But other than aid packages, free trade deals are generally good ideas. If for no other reason than trade stops wars and does more to improve the quality of life of average foreigners than all the Aid packages in the world.

3. Don't underestimate the effect of the 1993 Economic package on the 90's boom. He raised taxes and cut spending which, against the conventional supply-side wisdom, shored up the federal balance sheet. This lowered interest rates, because the less money the Government borrows the more that's left for business to borrow. Without the health of the federal budget the interest rates would never have gotten that low. Those rates produced the LOADS of cash that served as the lubrication of the economy. Yes, much of the boom was fueled by technology-related productivity increases but without the lubrication of cheap capital, the machine would've seized up far earlier than the 2000-ish recession.

4. It should be noted that the "real world human effects" of free trade, while hurtful to middle class Americans, were probably very positive for the citizens of the countries that now have our jobs.

5. The "Don't As Don't Tell" policy was progressive for 1993. It was his first month as President and he made the calculation that he shouldn't completely alienate the Joint Chiefs. It should be noted, too, that Colin Powell was the loudest advocate of DADT. He's since said that the policy had unintended consequences. Most people respect Powells judgement (even moreso before that fated UN Presentation on WMDs). Clinton had basically no military experience. One month on the job a career soldier, a highly respected Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, one of the most respected military minds this side of WWII told a young President that openly gay soldiers would disrupt unit cohesion and reduce the effectiveness of the US Military. Clinton was one month on the job. He made the right call. Maybe he should've looked closer at the policy 5, 6, 7 years later, but there's a lot of things vying for Presidential attention. Furthermore, DADT was an incremental improvement for the gay community, even if they didn't see it that way at the time.

6. Clinton was a good steward of his office. His personal issues were overblown and I'd bet dollars to donuts that the Oval Office saw a great deal of blow jobs long before Bill Clinton. We just didn't hear about them.

7. You overlook so many of his incremental domestic policy improvements. No, he didn't start the next great American Revolution. But he did give us the EITC. He did give us the FMLA. He did give us a minimum wage increase. He did expand Medicare and Medicaid to cover more children. He did put 100,000 new police officers on the streets. He did raise CAFE and Environmental standards. He did balance the budget. He did attempt to save social security without cutt

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Chris Burke]

Honestly, you're lucky the democrats even bothered trying to pass a bill with a timetable for withdrawal in it -- I think that's about the best you could hope for.

Yes, that's the best I hoped for from the Democrats, but that's not the best they could have done.

What we had here was a standoff. The Dems can't beat Bush's veto, but Bush can't get any bill to sign that isn't crafted by the Dems. For a minute, it looked like they might try to go the distance. But the Dems completely collapsed in the face of Bush's "You are endangering the troops. The trooooooops!" rhetoric. They were so worried that people were think they were unpatriotic -- which people, I ask, since as far as I can tell that was exactly what the people who actually voted for them wanted -- that they caved in and gave Bush exactly what he wanted with nothing more than a "and gee, it sure would be nice if the war would end some day" note at the end.

What the Dems needed to do is match Bush's rhetoric with their own. Stand up and make it clear that they believe they are "supporting the troops" by bringing them home safetly. Make it clear that it is Bush who has put the troops in very literal danger, who has failed our troops by failing to manage the war properly. They need to hit him where he is ultimately the most vulnerable: the utter failure of his Iraq policy, and the fact that this has directly resulted in our soldiers being killed needlessly.

Yet for some reasons the Democrats are afraid to call him on it. What should be Bush's greatest weakness is an inexplicable source of strength. They're afraid to come right out and say "you're getting our troops killed because you failed to plan for any of this, we need to end the pointless bloodshed". So by their silence they implicitly hand Bush the title of "troop supporter", boosting his rhetoric and ultimately dooming their own pathetic attempts to do what they were voted in to do.

I didn't really hope for much. But I did hope that the Democrats would realize that they didn't get voted in for them, they got voted in because we wanted things to change, for the war to stop, and that would not happen with a Republican majority. They're so worried about what we think of them, they don't notice that we want them to do something even if politically dangerous. But by playing it safe, they've killed the support they had.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[manowar821]

I'll agree with this, it's completely true. You can literally see the gender barrier in between some people and Hillary, it's thick like jello, and you could drown in it if you're not careful. Her policies are another issue, but I rarely hear anyone complain about them. It usually seems to be nonsensical complaints.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[Danathar]

Europe is NOT the model of utopia I want to emulate.

