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By Patricia Williams, The Nation
Posted on January 20, 2009, Printed on January 20, 2009

We’ll all sober up after inauguration day, but meanwhile let’s enjoy some fizzy relief over George W. Bush’s departure and a changing of the guard.

Millions of people are expected to descend on the nation’s capital for the inauguration of Barack Obama. It is unprecedented: churches, temples, mosques and tribal councils have hired buses to attend. Schools are closing for the day. Universities are setting up JumboTrons to watch the festivities. Global media will join the dancing in the streets.

A friend recently asked me if I thought all these constituencies were celebrating the same things. Did I think this coronation-scaled civic bliss was mostly about Obama’s being our first African-American president? Or was it because his win convinces us that some “post-race” American Dream has been ultimately affirmed? That he’s going to improve the economy? Repair global relations?

The question made me reflect for a moment. Yes, the symbolism of his race is significant, although it certainly cannot be equated with the end of racism. And surely we’re uplifted by Obama’s being so genuinely likable and smart. No doubt the euphoria is also unusually great because his campaign drew constituents into political engagement–the phone banks, the door-to-door canvassing, the social networks, mass e-mails and text messages. As a result, people feel personal, even possessive, satisfaction about his victory.

But at least as important as all that, I think, is a kind of Wizard of Oz-ish fizzy relief about George W. Bush’s exit–as in Ding Dong, the Wicked Warlock is melting into a nice little past-tense puddle. There’s a giddily celebratory sweeping out of the indubitably, absolutely, completely, very worst president in our history. So many bad things have happened in the past eight years that it’s hard to keep them all in one’s head at one time. Another friend says he hung a list in the hallway of his apartment building, tabulating all the really awful things he blames Bush for. Other neighbors added to it. At first, he said, he was going to use it to host an inauguration party at which people would knock back a shot for each phenomenally inept executive flub. But then, he says, “I realized we’d all be drunk for a year.”

In any event, it’s a great list; the sheer length of it reminds one how dizzyingly mismanaged the executive office has been. Here are a few of the highlights, to get you in the mood of groveling gratitude for the new course we are about to embark upon:

Pax Americana and the aspiration to consolidate a global American empire. The Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive warfare. Hurricane Katrina and “heckuva job, Brownie.” The explicit rejection of the Geneva Conventions. John Yoo’s and Alberto Gonzales’s redefinition of torture. Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank subsidizing his girlfriend. Ahmad Chalabi. The FCC allowing greater consolidation of media. The outing of Valerie Plame. The manipulations asserting that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The addled handling of Harriet Miers’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Opposition to stem cell research. The looting of the National Museum of Iraq, and the burning of Baghdad’s National Library. Donald Rumsfeld’s remarks that rioting in Iraq was the sign of a liberated people and that Iraq was no more violent than some American cities. Stacking the Civil Rights Commission with conservatives, like Abigail Thernstrom, who want to overturn sections of the Voting Rights Act. The shooting death of Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari and injury of journalist Giuliana Sgrena at the hands of American soldiers. The appointment of ultraconservatives John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. Cheney filling his friend with birdshot. The USA Patriot Act. Doing away with habeas corpus. The National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping of citizens’ phone calls and e-mails. The notion of an unchecked, unaccountable “unitary executive.” The failure to keep official numbers of dead Iraqi civilians. The forbidding of photographs, or even visibility, of American military dead. The multilayered, high-level lying about how football hero Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan. Halliburton taking kickbacks from Kuwaiti oil suppliers. Paul Bremer dispensing billions of dollars for contracts in Iraq, which disappeared, never to be accounted for or recovered. Blackwater mercenaries accused of murdering Iraqi civilians. “Military tribunals” established outside the military justice system, with no due process or right to an attorney or to cross-examination or even to know the charges. The silly disparagement of the national anthem sung in Spanish. Bush talking directly to God. Abu Ghraib. Profiling Arab, Muslim and Latino immigrants. Guantánamo. Extraordinary rendition. Lousy veterans’ benefits. Lousy veterans’ hospitals. The failure to provide soldiers with reinforced armored vehicles (“You go to war with the army you have,” explained Rumsfeld). The refusal to recognize post-traumatic stress disorder as a legitimate condition. Monica Goodling’s political litmus tests in hiring for nonpolitical posts in the Justice Department. Expelling Helen Thomas from the White House press room and putting in fake reporter “Jeff Gannon” to throw adoring softball questions. John Ashcroft’s draping of bare-breasted sculptures in the Justice Department. His subpoenas of more than 2,500 records of abortions performed at public hospitals. Gonzales firing US Attorneys around the country for political reasons. Oh, and did I forget the economy?

This is only a short list–it doesn’t even touch on the things we were spared but that might have happened: Bush’s (failed) nomination of Bernard Kerik to head Homeland Security; the privatization of Social Security; the elevation of Alberto Gonzales and Robert Bork to the Supreme Court; a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

“Honestly,” says my friend, “who needs booze? Just reading the list, you could get drunk and have a killer hangover.” I do suppose we’ll all sober up after inauguration day. But I’m going to sneak a look at the list every now and then, just to make sure I don’t take anything for granted. However challenging the future we face, an Obama administration represents real change.

Patricia J. Williams, a professor of law at Columbia University and a member of the State Bar of California, writes The Nation column “Diary of a Mad Law Professor.” Her books include The Rooster’s Egg (1995), Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race (1997) and, most recently, Open House: On Family Food, Friends, Piano Lessons and The Search for a Room of My Own (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2004.)

© 2009 The Nation All rights reserved

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Chris Matthews takes an in-depth look at the eight-year Presidency of George W. Bush. The documentary writes history’s first draft of the Bush presidency. Based on Bush’s quote from 2005, “I’m the decider and I decide what’s best,” it proceeds to put under the microscope six key decisions the Decider made (or didn’t make): the decision to invade Afghanistan; the decision to invade Iraq; the in-decision over Katrina; the decision to surge troops in Iraq; his decisions on Supreme Court nominations and finally, his decisions during the current financial crisis.

The Decider: A Hardball Documentary - originally aired on Dec. 29 at 5 and 7 p.m. ET.

