Open Thread and Diary Rescue

This evening's Rescue Rangers are ybruti, vcmvo2, Got A Grip, srkp23, dadanation and jlms qkw with Avila as editor.

• With evidence to be used in future war crimes trials, Valtin explains the Nuts & Bolts: How U.S. Organized Torture Program. (ybruti)
• truong son traveler highlights some disturbing discrepancies between BushCo's Iranian propaganda and reality as observed from another part of the world in The Truth About the Iranian Threat. (Got a Grip)
• For a well-written and frightening examination of the parallels between the current occupation of Iraq by the US and the British occupation of Mesopotamia in the 1920s, check out Troutfishing's Empire. (dadanation)
• clammyc powerfully asks us, If we don't talk about Iraq, then why would anyone else? (srkp23)
• gjohnsit describes how taxpayers are bailing out bankers yet again in Is this a great country (for bankers), or what? (vcmvo2)
• First-time diarist NY expat brit analyzes how increased production of biofuels might increase third-world problems in Biofuels and inreasing 3rd world poverty. (vcmvo2)
• Shaviv recounts the history behind the military attempts to use nuclear power to propel aircraft in Mad Science Project of the Week 15: wherein the atom and the airplane are combined. (Got a Grip)
• In an illustrated and thoroughly researched diary, sobermom describes the battle for equality by women rowers in Feminisms: Women Under Way. (ybruti)
• joehoevah analyzes the current state of gay marriage and adoption, and opines that things are getting better in Why the Left is Right on...Gay Rights! (vcmvo2)
• Louisiana 1976 reflects on Katrina and the recent Midwestern floods and concludes, Yes, There Is A Double Standard...... (srkp23)
• iampunha artfully weaves the personal and the political in June 26, 1988 and 2003: Crazy Little Thing Called Love. (srkp23)
• Chris Rodda details the efforts by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to stop the rebroadcast of a TV special that blatantly violates military policy in MRFF Urges DoD to Pull the Plug on TBN Special, Demands Investigation. (dadanation)
• You don't need to agree, just read and think. chrisblask shares and debates approaches to problem solving in Winning the Big Game is What Matters. (jlms qkw)
• Vyan highlights today's Torture Hearings: Conyers vs Yoo and Addington. (srkp23)
• Adolph Twee takes a new approach to an old comedy routine in Hu Yoo Kidding (With Apologies to Abbot & Costello). (Got a Grip)
• Welshman tips his hat with a wink and a nod at the potty humor of a group of San Franciscans who have found the perfect way to honor Commander Codpiece in Exorcising demons by going to the John. (Got a Grip)

Even if it's too late to recommend some of these diaries, the diarists will appreciate your comments. Enjoy and please promote your own favorites in the open thread.

Profiles in WTF?: Sheldon Whitehouse

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), December 7, 2007:

[L]ook what the Bush Administration does behind our backs when they think no one is looking. For years under the Bush Administration, the Office of Legal Counsel within the Department of Justice has issued highly classified secret legal opinions related to surveillance. This is an administration that hates answering to an American court, that wants to grade its own papers, and OLC is the inside place the administration goes to get legal support for its spying program.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was given access to those opinions, and spent hours poring over them. Sitting in that secure room, as a lawyer, as a former U.S. Attorney, legal counsel to Rhode Island's Governor, and State Attorney General, I was increasingly dismayed and amazed as I read on.

To give you an example of what I read, I have gotten three legal propositions from these OLC opinions declassified.  Here they are, as accurately as my note taking could reproduce them from the classified documents.  Listen for yourself.  I will read all three, and then discuss each one.

1. An executive order cannot limit a President.  There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order.  Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.
2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.
3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.

In a nutshell, these three Bush administration legal propositions boil down to this:

1. "I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them."
2. "I get to determine what my own powers are."
3. "The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is."

When the Congress of the United States is willing to roll over for an unprincipled President, this is where you end up.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), June 25, 2008:

Question:  On Cloture on the Motion to Proceed (Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to H.R. 6304 )

Measure Title: A bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to establish a procedure for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence, and for other purposes.

Whitehouse (D-RI), Yea  

Sheldon Whitehouse believes in Double Secret Exclusivity. He is living in a dream world.

Popular vote landslide

At the presidential level, Democrats haven't won more than 50 percent of the vote since 1976, and they have won more than 50.1 percent of the vote just once (1964) since 1944.

Get that? In the last 64 years and 16 presidential elections, Democrats have won more than 50.1 percent of the vote just once. Woeful.

Obama aims to change that.

Never will a campaign predict a landslide, but if only, say, half of the assumptions that guide Obama's general election strategy are true, his campaign is, in essence, preparing for a landslide in the popular vote. There's no way that 10,000 Obama volunteers in Texas won't influence his vote totals there even if he doesn't win.

If Obama can score, say, a 10-point victory in the popular vote (running up margins in states like Illinois, New York and California and losing Texas by narrower margins), it will have real-world implications not just to down-ballot races, but also to his agenda.

Yeah, well, hold THIS, buddy.

"Crossword Tommy" Coburn, scourge of bathroom lesbians everywhere, is notorious among his colleagues for being a serial abuser of the Senatorial "hold," used to block legislation from coming to the floor for a vote.

Lots of people have wondered how it is that Coburn is able to hold up so many bills, many of them extremely popular on both sides of the aisle. Well, the truth is that a hold by itself doesn't actually stop legislation. A lot of other factors have to come together to make it work, but that's a subject for another day.

Today, let's just enjoy the anticipation of seeing what happens when those other factors begin to unravel:

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is planning a "Coburn Omnibus" for July that would wrap most if not all of the bills held by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) into one large measure to be voted on by the Senate, according to a Coburn aide and two Democratic leadership staffers.

Coburn is blocking roughly a hundred bills that are generally non-controversial or have broad support. By placing a hold, Coburn prevents the bills from passing quickly through the Senate under a unanimous consent request. With floor time at such a premium, Reid would have trouble bringing up each bill for an individual debate and vote.

But in a stroke of legislative creativity that may have no precedent, Reid could lump all of the bills into one package and bring up the Coburn Omnibus for a single vote. Coburn can still object, but the broad popularity of the bills means that there would likely be more than enough support for veto-proof passage.

Ha-ha!

This would really be a terrific play by Reid. Individually, these bills -- though they enjoy popular, bipartisan support -- aren't by themselves a high enough priority for the use of Senate floor time to justify jumping through the hoops of Coburn's objections, motions to proceed, cloture votes, etc. But lumped together, they can all be moved at once, and lean on one another for the support of a large majority of Senators, many of whom have had e-friggin'-nuff of Coburn's shenanigans.

Kudos to Reid for the idea, and a backhanded thanks to Crossword Tommy for illustrating for us why, once upon a time at least, Senators didn't just put holds on everything under the sun.

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