Low Birth rates (for non-immigrants)
High Taxes
EU Bureaucracy that makes ours look streamlined

The U.S. is no bed of roses, but making the argument that Europe has done a better job due to it's parliamentary style of government. does not wash either.

Re:Question for any Americans reading Slashdot.

[bfields]

[intelligent] means nothing if she uses her intelligence to do things I don't want.

Ya know, after the current administration, I think I'd settle for intelligent but wrong.

I mean, I was totally, bitterly opposed to invading Iraq. But, if it had been done by an administration that was actually interested in being *smart*, in exposing ideas to challenge and learning from it, etc., etc.... I don't know, maybe it could have had some merit. Or at least not been such an utter failure.

So while I may have a pretty strong political ideology of my own, I've got to recognize that a lot of good government comes down to understand the details really well, and to respecting good processes. As opposed to setting a broad course based on gut feeling and then fighting any sort of oversight.

Re:Keep sucking up your Democratic Propaganda Fanb

[Watson Ladd]

Would you prefer we elected Republicans instead? Yes, the Democrats betrayed the left, but would the Republicans have been any better? Remember that liberals are now hammering the Democrats to grow that most rare of all Washington institutions, a spine.

Glass Houses

[southpolesammy]

[ObDisclosure -- I'm independent -- I prefer to think before I vote.]

Before this becomes a big GOP-bashing party, let's not be so tunnel-visioned to believe that this could never happen on the blue side of the aisle.

Re:Glass Houses

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly are you arguing? I'm sick of this: "well everybody does it" crap. NO friend, not everyone does it -- and even if they did, I don't see the relevance. Your attitude is the biggest threat to the republic.

Re:Glass Houses

[Anonymous Coward]

Leave it to an independent to reflexively indict by innuendo every member of both political parties.

So just to be really even handed, I will point out that even political independents can be corrupt. Now everyone can feel good that everyone is equally capable of criminality in the abstract, and we can get back to discussing the actual criminality that has occurred, which happens to have been conducted by the leaders of the GOP.

Re:Glass Houses

[southpolesammy]

You're right -- inaction is a great threat to the republic. But so is having a double-standard. Just ask Dred Scott.

Re:Glass Houses

[Fizzol]

What would the double standard be in this case? I have one because I condemn the GOP for actually doing something wrong but not the Dems for something that they didn't do but might theoretcially do? If there's a double standard here it's completely in your court.

Re:Glass Houses

[sheldon]

Yeah yeah, the old Carville line. If the democrats say 2+2=5, and the republicans say 2+2=5000, we should report it as "Both sides are wrong".

Seriously, one of the things I have found encouraging has been the way William Jefferson of Louisiana has been handled by the Liberally Biased. Namely blogs like talkingpointsmemo.com, which has spent nearly as much time reporting on his misdeeds(using national guard to get papers out of his house during Katrina), as they did going after Duke Cunningham. There has also been considerable pressure from the left to oust him from office(in a primary bid), and to oust him from committees.

Compare and contrast this with how the GOP responded to virtually every Congressional scandal, such as trying to change the rules to keep Delay in his leadership post, to claiming it was a Democratic witch hunt against Cunningham or Foley or whatever one was in trouble that week.

Yes, any time you have passions flowing, it is easy for a con artist to take advantage of them and make some personal gains. The key is whether you have people whose independent thought overrides their emotion and calls BS for what it is.

Such has been the case of the liberal bloggers, at least thus far. This has been encouraging.

But the notion that both parties are the same as of right now, or over the past 10 years even, is laughable. The Republicans in 2006 were ten times worse in their abuse than the Democrats of 1994.

Re:Glass Houses

[idsofmarch]

This is an irrelevant argument at best. The fact is a number of White House officials acted in an untoward manner despite specific policies prohibiting them from doing this. Whether the other party does it too is meaningless when deciding if a policy should be followed. If you're really independent you should be willing to kick the GOP in the shins for their malfeasance and reserve the right to do the same thing to the Democrats when they present you with the opportunity.

Re:Keep sucking up your Democratic Propaganda Fanb

[Copid]

Democrats haven't even tried to keep the promises that they were elected in Nov 2006. They promised to end the war, and didn't. They promised to clean up earmarks, and they won't. Bottom line is, all you liberals that flocked to Democrats like zombies do to living brains have been had just as much as we conservatives were that ate the public line of the RNC.