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By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com
Posted on August 9, 2008, Printed on August 10, 2008

Remember the total, hideous, inexcusable absence of oversight that has been the great hallmark of George Bush’s America for almost eight years now? Well, now we’re getting to see that same regulatory malfeasance applied to yet another cornerstone of our political system. The Federal Election Commission — the body that supposedly enforces campaign-finance laws in this country — has been out of business for more than six months. That’s because Congress was dragging its feet over confirmation hearings for new FEC commissioners, leaving the agency without a quorum. The commission just started work again for the first time on July 10th under its new chairman, Donald McGahn, a classic Republican Party yahoo whose chief qualifications include representing Tom DeLay, the corrupt ex-speaker of the House, in matters of campaign finance.

Apart from the obvious absurdity of not having a functioning election-policing mechanism in an election year in the world’s richest democracy, the late start by the FEC makes it almost impossible for the agency to do its job. The commission has a long-standing reluctance to take action in the last months before a vote, a policy designed to help prevent federal regulators from influencing election outcomes. Normally, the FEC tries to root out infractions and loopholes — fining campaigns for incomplete reporting, or for taking shortcuts around spending limits — in the early months of a campaign season. But that ship sailed way too long ago to take the stink off the 2008 race.

“The time for setting the ground rules was earlier,” says Craig Holman, a lobbyist with the watchdog group Public Citizen. “There isn’t time to do much now.”

That’s especially true given the magnitude of what we’re dealing with here: the biggest pile of political contributions in the history of free elections, nearly a billion dollars given to presidential candidates in this season alone. Because the FEC has been dead in the water for so long, it’s likely that we’ll still be in the dark about a large chunk of this record manure pile of campaign contributions when we go to vote in November.

But that doesn’t mean that a little sifting through campaign records doesn’t tell us quite a lot about who’s backing whom in these races. The truth is that the campaigns of both Barack Obama and John McCain are being inundated with cash from more or less exactly the same gorgons of the corporate scene. From Wall Street to the Big Oil powerhouses to the military-industrial complex, America’s fat-cat business leaders know that the Animal House-style party of the last eight years that made almost all of them rich with bonuses, government contracts and bubble profits is about to come to an end, and someone is going to have to pay to clean up the mess. They want that someone to be you, not them, and they’ve spared no expense to make sure both presidential candidates will be there to bail them out next year.

They’re succeeding. Both would-be presidents have already sold us out. They’ve taken the money and run — completing the cyclical transformation of the American political narrative from one of monopolistic Republican iniquity to an even more depressing tale about the overweening power of corporate money and the essentially fictitious nature of our two-party system.

In layman’s terms, we’ve gone from being screwed to being fucked. Who knows — maybe Barack Obama will surprise us if he wins the election. But if you look at the money, it doesn’t look good.

Thanks in part to the dormant FEC, corporate America has had even easier access to the candidates than usual in its effort to buy off the next government before the crash. In fact, this election has seen some excellent new innovations in the area of campaign-fundraising atrocities. Chief among them is the rise of so-called “joint committees.”

It used to be that campaigns could raise a maximum of $2,300 from each individual. Now, both candidates — but especially McCain, who far outstrips Obama in this area — routinely hold fundraisers in which individuals can give far more to a joint committee. Technically, the candidate still pockets only $2,300 in contributions. The bulk of the money raised — in McCain’s case, a whopping $70,100, or 30 times the previous limit — goes to the state and national arms of the candidate’s party, which can then spend the unprecedented haul on behalf of the candidate. “This allows CEOs to walk in the door and drop $70,100,” says Holman. “It basically allows campaigns to exceed the spending limits.”

McCain has raised more than $63 million via these joint committees, thanks to more than 1,000 “megadonors” who have each given at least $25,000 to his campaign effort. Obama, by contrast, has some 471 megadonors — and a close examination of their backgrounds underscores some of the differences in corporate America’s attitudes toward the two candidates.

One of McCain’s chief sources of corporate money is the private-equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, memorialized for its takeover of RJR Nabisco in the movie Barbarians at the Gate. Through the pretext of joint committees, 10 KKR executives have given McCain $285,000, and it’s not hard to figure out why. Two of McCain’s key campaign proposals — lowering the corporate tax rate to 25 percent and making purchases of industrial equipment fully deductible — would save a single KKR subsidiary, Energy Future Holdings, $49 million.

“Just in his tax policies alone, McCain is saving corporate America $175 billion a year,” says James Kvaal, who analyzed McCain’s tax policy for the nonprofit Center for American Progress.

McCain has also raked in big contributions from two other giants of the buyout world: the Carlyle Group (famous for its close ties to the Bush administration) and the Blackstone Group (whose co-founder, Pete Peterson, wrote a $28,500 check to McCain after he took home almost $1.8 billion from a public offering last year). McCain has also received monstrous sums from hedge-fund managers, attracted by his pledge to keep the tax rate on their earnings at only 15 percent. Executives and family members in a single hedge fund, Knott Partners, have contributed some $225,700 to McCain’s campaign.

Then there’s the predictable influx of cash from would-be military contractors. John Lehman, a former secretary of the Navy whose firm builds the Superferry transport vessel, not only donated $28,500 of his own money, but bundled at least $250,000 for McCain from other donors. Donald Bollinger, who is a contractor on the controversial Littoral Combat Ship, gave $27,300 and bundled a whopping $500,000. Anyone want to bet on a decrease in Naval appropriations in a McCain presidency?

McCain has also received big money from telecommunications magnates. The senator has always been a friend to the industry: Back in 2003, just four days after AT&T sent him a check for $10,500, he sponsored a bill to ban state and local taxes on Internet service. Since 2007, McCain has taken in some $1.3 million from the communications industry. Just four members of the McCaw family, which owns the telecommunications firm Eagle River, have kicked in $123,200. McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, was a former lobbyist for BellSouth, Verizon and SBC Communications. His deputy campaign manager, Christian Ferry, was a partner to Davis at Verizon. One of his chief advisers, Charlie Black, is the head of the lobbying firm BKSH and Associates, which represents AT&T. His Senate chief of staff, Mark Buse, worked for AT&T Wireless. All told, of 66 current and former lobbyists working for McCain, some 23 come from the telecommunications industry.

