There is no "executive privilege" in impeachment? Well, what do you know, I think that the right of "executive privilege during impeachment" will be invented should impeachment ever make its way onto the table, and virtually every Rethuglican will agree that there is such a thing.
The Supremes already did this one, so it would be harder to break.
Abu would be hard to hire, since he might be called on to defend something in those courts he insisted didn't have any authority over the executive branch. I would love to see that, myself.
A few ideas, after sleeping on it...
"focus on ____"...
This is key. (No duh, huh.) But there, in one word, is sound, sound advice. One of our greatest disadvantages has been the ability of the corporatocracy, via its media, to control the news cycle. We unintentionally cooperate in trying to keep up with the news cycle, to comment on it all the time, when what we really should be doing is finding *one major point* and obsessing a little about it. (Though the analogy is hackneyed, when I think of focus I think of a magnifying glass held in the sun so that it creates a focused, intensely bright hot spot that bursts into flames.)
Nicole Belle over at C&L has a post:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/20...ushs-torturing/
...that juxtaposes the "Bitter, Elite Obama" story with the ABC revelations of last week. This would seem to be a really good thing to focus on, as it not only has the ABC story, but is an indictment of the utter idiocy of the media in the bargain.
"While Kitty Pilgrim clutched her pearls for a full hour at the thought of poor voters in rural Pennsylvania being thought of as being bitter and distrustful of others because of their disaffection, she (and all the other talking heads and news shows) IGNORED the fact that our president has admitted that he committed a war crime. A crime for which other heads of state have found themselves in front of a war crimes tribunal in The Hague, but merited not even a yawn out of our media... Talk about disaffection. At this point, I am of the belief that we need to put the heads of these media companies on trial as well for their complicity."
And no one can be this stupid/lazy all of the time. It *is* complicity.
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One of the things that I like that Obama's been doing is answering inane charges with sane, reasoned responses. As much as possible, we need to do the same thing--answer insanity with fact. Loudly, and repeatedly.
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We need to take advantage of the media that we *have*, too. Hartman. Stephanie Miller, I think. Probably not Randi Rhodes, given her antipathy for the blogosphere, but we should try. Rachel. Jeff Farias. Mike Malloy. Amy Goodman. A few of the Pacifica-types. And especially Sam Seder, the best friend the blogosphere ever had. A full-court press on some agreed-upon point, all day, all week, all MONTH if need be.
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And us in the blogosphere--BE dirty fucking hippies! Be "obscene", since that seems to be so attention-getting. We've been saying "fuck" all along...it may be time to put it in a really big font size and/or to turn the mics WAY up. I would *love* the chance to debate what is truly obscene. (And yes, this IS in direct contradiction to the "sane reasoning" above. I'm just throwing out ideas, here.)
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I dunno. More and more, it becomes apparent that we need to do something before the elections, to try to guide this country back onto its proper
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I dunno. More and more, it becomes apparent that we need to do something before the elections, to try to guide this country back onto its proper path, before a new administration can call us to "move forward". And in thinking about the ABC revelations, it occurs to me that there's been no strenous denial from the administration. This, in conjunction with Cheney's "So?", seems to be the final "fuck you" from the Bushies. "Yeah, we had a circle jerk while fine tuning our torture policies...SO?"
I want, more than anything, to say "so THIS" to this bunch of arrogant pricks--the administration, the media, and their corporate pals.
Hi Avedon. What we do is stay on the topic to the exclusion of everything else. I've tried to do that at Pruning Shears. If we're serious we should take the "No Primary Pledge". For God's sake stop contributing to the Clinton/Obama drama. Every word we write on it gives aid and comfort to the horserace paradigm. I've seen a lot of hand wringing over it on the left-leaning blogs but every word posted on it dignifies the talking heads. We might not be able to change them but surely we can change ourselves.
I've cross-posted this comment elsewhere but just for the record your site hasn't been one of the offenders.
If the Supremes could find a way to put W into office in 2000, I'm sure they could find a way to also allow W's executive privilege claims. I have zero confidence that this precedent would be upheld.
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