And if they keep it up, I'll be voting against the incumbent again. It's true that the Democrats aren't doing enough to clean up the mess. That doesn't mean that it didn't make sense to boot the guys who were making the mess to begin with.

Question for any longstanding Slashdot reader

[jd]

There have been dozens (at least, and excluding dupes) of stories covering systems that can lift the last ten layers of disk content off a drive. Unless these guys have done a secure wipe with specially-designed patterns to eliminate residual information, why the hell isn't anyone paying one of the labs capable of such content lifting to read these drives?

The owners of the system claim deleted files can't be recovered. Well, like I said, unless it's a secure wipe, that's patently bogus, even if the original tracks have now been filled with other data. Up to nine times over, if you're lucky. I'm not sure I would trust a technologically-ignorant group to run a critical service.

The Democrats, on the other hand, no matter how justified their cause, are either unwilling to get competent technical advice or are unwilling to take the gamble of being wrong if they have that advice or knowledge. This may well be rocket science, but it still doesn't take a rocket scientist to do a search on Google to find out what can be done and who can do it.

In short, for me this has ceased to be a matter of rights and wrongs, of whether the law was broken, or of whether civil servants lost their jobs due to degenerate politics. Nobody will ever know the full facts of the matter, because those who could perfectly well obtain them have - for their own reasons - declined to do so. I trust the Democrats on many issues, but after this, I cannot trust them on the issue of cleaning up politics. How can I? Either they want to but can't, or they don't and won't. What does it matter which it is?

I'd also LOVE to know where all the technologists are, who are fully aware of these sorts of capabilities. Why the silence? It's not a conspiracy, that's obvious enough, so why is nobody asking questions? Why are the Republicans not asking why the Democrats aren't making the effort? Why are the blogs not discussing the effects of layering text over text on the magnetic fields? Even if the reliability of the technique is too poor, someone could at least have asked and gotten that reply.

Re:Question for any longstanding Slashdot reader

[timotten]

I have seen this question raised by some liberal blogfolk. The conversation that I saw went a bit like this:

[Semi]Techie: Someone has data recovery abilities. Why don't the Democrats get them? This is outrageous!
Non-techie: OMG! Totally!
[Semi]Techie #2: Totally!
Non-techie #2: Totally!

Now, I generally don't pay much attention to the hardware issues, so I may be speaking out of turn, but it seems like quite a leap to go from

Someone somewhere has done an experiment in which they managed to recover some bytes that were overwritten 9 times.

to

We can provide accountability for our government officials by shipping these drives out to some website.

Yes, it may be possible, but:

1. Just how robust is the technology? Can we really read data that was deleted from a heavily trafficked mail server -- 2-8 months after the fact?
2. Are we prepared to have a public, political discussion about the quality of the technology? What will that discussion look like?
3. How do we ensure that the data recovery process is done in a manner that ensures public trust? How do we authenticate recovered emails?
4. When do we publicly announce that we're using this recovery technology? Right now? Maybe we only announce if we actually get data?

Most importantly, you have to put this into context: Democrats need to publicly demonstrate malfeasance by Republican officials. One way to do that is with this uncertain approach of recovering data, examining messages, and then building a case. Another way is to point out the deleted emails and show that the admitted deletions were illegal.

Re:Keep sucking up your Democratic Propaganda Fanb

[HangingChad]

Idiots. Keep reading your MoveOn.org "press releases"

It's no worse than you watching Fox News. Our country is being gutted, everything we stand for as a nation undermined and you're still supporting them?

With your user number, you'd think you'd be old enough to have learned something. What an embarrassment that you continue to support such a lying, corrupt administration. We are all the poorer as a nation because of you.

Does anyone besides me wonder if there's a peaceable solution to our differences? Sometimes I wonder if we're going to have to have it out with you and your kind to get our country back. How can we move forward when a third of the nation is okay treating the Constitution like it's just a piece of paper?

Ends-Justify-Means Mode

[Tablizer]

let's not be so tunnel-visioned to believe that this could never happen on the blue side of the aisle.

It is fairly well-known that the repubs had a sense of "ends justify means" for quite a while. They practically felt that since they were doing "God's work", they had a right to skirt the rules. Perhaps in the 1970's the Demo's had this kind of belief due to civil rights and Vietnam. However, the prez was a Repub at the time, putting that in check. This time there were no checks on power: Pubs controled 2, and perhaps 3 branches of gov't.