Given McCain’s telecom backing, it’s not surprising that the senator has had one of his characteristic changes of heart. As recently as last November, McCain was staunchly opposed to retroactive immunity for telecommunication companies that took part in Bush’s illegal spying on American consumers, saying their actions “undermine our respect for the law.” Now, jammed to the gills with telecom cash, McCain calls himself an “unqualified” supporter of immunity, praising the telecom industry’s warrantless wiretapping as “constitutional and appropriate.”

All the same, plenty of other evidence suggests that much of Wall Street is betting on an Obama win. In fact, some observers believe that KKR announced a multibillion-dollar public offering this summer because it expects McCain to lose. “They’re doing the public offering now so that the compensation can be taxed at the lower rate while Bush is still in office,” says a strategist for a major labor union. “They’re betting Obama is going to win, and they’re getting their money while they can.”

Other companies are getting in on the ground floor with the new chief by stuffing money in his ears. Overall, Obama is flat-out kicking McCain’s ass when it comes to Wall Street contributions, raking in nearly $9 million from securities and investment executives, compared to $6.2 million for McCain. Obama has received more contributions from Goldman Sachs than from any other employer — more than $627,000 at this writing — not to mention $398,021 from JP Morgan Chase, $353,922 from Lehman Brothers and $291,388 from Morgan Stanley. Even among hedge-fund executives, who have an unequivocal interest in electing McCain, Obama is whipping the Republican, collecting $500,000 more than McCain. All of which begs the question: Why would corporate giants like these throw so much weight behind a man who promises to strip them of billions in tax breaks?

Sadly, the answer to that question increasingly appears to be that Obama is, well, full of shit. He has made no bones about his plans to raise income by soaking the rich, promising to roll back the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000, increase the top tax rate on capital gains to 25 percent and raise the top rate on qualified dividends. He has also pledged to deliver a real stomach punch to hedge-fund managers, raising the tax rate on most of their income from 15 percent to 35 percent.

These populist pledges sound good, but many business moguls appear to be betting that the tax policies, like Obama himself, are only that: something that sounds good. “I think we don’t want to make too much of his promises on taxes,” says Robert Pollin, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts. “Not all of these things will happen.” Noting the overwhelming amount of Wall Street money pouring into Obama’s campaign, even elitist fuckwad David Brooks was recently moved to write, “Once the Republicans are vanquished, I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that capital-gains tax hike.”

Those worried that Obama might be all talk when it comes to needed reform had a real scare in July, when the senator failed to show up to vote for the Stop Excessive Speculation Act, a bill designed to curb rampant oil speculation. Oil speculators provide the perfect microcosm of what happened to the economy under Bush. Back in 2001, investment banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan got together and created an online exchange called the ICE for trading energy commodities. The ICE ended up buying the British-regulated International Petroleum Exchange; it then opened trading windows in the U.S., allowing Wall Street investment banks to make oil-futures trades on American soil, on their very own commodities exchange, without any federal regulation whatsoever.

“In financial terms, they were playing blackjack at tables where they themselves were the dealers, in casinos they themselves owned,” says Warren Gunnels, a senior policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders. “It was crazy.” Trading on the ICE had a massive impact on U.S. gasoline prices, and more than one legislator wondered if energy speculators were manipulating the market, as energy traders like Enron had been before. The speculation bill was designed to regulate the ICE and place limits on trades. But on the day before Obama returned from his eight-day, eight-country, megadazzling international photo op, Democrats failed by a vote of 50-43 to force a vote on the bill, as heavy lobbying by investment banks like Goldman Sachs torpedoed the effort.

Not only did Obama not show up to vote, he appeared at a public forum three days later flanked by Jon Corzine and Robert Rubin, two former Goldman executives, to discuss how to revive the economy. Here you have the basic formula of campaign contributions in a nutshell: Powerful investment bank gives big money to candidate, needed reform requires candidate to cross said investment bank, candidate pussies out and finds way to be gone at the moment of truth, candidate resurfaces later in arms of aforementioned investment bankers.

Obama’s absence on oil speculation was eerily reminiscent of his previous decision to change his mind about giving retroactive immunity to telecom companies for spying on Americans. Obama withdrew his pledge to filibuster the immunity bill right around the time the Democrats announced that AT&T would be sponsoring the Democratic convention. So no filibuster on retroactive immunity from the top Democrat — but conventiongoers in Denver will get tote bags emblazoned with the AT&T logo. So that’s something.

Look, we all knew this was coming. Once Obama vanquished Hillary Clinton, it was inevitable that his campaign would start roping in the Clinton moneymen for the fall confrontation with McCain. Among those snagged by Obama were Iranian millionaire and former Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman Hassan Nemazee, venture capitalist Alan Patricof and the touchingly plugged-in Wall Street power couple Maureen White (First Boston) and Steven Rattner (Morgan Stanley). Rattner and White, the former chief fundraiser for the DNC, are longtime friends of the Clintons; she quit the DNC in 2006 to build Hillary’s war chest, while he backed Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont and flirted with a Mike Bloomberg presidential run. Such are the people who are now whispering in Obama’s ear.

Over the summer, the Obama camp has relentlessly pushed the notion that its record fundraising is mainly the result of small online donations. The first presidential candidate to raise so much money that he could afford to eschew the spending limits that would be imposed if he accepted federal matching funds, Obama claims that he opted out of public funding so that he could have a campaign “truly funded by the American people.” And indeed, he has a record number of small donors, with some 45 percent of his campaign cash coming from contributions smaller than $200.

Which is a great percentage — but it’s only eight points better than John Kerry in 2004 and only 14 points better than George Bush that same year. In truth, Obama is still raising tons of money from big corporate donors. In June alone, as Obama was raking in more than $30 million from small donors, he also bagged $6 million in a single fundraiser at Ethel Kennedy’s home in Virginia and another $5 million at an event in Hollywood. But time and time again, you see Obama aides boasting about how the day of the big-dollar donor is over. “More people are involved, and I think that necessarily dilutes the impact of any individual — which is probably a good thing,” one prominent Obama supporter recently declared. This staunch champion of the small donor happened to be none other than James Rubin, son of former Goldman Sachs co-chairman Bob Rubin.

Obama’s decision to embrace Clinton’s moneymen coincided with his decision to attend a public forum on economic policy with an A list of Clinton-era economic advisors, including Rubin and Corzine. “The message is that he’s going to be a friend to Wall Street, just as Bill Clinton was a friend to Wall Street,” says Pollin. “Wall Street will want to be at the head of the table.”

By now it should be clear what type of service Wall Street will demand. The financial disaster dumped on us by eight years of Bush’s mismanagement has left America with the prospect of short-term solutions in the form of massive government bailouts, and long-term solutions in the form of reform and regulation. A big chunk of the $1 billion in cash that will be spent on the presidential race this year represents Wall Street’s desire to make sure that both candidates can be counted on to make the short-term bailouts large and passionate, and the reforms gentle and halfhearted. “They want to make sure there’s socialism when they need it — bailouts — and capitalism when they need that,” says Pollin.

Both candidates are already falling all over themselves to signal their business-friendly approach to the economy. McCain entered this election with a reputation as a strict Goldwater conservative. “I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly,” he declared. McCain also sounded off in the past about troubled quasi-governmental lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, pledging to “make them go away” and to strip them of their right to lobby.

But this year, McCain — perhaps emboldened by the $238,100 he got from seven JP Morgan Chase executives or the $500,000 bundled for him by Chase executive James Lee Jr. — caved in and supported Chase’s outrageous government-backed acquisition of Bear Stearns. He also backed the recent bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — no surprise given that former Fannie Mae lobbyists are serving as his chief of staff and the head of his vice presidential vetting panel.

Obama also supported the Freddie Mac-Fannie Mae rescue, and that, too, is no surprise, given that he hired one former chairman of Fannie Mae to chair his vice presidential vetting panel and hired another former Fannie Mae chairman to serve as his consultant on housing issues. Most of us will never get within a hundred miles of a single Fannie Mae chairman, but Obama has already hired two — and he isn’t even president yet.

This, folks, is the way of the world. Forget all the promises to make the rich pay their fair share. As the candidates get closer to office, the actual paying customers move to the front of the line.

Sadly, both candidates have an extensive history of being dependable pals of campaign contributors. Back in 2000, when Obama was a state senator in Illinois, an entrepreneur named Robert Blackwell Jr. hired him to be his lawyer, paying him a monthly retainer of $8,000 — big money for a part-time legislator with an annual salary of just $58,000. A few months later, Obama sent a letter urging state tourism officials to give a grant to one of Blackwell’s companies, the amusingly named Killerspin, to fund a table-tennis tournament. Killerspin received $320,000 in public funds; Obama pocketed $112,000 in fees from Blackwell.

So far this year, Blackwell has bundled more than $100,000 for Obama’s campaign. Looks like there’s going to be a shitload of table-tennis tournaments all across America next year.

McCain also likes to write letters for big contributors. In 1998, four months after BellSouth contributed $16,750 to the senator, he sent a letter to the FCC asking it to give “serious consideration” to the company’s request to enter the long-distance market. He later wrote letters on behalf of Paxson Communications, which donated $20,000 and let him use their company jet, as well as Ameritech and SBC Communications, which raised $120,000 for McCain at a time when they were seeking permission to merge.

McCain’s still sticking by that gang. Former Ameritech chairman Richard Notebaert bundled more than $100,000 for him this year, and two of McCain’s key fundraisers, Peter Madigan and Tim McKone, hail from SBC. The point is that politicians are intensely loyal to the people who give them money — and not anywhere near as loyal to the promises they’ve made to suckers like us. No matter who’s in the White House, the direction of the government has remained remarkably stable. Clinton’s treasury secretary, Rubin, was a Goldman Sachs man; Henry Paulson, the current secretary under Bush, is also a Goldman Sachs man. It’ll probably be a Goldman man again next year. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. In sickness or in health, the faces may change, but the money remains. “It’s not an accident that both administrations picked for leading economic advisers people from Goldman Sachs,” says Pollin.

The really distressing thing about all of this is the signal it sends to Americans. Goldman Sachs posted a record profit of $11 billion last year, much of it from betting against the subprime mortgage market they themselves helped to fuck up. That little energy exchange Goldman set up, the ICE, made a profit of $240 million last year, as gas prices skyrocketed. It may suck to be you right now, but all that pain isn’t so bad if you are a big oil speculator.

When you live in million-dollar Manhattan townhouses and make billions in profits betting on the pain of the ordinary foreclosed homeowner, you shouldn’t get to run around on TV with the prospective president on your arm. You should be hung by your balls. But that’s not the way it works, and despite what you might have heard about “change,” it probably never will be.

For all the excitement that Barack Obama has garnered, and all the talk about a new day in Washington, it would be tragic if the real legacy of his election victory was to finally expose the essentially unchanging, oligarchic nature of our political system. It’s the same old story: Money talks, and bullshit walks. And don’t be surprised if we’re the ones still walking after November.

Matt Taibbi is a writer for Rolling Stone.
© 2008 RollingStone.com All rights reserved.

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[SOURCE: Interfaith Alliance -- E-Mail Alert @ Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 9:07 AM]

There’s been a lot of buzz from the White House about their so-called “faith-based” initiative since I wrote to you last week. And yesterday, Senator Barack Obama shared his vision for the future of “faith-based” funding in an Obama Administration.

While I was pleased to hear Senator Obama affirm his commitment to the boundaries between religion and government and that, under his proposal, tax dollars would only be used to fund secular programs, Interfaith Alliance will be keeping a close watch on the future of the faith-based initiative, regardless of who is elected in November. Ultimately, my hope is that all of President Bush’s “faith-based” executive orders will be repealed on the next president’s very first day in office. And that Senator McCain follows Senator Obama’s lead to prohibit religious charities from discriminating in their hiring practices.

But you and I know that in order to truly uphold the Constitution, faith-based charities must be held to much stronger safeguards. Wouldn’t it make more sense – for the sake of both faith and freedom – if any future “faith-based” program:

• Required religious institutions to establish separate 501(c)(3) organizations to handle government grants?
• Guaranteed congressional oversight to prevent abuses of government funds?
• Ensured that federal funding would go to the groups most qualified to do the work, not the groups most politically expedient to the purposes of the White House?

I think so. The Interfaith Alliance’s proposal would reduce the ability of religious organizations to misuse faith-based funds while simultaneously protecting them from intrusive government investigation.

It is time to close the Pandora’s Box of this “faith-based” initiative! It was opened by the Clinton Administration and has been exploited by the Bush Administration for the last seven years.