It is this sense that the ends are important enough to justify the shady means when these kinds of things happen. They felt that when their grand plans succeeded (Iraq victory, Gaza democracy, Prayer, etc.), then voters would be so happy that they could stay in power and stop any investigations. But, reality caught up with them.

Yes, it could happen to the Demo's, but it takes almost a perfect storm. Voters have historically kept mixed parties in the different branches, and this kind of "alignment" is rare.

Chalk one more onto the tally

[r_jensen11]

Honestly, I believe that this administration has fucked up so bad that there is no shock element any more. Compared to Bush, Nixon was a saint, and Carter was as accomplished as FDR.

I agree with some points earlier about how we'd be even worse if we impeached Bush, though. Who would we be left with? Cheney. The only solution would be to impeach both Bush and Cheney at the same time, but by the time that proceeding gets through we'd already have finished the next election.

yargh!

[lordvalrole]

basically, Mr. Carl Rove ended up only having 130 emails actually recorded throughout bush's presidency when there should of been all of his emails and all of the other peoples emails recorded. This is why we will never know anything come 25 years from now when things get declassified. This seriously amazes me why the general public is not outraged by this. Compared to the insane ridiculousness of this administration. This trumps it all. I could bet my life that most of those emails were about foreign affairs in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, oil, military, war funding, contracts and contractors for Iraq, occupying the middle east, nsa wiretaps, spying on Americans, the whole damn thing were in those emails. I seriously would be my life on it. Now we have no records of any wrong doing. How screwed up is this place. We should be marching in DC with pitchforks (well guns) and over take the city. Un-fucking-believable

no malice needed

[r00t]

People like to use one email account for everything.

People hate to change their email account.

That's it. No malice needed, or even incompetence. It's just being lazy/efficient. Perhaps we should be thankful they aren't all using hotmail accounts.

Re:no malice needed

[phoenix.bam!]

If they were using hotmail accounts the emails would have been properly backed up.

As it stands, there was a massive violation of the Presidential Records Act and the evidence has been destroyed. Either the server admin was following a backup/deletion policy dictated by a willful violation of the law from higher ups at the RNC, or he is incompetent. I'm going to bet on following a policy that was a willful violation of the law. He's going to flip and hopefully someone will end up in jail for usurping the Republic.

The big Constitutional FUBAR

[zogger]

There is one reason why this ludicrous and destructive charade continues, and that is from a serious flaw in the Constitution. The executive branch controls 99%+ of the "no questions asked" order followers who carry guns.

And that's it. Supposed to be some vague oath for constitution and then commander in chief. That's the theory. In practice, it is completely loyal to commander in chief. Full stop.

      The legislative branch has nothing. Zero. Toothless. Even when they allegedly "pass" this or that legislation, it invariably gets "decided" to be something else, by "signing statements", and the orders from the deciders keep being followed. Combine that with that little cute warning to Congress and the mass media with that *mysteriously unsolved* anthrax attack, which let them know in no uncertain terms who was calling the shots now, and you get what you see.

This has been a coup d'état, with hacked elections and some really dodgy and quite *odd* "terror" attacks, and until that is recognized universally and identified as such, by the population en masse and especially by the toady media and by folks inside the government "system", nothing much will change, it will just keep getting worse.

Above is my opinion. I do not like having that opinion, it just sucks.

  This is my anecdotal. Going by what I was taught in gradeschool, we are already way past the point where this can be called a police state. That it is not as bad for people right now as worse police states like north korea or wherever is a moot point. The important thing is, it crossed the threshold and is continuing relentlessly in that direction. It's been slow speed but really increased the past few years. I think they really saw they could pull it off cleanly if they took their time and did it piecemeal, instead of an all at once overnight deal like most coups. I also think it has been going on in a loose form since at least when they offed JFK and got away with it. Eisenhower warned the nation. I don't think he was joking.

Re:Such a One-sided Conversation

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Revotron - you're such a tool...

Let's see... which is worse?

Sacks of cash in the freezer or thousands dead in an illegal war of aggression?

Mull it over again....

Sacks of cash in the freezer or suspending habeus corpus, a cornerstone of the rule of law?

Let's try it again....

Sacks of cash in the freezer or torturing people?

Yes, Jefferson is a cheezie corrupt punk, but your scaling the war crimes, the violations of the constitution, and the offences to common reason and decency perpetrated by the Bush Junta is ludicrous and pathetic, as well as ignorant and just plain stupid.

So, before you post more of that kind of idiotic horsecrap, please think twice. In your case, once would be a grand improvement.

RS

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Publicly killing kittens? Publicly killing people.

[Futurepower(R)]

Bush has certainly done worse than publicly bite the heads off kittens. He has killed more than 650,000 Iraqis in a very public scheme to restrict the flow of oil from Iraq, and thus cause oil prices to rise. (Saddam Hussein was selling oil by trucking it through Turkey. Iraq has 20% of the known reserves of oil.)

The truth is much, much worse than any one person can document. But I tried to write a summary: George W. Bush comedy and tragedy.

Off Topic read at own risk.

[jombeewoof]

(Non-American here.)

Why is anyone a "card-carrying" anything? Why don't they assess each issue and position as it arises regardless of which party is presenting it?

Maybe that's just too much of an ideal scenario?

  I usually don't chime in on political topics, because frankly I just don't care. I know I'm going to get it in the "end". Any politician is going to screw you, it's part of the job.

But this question begs to be answered, and I think I can give it a little bit of justice.

I think it's because everyone knows that politicians are corrupt. But they want to be on the the "winning team" In the late 80's Bush the Senior was ruining things... opps Running things. and after 12 years of Republican rule the country wanted something a little different. So the majority of people found some flaw in the republican platform. Anything at all they could disagree with. They would build on this one thing(or 2 small things you get the idea) and eventually talk themselves into being a Democrat. (i'm too young to cite any specific examples... poor schools I guess)

Clinton had his fair share of scandal, whether deserved or not (not up to debate in this post) is irrelevant. Many people claimed to "think of the children" or Family Values or whatever judeo-christian BS the Moral Majority is shoving down our throats.
These people now identified with the Republicans more because they would never (get caught) cheat(ing) on their wives. Or Lieing under oath. Or even would never be confused as to the legal definition of "is".
These people were slowly but surely shown the benevolent side of the Republican agenda. As their following got stronger they branched out into more legally/morally obscure areas.
The people are already going to vote republican because they agree you should (get caught) cheat(ing) on your wife, you shouldn't (get caught) stealing from children etc...
wow that turned into a rant.

I am an American. At one point I thought this country was great, we had freedoms many other places didn't enjoy. We had a great document that limited the power of any one individual, we even had a system of checks and balances so that in the off chance that one individual or group became too powerful it could never truly take away our inherent rights.

This system probably worked rather well for quite some time. Maybe even 50 years.

With the current system, there is no possible way to get back to what this country is about. We are too far gone.

But I cannot think of any alternative. Power breeds corruption. I cannot honestly say that I have never used my job to further my own personal goals. I drove cab for 4 years, I used that job to meet loose women, and score drugs. I'm now in the IT field. I use this job to keep with current trends in the industry and meet contacts that will further my personal agenda.
I'm not saying that if I was a politician I would burn schools down to create parking lots for my fleet of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, but some people do not have high moral standards I do.

If there is a way to use a position of authority, any authority at all it will be abused, more often than not. This is the new American dream.
Lie, Steal, Cheat, Blame your predecessor.

The Constitution is a great piece of work, sad to think of it more as a work of fiction these days.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, America has to go through some kind of radical change. IMHO nothing short of revolution will bring this country even close to the splendor that it once was.
I'm not talking about riches and wealth splendor, I'm talking about freedom.

Re:too much email to actually govern

[rhizome]

Maybe these guys are so busy sending emails to each other that they have no time left over to actually try their hand at competent governance.

Consider the possibility that the governing was being done with the RNC.com email accounts. This is part of what the scandal is about.

Re:Barack Obama and Ron Paul?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Democratic party has enough right-wingers IN the party that it needs no balancing out. They just gave Bush another blank check to warmonger.

Machiavelli, meet Delusion and Dogma

[macraig]

"There can be no crime committed when it's God's will and work that is being done." That is the way such people have deluded themselves to reason. Machiavelli would be proud.

legality

[misanthrope101]

You don't need to prove malice or incompetence when the acts were illegal. Motive is always speculative, but if it makes sense to think they were probably covering things up, they probably were.