While Senator Obama’s plan is a step in the right direction, we need your continued support to:

• Bring people who have been impacted by the current Administration’s so-called “faith-based” initiative and its discriminatory practices to Washington to speak out.
• Push the Bush Administration to give Congress and the American people a full accounting of where faith-based money has gone during the last seven years.

Help us get to the bottom of the “faith-based” initiative’s cronyism of the last seven years!

In the words of Interfaith Alliance Honorary Chairman, Walter Cronkite, “Nothing less than the sanctity of religion and the integrity of our democracy are at stake.”

Sincerely,

Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy
President

P.S. Help us close the Pandora’s Box of the current “faith-based” initiative, and push for one that will allow charities – both secular and faith-based – to provide their services where they’re needed most, while respecting individual rights and upholding the Constitution.

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Support our work on Capitol Hill to respect your rights as an individual and uphold the Constitution:

Obama: Expand Faith-based Programs
By Kathy Kiely
USA TODAY, July 2, 2008

Barack Obama, arguing that it makes sense for the federal government to join with religious organizations to solve social problems, said Tuesday that he wants to continue President Bush’s initiative to promote “faith-based” social welfare programs.

“Few are closer to the people than our churches, synagogues, temples and mosques,” the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said. Such partnerships can take place without violating the Constitution, he said. “I believe deeply in the separation of church and state.”

Obama delivered his speech after touring a community ministry in Zanesville, Ohio. The speech, designed to showcase long-held views on the value of faith-based programs, came a day after he spoke about patriotism.

Obama acknowledged that he “did not grow up in a particularly religious household,” but he said he changed because of his work as a community organizer in Chicago. “I came to see my faith as being both a personal commitment to Christ and a commitment to my community.”

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[SOURCE: 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Friday, May 19]

KEITH OLBERMANN, HOST: A special comment postscript. If I talk about cold-blooded killers in Iraq, why does the lunatic fringe immediately think of our troops there? That’s ahead, but first time for COUNTDOWN’s worst persons in the world.

The bronze to William Kristol, still, remarkably enough, a columnist with the “New York times.” Another column, another glaring factual error; noting Senator Clinton’s 41-point win over Senator Obama in last week’s West Virginia primary, Mr. Kristol writes today, quote,

I can’t find a single recent instance of a candidate who ultimately became his party’s nominee, losing a primary by this kind of margin.

Well, sorry. Way back on February 5, 2008, I believe it was, Mitt Romney beat John McCain in Utah by 85 points. Romney beat McCain in Colorado by 41 points and Mike Huckabee also beat McCain In Arkansas by 41 points. I guess it depends on your definition of the word recent. Or maybe of the word research.

The runner-up, comedian Rush Limbaugh. Apparently his water-carrying assignment this year is try to paint Senator Obama as stupid. Obama connected the dots between the economic meltdown and the period that preceded the Great Depression. The comedian slammed him for it because comedian’s economy is doing just fine, thank you. To humiliate Obama a little more, comedian quoted at length from a 1996 essay he found online called “The Main Causes of the Great Depression” by Paul Alexander Gusmarino III (ph), excoriating Mr. Gusmarino, laughing at his plea that people not plagiarize his work. Limbaugh actually said, Mr. Gusmarino, you better check Karl Marx and see if you plagiarized him in putting this piece together.

Alexander Gusmarino III turns out to have been in 1996 a history student in the tenth grade. Rush, if you’re going to talk over the educational head of your listeners, you’re going to be bankrupt in six weeks.

But our winner, Oliver North. After Mr. Bush was nice enough to criticize Senator Obama in best Bill-O fashion, never stooping to actually mentioning his name, but making it clear that’s who you mean, for being willing to talk to Iran, perhaps. North on Fixed News said

Bush’s historical analogy was correct and added, quote, John McCain Got up and said, you can’t have these kinds of unconditional, no preconditions discussions with despots and dictators, dead on the mark.

Oliver North said this. Oliver North from the Iran-Contra scandal this said. Oliver North from the Iran-Contra scandal, the chief coordinator of the sale of American weapons to the military of Iran, said this. Oliver North, today’s worst person in the world!

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

OLBERMANN: Finally, as promised, a post-script tonight regarding last week’s Special Comment. You may remember Mr. Bush had used a cumbersome phrase to describe insurgents in Iraq,

“cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives.”

Last Wednesday, I quoted that phrase from the Politico.com interview to say that Mr. Bush had now also given America cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives. I identified them as Mr. Bush’s personnel, quote, those in or formally in your employ, who may yet be charged someday with war crimes.

I also described the chaos of post invasion Iraq with an

“American viceroy, enforced by mercellous mercenaries who shoot unarmed Iraqis and then evade prosecution in any country by hiding behind Mr. Bush’s skirts.”

No writer or broadcaster is ever as precise and clear as he thinks he is. Television goes by quickly and the viewers are not provided a copy of the script. So it is possible that reasonable viewers might have been confused by exactly to whom I referred, especially considering that I edited the original line, which was:

“Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created includes cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives? They are called your cabinet and your Pentagon.”

During the editing process, it seemed that was a little broad, that there appear to be men in both of those places, General Ricardo Sanchez, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, perhaps even the new Secretary of Defense Mr. Gates, who did not merit inclusion in that list. Obviously, my use of Mr. Bush’s phrase, cold-blooded killers, did not refer to U.S. troops. I have never had anything but the highest respect for them and their sacrifice. This newscast constantly advocates their causes, their needs, our collective debt to them. And we constantly call out the administration on its failures to honor them, to protect them, to stop the Pentagon from sticking a band-aid on those whose hearts and minds are broken, and send them back for another tour.

The U.S. troops in Iraq, even those few who have done bad things there, are still victims in this equation, and most are the proverbial innocent bystanders. My use of Mr. Bush’s phrase, cold-blooded killers, referred not to the them, but rather to those former and current members of Mr. Bush’s administration and Pentagon who so irresponsibly unleashed the hounds of war and may indeed someday face war crimes trials.

And that phrase merciless mercenaries seemed to be self-explanatory. Neither are these U.S. troops, not when there are literally mercenaries in Mr. Bush’s employ, principally from Blackwater USA, who literally shot unarmed Iraqis, most infamously in a massacre in Baghdad last September.

Strangely, when the terms cold-blood killers and mercenaries were used in a public forum, my critics in the lunatic fringe, rather than even considering that the criticism even might be directed at the Pentagon or the administration or Blackwater USA, immediately decided that these were descriptions of our American heroes fighting in Iraq.

It is perhaps instructive, I think, that to the right wing commentators and right wing blogs those terms should first invoke not the war-mongers of the Pentagon, nor the gunmen from Blackwater, but U.S. troops.

I can not imagine that kind of evil knee-jerk reflex. I feel very sorry for those who have shown it. It seems to me that these right wingers have inadvertently shown then their true colors, their instinctive hatred for and contempt for those self-sacrificing Americans who have been needlessly placed in harm’s way by these very commentators and the politicians they support. They hear criticism of our nation’s collective conduct in Iraq and they immediately assume it’s the fault of the soldiers.

In the wake of an insult that exists only in their minds and never in my words nor in my heart, there remains, I think, only one question to ask:

Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin, why do you hate our troops?

Good night and good luck.

Popularity: 3% [?]

[SOURCE: 'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for Friday, May 19]

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Welcome back to HARDBALL.

A network note right now: This weekend, NBC News foreign affairs correspondent Richard Engel did an interview with President Bush that aired sometimes in full, sometimes edited, on various NBC News programs.

The interview touched on the president’s speech last week to the Israeli Knesset, where appeared to link senator Barack Obamas willingness to negotiate with Iran with the discredited World War II-era policy of appeasement.

The White House today complained that the editing of the interview was selective unfair.

Well, this afternoon, NBC News issued the following statement:

“Richard Engel’s interview with President Bush has been available, unedited, in its entirety, for the past day on our Web site. Our reporting accurately reflects the interview. Just as the White House does not participate in the editorial process at ‘The Washington Post,’ ‘The Wall Street Journal’ or ‘USA Today,’ NBC News, as part of a free press in a free society, makes its own editorial decisions.’

By the way, you can see the entire interview on MSNBC—MSNBC.com.

Now back to the campaign.

John McCain’s national finance co-chair, Tom Loeffler, has become the fifth person forced to leave the campaign now due to his lobbyist ties. His firm counts Saudi Arabia as one of its clients. And, two years ago, he and the Saudi ambassador met with McCain to discuss U.S.-Saudi relations.

Do lobbyist ties to McCain’s campaign run counter to his image as a reformist? And will this new policy of cleaning house put him at a fund-raising disadvantage?

“Newsweek’s” Michael Isikoff and the “Washington Post’s” Michael Shear both covered this story. Michael, you’re behind all this, aren’t you? Really—I’m talking to my Michael sitting here. Michael Isikoff goosed these people—are they setting a standard that’s too high or what?

MICHAEL ISIKOFF, “NEWSWEEK”: I think they’re a bit tied up in knots over this. Listen, this issue of lobbying ties to the McCain Campaign has been out there for quite some time. And people have flagged it. McCain has been hit by it. There have be stories wren written about it, and they’ve kind of slapped it off and said it’s an inside the beltway thing.

MATTHEWS: Doesn’t Peoria care about the fact he’s got K Street boys all around?

ISIKOFF: What happened is a week ago, in our issue that came out last weekend, I was writing about the choice of the convention manager. McCain — they were going to go with Paul Manafert (ph) who is Rick Davis’ business partner. He had run Republican conventions before.

MATTHEWS: He was formerly of Black, Manafert and Stone, former partner with Charlie Black, who is now chairing the campaign?

ISIKOFF: Exactly. But they nixed him at the last minute because he represents former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yanukovych, who’s a Putin ally, who has been accused of being a thug and allegations of corruption have surrounding him. They decided that would be too much, having as the face of the convention somebody who has these kinds of foreign connections.

So they turn around and they pick this guy, Doug Goodyear, who runs the DCI group, and I discovered that he headed the group at the time it was lobbying for the Burmese Military Junta. Now, to some degree, they got caught by really bad timing there. Look, the Burmese Junta is one of the brutal authoritarian governments in the world.

MATTHEWS: Every guy or woman who has ever ran against the establishment in Washington says they’re a bunch of pig lobbyists, representing these sleaze-ball, frightening foreign governments. They’re not looking at for America’s interest. They’re just taking money. They’re bad guys. They are the bad guys. How come there are so many of these bad guys surrounding McCain that he has to fire them all?

ISIKOFF: You know, it was the week of the cyclone catastrophe, where the Burmese Junta is not letting anybody in. McCain goes ballistic. You know, these two guys get fired. There were two guys from DCI Group who were working for the campaign. He orders this new conflict of interest policy that’s pretty draconian. It says you can’t lobby at all and work for the campaign. You can’t receive compensation.

MATTHEWS: I can’t believe there’s lobbying going on in my campaign?

ISIKOFF: I think some people are going to make that argument, saying, look, why did it take you so long? You’re were surrounded by lobbyists and you have been for the last year.

MATTHEWS: Is he a fraud?

ISIKOFF: Is John—

MATTHEWS: Yes? Are you making that case? You’re the investigative reporter.

ISIKOFF: I’m saying, look, the problem for John McCain is he ran in 2000 as the foe of special interest, the guy who was going do smash the iron triangle of lobbyists and law makers and special interests. He runs in 2008 and he’s got a very different cast or background to who his people running his campaign are.

MATTHEWS: Let’s take a look at Obama. Here’s what Obama said about McCain’s lobbying ties on Sunday, yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: It does appear that over the last several weeks, John McCain keeps on having problems with his top advisers being lobbyists, in some cases for foreign governments or other big interests that are doing business in Washington. That I don’t think represent the kind of change that the American people are looking for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: Here’s the McCain spokesman’s response to that: quote, “just a few years ago when Barack Obama was beginning his career in politics, he was launching it at the home William Ayers, an unrepentant domestic terrorist. If Barack Obama is going to make associations the issue, we look forward to the debate about Senator Obama’s associations and what they say about his judgment and readiness to be commander in chief.”

Is William Ayers running the campaign? I forgot. That was a wet noodle coming back. You know what, are you saying that Barack—last thought, I’m a movie buff. Was John McCain’s 2000 race the Straight Talk Express race, sort of like “Lawrence of Arabia” with the Arabs in the first part of the movie, and second part when he goes out and hires the thugs? Is this 2008 campaign corrupt and the first one was clean? Is that what you’re saying? You’re the investigative reporter.