Re:Geez, since when is making money a crime?

[vcalzone]

The choices are not as you would like us to believe.

What we currently have is a corporate environment filled with anti-American sentiment. They avoid paying taxes at all cost, sidestep environmental regulation, avoid paying fair wages or proper benefits (if they decide to give Americans jobs at all), and do it all without a trace of thought as to the state of the country.

And that is NORMAL. Corporations are sharks, they only exist to make money, and to ask them to fight on behalf of the people is preposterous, because it is simply not feasible or logical.

Government, on the other hand, is responsible for its citizens. They are responsible for the common welfare. And when they start making decisions that are not in the best interest of the people who elected them, they have made themselves obsolete.

Pick one. Either corporations are responsible for helping citizens take care of themselves, or the government is. And I, for one, don't think this is a burden that business should have to bear.

Iron

[DoctorFrog]

If a felon is one who commits a felony, you sir are an iron.

This:
[Y]ou know insulting the speaker always invalidates the facts he speaks.

coming right after this:
Clinton was an immoral slime ball with the frat boy charm that got him through.

would blow out the irony meter on anybody but a Neo-conservative fascist who is goose stepping over his fellow countrymen while saluting Fox News.

Re:Publicly killing kittens? Publicly killing peop

[nido]

Documentation is nice and all, but The Complex (military-industrial-banking-etc) has been building towards the present scenario for a very long time (since the day the British surrendered way-back-when), and it will take much more than a precise statement of 'facts' to incite revolution.

Something about how The Complex's actions are in the process of cutting America down at the knees. Even though much of the populace seems to be doing okay right now, the entirety of the U.S. population will eventually suffer consequences of the Neo-Con-victs' tyranny:

First they came for the seamstresses and shoe makers, and I did nothing because I was not a seamstress, and clothes sewn by third-world slaves are cheaper for me to buy anyways.

Then they replaced the union butchers with Mexican Slaves, and I didn't care because I've forgotten how meat is supposed to taste, and the migrants' blood doesn't make it through the shrink-wrapped package.

Then they came for the electronics assemblers, and I did nothing because I was not a assembler, and electronics assembled by displaced third-world peasant farmers are cheaper for me to buy anyways.

Then they came for the white-collared workers, and I did nothing because I'm not a white-collared worker, and who cares if a couple overpaid office workers lose out to an Indian fella who's willing to work twice as long for a third the pay?

Then the economy collapsed, and no one had any money to shop at my little store, pay my exorbitant fees for medical services, pay the taxes to support the Imperial War Machine, buy food to put on the table, etc.

-me (feel free to fix & spread the meme)

I wish I could say I've done more to change the system... I've donated a couple bucks to various resistance organizations, but that hardly seems like much. I'm working on a plan to enlist veterans to collect signatures to recall my state's worthless Senators & Congressmen, but this plan is on hold until I figure out 'how to read' (which is, of course, a euphemism for all the things I should've learned in skool but didn't. Soon, very soon indeed, certainly.).

Chomsky has some good stuff out. I found a torrent of his Class War CD, and was quite impressed with the argument (he's been ahead of the curve for quite a while, I think)

Re:Keep sucking up your Democratic Propaganda Fanb

[vought]

Nice deflection from my original request.

I don't think your post matches the challenge of "putting up or shutting up" that I set. I'll grant that absolute contests like that are no fun, but I couldn't let your counterfactual statement stand.

Like so many manufactured scandals, the "trashing" of the White House by Clinton staffers never actually happened - it was ginned up by a Republican machine ready to deliver locker-room dick sizes to a press breathless for scandal - and a year after the story "broke", the truth came out, thanks to the non-partisan GAO.

Hell, read it. I'm tired of trying to make Republicans believe that white is, in fact, white.

From the article:

The White House made 78 staffers available for interviews with the GAO, and clearly spent an enormous amount of energy just to try to stick another scandal to the Clintons. (Gonzales' time alone, billed by the hour, might cost more than the $9,000-plus the GAO blamed on the Clintons.)

Some conservatives. They've been doing the same trick for six years now and spending a shitload of money just to keep the lights on while 68% of people don't even want to get in the front door.

Oh please!