ISIKOFF: I have not made that analogy. I don’t think it quite holds up.

MATTHEWS: I forgot. Michael, what do you think?

MICHAEL SHEAR, “THE WASHINGTON POST”: My colleague from “Newsweek” doesn’t have to be the one making that claim, because Senator Obama is going to make it. Senator Obama began this campaign claiming to be the outsider, the guy that’s going to come in and fix up the special interests in Washington. Now that it looks like the race is going to be against the two of them, Senator McCain needs to make sure that he’s right on that issue. He can’t afford the last several months of people talking about the lobbyists that are surrounding him, running his campaign.

I think putting the policy in place was an attempt to get right on that issue.

MATTHEWS: He wouldn’t have had to do this if he was facing Senator Clinton.

SHEAR: Maybe he does it anyway, but I think it’s particularly important when he faces Senator Obama. This is going to be a key issue and it’s not—look, regular people don’t care about what one, you know, aide or adviser did.

MATTHEWS: But they do worry about sleaze in Washington.

SHEAR: They do, exactly. Exactly.

MATTHEWS: They don’t like the idea of our guys getting elected, women getting elected to public office and being surrounded by people who are, what we used to call in the ‘60s, quite accurately, pigs. Michael Isikoff, thank you, sir. Michael Shear, thank you.

Up next, after tomorrow night, Barack Obama could have the majority of pledged delegates. What will Hillary Clinton’s case be to stay in the race? If it’s a Democratic party, lower case D, and the most votes go to the other guy who is elected, how can you take the nomination away from him? That is the challenge to be addressed when we come back. This is HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL and the politics fix. Tonight our round table, MSNBC political analyst Michelle Bernard, James Carroll of the “Louisville Courier-Journal,” one of the great newspapers of the country, and MSNBC senior campaign correspondent Tucker Carlson.

Tucker, you start. It seems to me that a moment has occurred in this campaign that hasn’t occurred before, a sense of completion, that it’s time for the two parties to go after each other. Both parties now have their nominee.

TUCKER CARLSON, MSNBC CAMPAIGN CORRESPONDENT: Right, that is absolutely the consensus. Everybody in Washington thinks that. I think many people in the Democratic party think that. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is beginning to argue—and I spoke to someone from it earlier today—that she’s going to wind up with the majority of the popular vote, and that matters. Now, what she’s going to do with that is another question.

I think even in the campaign, they have internally conceded they’re going to lose. I think she’s going to keep running. Moreover, think about what the results, as expected tomorrow, mean. If she wins Kentucky, and it looks like she is going to, why are people voting for someone they know is going to lose? That’s a significant act that is occurring there. I think they’re reading that as a weakness on the Obama camp side. They’re probably right. They’re going to parlay that into something. God knows what.

MATTHEWS: Here’s Hillary Clinton speaking for herself, today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I will tell you where this race stands right now, because I want you to tell your friends and neighbors, because I want you to encourage everybody to come out and vote. Right now, I am leading in the popular vote. More people have voted for me. And the states that I have won are states a Democrat has to win if we’re going to be elected in the fall.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: Well, that’s the argument. Michelle? First of all, just to be fair, her definition of states where she got the vote, she’s technically accurate, however not official. She won in Michigan, for example, where there was no other name on the ballot but hers. She won in Florida handily, in a state where they were told not to campaign in. By definition, the way she draws it, yes. What does she do with that information?

MICHELLE BERNARD, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: She’s a good lawyer. Every lawyer, your first year of law school, you learn how to make an argument from both sides of the aisle, whether the argument passes the sniff test or not. This clearly doesn’t pass the sniff test. I think it’s all about symbolism. She gave a very important speech last week. I sort of had an ah-hah moment, where she talked about a woman that she met in a hospice center, really hanging in there, fighting to the end. I think this is what Hillary Clinton is doing in her campaign. It is for women. I don’t know if the argument is to say, I’m not going to get it, and it’s because they’re picking on me, because I’m a woman, or whether she’s just saying, I’m a fighter. I’m going to hang in there until the end. I’m not going to give up. She will gracefully bow out after Barack Obama is formally nominated.

MATTHEWS: If you’re going to get into this whine game, why doesn’t Barack Obama complain that some white people won’t vote for him because he’s black?

BERNARD: He’s above it. He can’t make that argument. If he does that, people are less willing to accept it from an African-American, I believe, than hearing that argument from a woman.

MATTHEWS: A lot of people don’t vote for somebody because they don’t like them, Jim. That’s another reason people don’t vote for somebody. They don’t like them.

JAMES CARROLL, “LOUISVILLE COURIER-JOURNAL”: Sure. Sure. Your first question about, you know, she’s going to win—all the polls are showing she’s probably going to win Kentucky tomorrow. Obama didn’t really compete there. Yes, he’s got offices on the ground.

MATTHEWS: How do you answer the question: why do these people in these states—maybe it’s racial or ethnic voting in some small percentage of the case. I’m going to assume it has some role, but I don’t know how big a role. They’ve voted for a person they know is going to lose. Is it a protest vote?

CARROLL: It may be a protest vote. It will be fascinating to watch the exit polling tomorrow. Hopefully, they’ll ask a question, something like that, to say, why are you doing this? It’s over. Everybody says it’s over. Of course, she’s blaming the media for saying it. The numbers are the numbers.

Back to the point about the popular vote. It’s a great academic question or a great academic footnote to the 2008 campaign. But the Democratic rules are—

MATTHEWS: It did didn’t do Al Gore any good, did it, back in 2000. In fact, tomorrow, there’s this—we’re going to get back to this. What happens if tomorrow night, what the Barack people say could happen, he’ll end up with the most elected delegates. He’ll have a majority of them. There will be no way he can lose. It will be like fighting for a division championship where you’ve locked it in. You’ve won it.

We’ll be right back. What happens then? Do you tell African-Americans get out of here? There’s something called super delegates? You’ve never heard of them before, but now that you guys have won one, I’m going to tell you about them. We’ll be right back with the round table for more of the politics fix. You’re watching HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTHEWS: We’re back with the round table for more of the politics fix. I want to go to Tucker for, you know, what might be the Kentucky Derby tomorrow night. If tomorrow night, the Barack people announce that on their tote board, and Tim Russert and Chuck Todd and everybody else comes out, objectively, and points out that now we have reached an end of part of this process; the elected delegates, the pledged delegates, have now given a majority of their support to Barack Obama. Henceforth, nothing can happen, really, to stop him from winning the most elected delegates. The only thing that can give this now to Hillary Clinton or someone else is the decision of the unelected delegates, the super delegates.

CARLSON: Right.

MATTHEWS: Does that create a problem for Hillary Clinton to say I’m still in the race?

CARLSON: Well, we’re already there. We all know where this is headed. It’s headed exactly where you describe. Their thinking is this:

A, there’s nothing that she loses by staying in the race. She gets to act tough and dignified. That helps her no matter what she wants to do from here on out.

Two, Obama is really, really new. Let’s get some perspective. When you started this show, practically, tonight, he was in the Illinois State Legislature. You don’t know what we’ll learn about him, what could happen. Acts of god take place. They are essentially running an act of god campaign at this point, hoping that something bad happens to his campaign.

MATTHEWS: Spring those elected delegates, even, that they’ll switch even if something horrendous happens. So, she stays in it how long, based on that theory?

CARLSON: Why not till South Dakota, June 3? It doesn’t hurt her.

MATTHEWS: Jim, three months of opportunity for something to go hellaciously wrong for Barack Obama and she’s sitting there as the default.

CARROLL: I think it’s a bad strategy. Other campaigns have been built on pretty thin gruel like that.

MATTHEWS: Take the vice presidential nomination and hope that some time between now and November something goes wrong.

CARROLL: I don’t want to go near that.

BERNARD: Hillary Clinton is going to become the Ron Paul of the Democratic party. There’s no way the super delegates can take this away from Barack Obama. There will be race riots in the streets if he wins enough super delegates –

MATTHEWS: Michelle Bernard, ladies and gentlemen. Get that quote on Youtube. You just saw a wonderful way of describing things. Thank you, Michelle Bernard, James Carroll, Tucker Carlson. Join us again tomorrow night at 5:00 Eastern for more HARDBALL, and then at 6:00, throughout the night, Keith Olbermann and I—these are fun nights—complete coverage of the Kentucky and Oregon primaries throughout the night. Kentucky probably first, then Oregon later in the evening. MSNBC will be live through the night, into the night. I love that. Now, it’s time for RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE with David Gregory.

Popularity: 2% [?]

[SOURCE: alternet.org]

By Robert Parry, Consortium News
Posted on May 16, 2008, Printed on May 16, 2008

If John McCain wins the presidency – and gets to appoint one or more U.S. Supreme Court justices – America’s 220-year experiment as a democratic Republic living under the principle that “no man is above the law” may come to an end.

To put the matter differently, if a President McCain replaces one of the moderate justices with another Samuel Alito – as McCain has vowed to do – then Justice Department lawyer John Yoo’s extreme vision of an all-powerful Executive could well become the new law of the land.

On May 6 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, during a speech aimed at appeasing conservatives, McCain promised to appoint justices in the mold of George W. Bush’s selections, Justice Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts, expanding the court’s right-wing faction that also includes Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Those four justices already have embraced the Bush administration’s radical notion that at a time of war – even one as vaguely defined as the “war on terror” – the President possesses “plenary” or unlimited powers through his commander-in-chief authority.

As expressed in classified memos by Yoo when he was a key lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, there should be, in essence, no limits on what a war-time President can do as long as he is asserting his duty to protect the nation.

Alito also is associated with this concept of a “unitary executive,” holding that a President should control all regulatory authority, define the limits of laws via “signing statements” and – at his own discretion – override treaties, the will of Congress and even the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.

Under this theory, a President can cite his commander-in-chief powers to spy on citizens without warrants, imprison people without charges, authorize torture, order assassinations, and invade other countries without congressional approval.

With just one more Alito, that view would claim control of the U.S. Supreme Court and allow a new five-to-four majority to, in effect, rewrite the Constitution. The founding principle of the United States – that everyone possesses certain “unalienable” human rights – would be history. [For details, see Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.]

‘Activist’ judges

All this would occur under the right-wing assertion that McCain was appointing justices who “strictly interpret” the Constitution. It has been a long-held tenet of the conservative movement that “activist” judges were at fault for outlawing racial segregation and other statutes that discriminated against minorities.

More recently, the Right has concentrated its wrath on Supreme Court rulings that struck down laws criminalizing abortion and homosexual acts.

But the “strict constructionist” phrase is really a euphemism for a double standard, objecting to judicial decisions that conservatives don’t like while justifying judicial activism when it serves right-wing causes, such as giving President Bush authority to brush aside the Constitution as he prosecutes the “war on terror.”

Even if the clear intent of the Founders was to avoid a tyrannical Executive by placing key war-making powers in the hands of the Legislature, right-wing legal scholars have favored overturning those principles in the name of an all-powerful President.

So, on one level, McCain might choose another Alito or two in order to reverse Roe v. Wade or allow states to crack down on homosexual rights. But he also would be enshrining the concept of a “unitary executive.”

Thus, perhaps more than any other question, the November election will settle whether a future Supreme Court will reshape the United States into an imperial system both at home and abroad – or roll back President Bush’s expansion of executive power in the direction of the Founders’ original vision.

Obama-Clinton battle

There is also a political component on the Democratic side to McCain’s May 6 promise to Republicans that he will help the Right consolidate control of the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court.

While many supporters of Hillary Clinton – especially middle-age white women – have told pollsters that they won’t vote for Barack Obama if he wins the Democratic nomination, that position might ensure that a core feminist principle, “reproductive rights,” will be struck down by the Supreme Court.

In other words, to show their anger over the defeat of a female presidential candidate, Clinton supporters might end up contributing to a historic defeat for feminist rights, including the possible outlawing of abortions in many states.

However, beyond the issue of abortion and other privacy rights, Democrats and all Americans will be faced with a fundamental question when they vote in November:

Will they continue the noble experiment of a democratic Republic with “unalienable” rights for all, what the Founders envisioned with the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution of 1787?

Or, do Americans want to go down the path marked by the likes of Yoo, Alito and Bush – ceding virtually all power to one individual who can operate beyond all laws and outside the rules of human behavior – and do so with the blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court?

Robert Parry’s new book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.”

Popularity: 2% [?]