[Bob-taro]

Good grief! Can it get any more "gray area" than this? So there is a law against using government email for political purposes and a law requiring all official, non-political email to be stored. I would imagine there are many emails (regarding appointments, for example) that could go either way. "Hey, how do you think it will make us look if we appoint this guy for this position?" Is that "official" or "political"? And were the emails "destroyed", or were they just not archived? (c'mon slashdot, this is our subject area - we know you don't shred emails). I'd like all the Bush opponents out there to take a minute and imagine hearing these same allegations against Clinton (or whatever administration you would support). I'll admit, if I'd heard the same news about Clinton, I'd be a lot more suspicious, but so far, this is just an allegation of not preserving emails. The implication is that this is part of some big cover-up or scandal, but nothing specific is mentioned. It's just more "Bush Dynasty = Big Oil = Big Conspiracy".

As a VERY left leaning voter, let me just say...

[spun]

I'm an anarcho-syndicalist and I feel the same way about Clinton, and his wife. They aren't real democrats. They are both centrist populists. Dennis Kucinich is the only democrat worth his salt these days. You know how most intelligent republicans are jumping ship these days? That was me vis a vis the democrats years ago.

I admit, listening to most repubs talk about Clinton is exactly as you describe, but elemenope is not a republican, and he isn't just badmouthing Clinton (except for the sedimentary rock bit, which is actually funny and kinda true.) He's offering legitimate criticism of his presidency. If we can't respond to criticism with something more than grade school insults, we're no better than the republicans.

You know who I liked? Carter. Go ahead and laugh. I think he was a better president than Clinton.

This is very, very wrong.

[hey!]

Having a majority isn't the only thing that counts. In fact it doesn't count at all, it's meaningless.

What matters is the power you can wield.

Political power is mathematically the number of winning coalitions you can join. By that measure, the most powerful man in the Senate is Joe Lieberman, who is, in effect, a Republican caucusing with the Democrats. He is roughly speaking as powerful as all the Democrats put together when it comes to a vote on an issue like timetables in the supplemental.

As the GP points out, the majority's power is further restrained by procedural and constitutional rules. Without the power to invoke cloture on a party line vote, the majority party's power is not really all that greater than the minority party, which is why the Senate has been less extreme than the House during the years of Republican hegemony. The only way for the majority to exploit its power is by abusing the rules (e.g. slipping provisions into bills at the last minute).

The same goes for impeachment. The Democrats can certainly impeach the President, but they can't get a conviction in the Sentate without a supermajority. Since this would work to the President's advantage, the Democrats cannot "win" any impeachment effort until the President is abandoned by his Republican allies.

Posts like yours are why I hate this crap

[dharbee]

Yes, it's you and people who do what you do. Don't get ruffled, but it's true?

What do I mean?

This

"Bush has certainly done worse than publicly bite the heads off kittens. He has killed more than 650,000 Iraqis [npr.org]"

Now, I'm making no judgment about this statement, but I do know linking to a blurb on NPR that itself says the study may be flawed is not what I'd consider a great way to start. I am certain there are better sources available.

But that's not really the point. The point is, this kind of irresponsible "fact" spewing is epidemic on both sides, and I simply am far too tired of watching them scream "lies" "murder" "impeach" etc. at the expense of being solution oriented. Posts like yours feed that.

Worse still, the number will continue to inflate, so that not long from now it will be "nearly a million" or some such manipulation of reality.

So now, as a responsible consumer of information, I have to wade through a mile of garbage to track down the truth, because it's far more important to "win" than to tell the truth. Some fact "massaging" seems to be accepted, and when the "massaging" itself gets "massaged" suddenly you have a serious information problem.

It's simply too tiring.

We separate for a very good reason.

[FatSean]

Backlash from oppressive communities. Communities work because they have alot in common, usually social rules.

The monolithic 'good ol' days' society of the 50s and before is long past. Our 'melting pot' isn't melting together because people have realized that they don't need to conform to one vision of the nation. And why should they? It's the land of the free, we are free to believe what we want. It just so happens that people are starting to believe much more diverse things, some of these concepts are antagonists.

With internet and easy personal travel, people have less incentive to give up their principles and to conform to the local community. They don't like being gay in their religious home-town where people look down on them, so they move. They don't like being made fun of as the 'college boy' in a dying blue-collar industrial town, so they move.

When people don't buy into the 'one vision', social shaming fails. It used to be that if you didn't behave according to the rules you'd be ignored or exiled. Now people voluntarily exile themselves from communities that don't represent their views.