Jay Rockefeller

What's the point of the Democratic Party? I know that technically its job is to get Democrats elected to office. But what of it?

What is the point if Democrats don't use the power that they gain in holding office?

What is the point if Democrats give their power away?

What is the point if Democrats let themselves get played for suckers over and over again in the most predictable ways.

Salon.com: Democratic leadership: not just complicit but also self-destructive

The signs are unmistakably clear that what was always inevitable -- full compliance by the House Democratic leadership with Bush's demands on warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty -- is now imminent. House leaders spent the week floating their specific proposals for how they intend to comply in full, and yesterday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes went on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, refused to criticize the President or the Senate FISA bill, and repeatedly and meekly expressed his willingness "this week" to give what he called full "blanket immunity" to telecoms (C&L has the video of Reyes' astoundingly weak and incoherent answers in response to Blitzer's Bush-mimicking questions).

What is the point of feigning that you object to a single party government when all you do is help an Executive who thinks he is King.

What is the point of taking the flak that comes from the right wing when you refuse to cave, the threats that Democrats are making us less safe every day they delay -- when you have no intention of keeping up the fight?

What is the point of that when you just give in?

Do they think Republicans won't attack them for stalling?  Now that they've caved entirely, they're admitting that Bush was right and that they were putting America at risk by not letting George W. 19% illegally spy on citizens.

Republicans WILL attack them.  That's what Republicans do.  They consolidate power and use it for the purpose of the party's ideology and to continue it's health. 

If Democrats merely help Republicans do what Republicans want to do, then what is the point of the Democrats?

Democrats don't enforce their oversight powers. Even when the opposition has admitted to committing crimes. 
Democrats instead grant even more power to the lawbreaking Executive. Indeed, doing the very opposite of oversight, they grant retroactive immunity to the criminals for the crimes they committed.

And at the end of the day the Democrats will be attacked for not having completely caved fast enough.

What is the point of the Democratic Party?

Last week Attorney General Mukasey told Democrats to stick their subpoenas up their asses. And the response is, "Here's some more power."  What is the point of the Democratic Party.

Above: Things with more spine than Harry Reid.

I know Thomas Paine and, to a lesser extent, Thomas Young have already addressed today's FISA votes, but I can't let today's insanity pass without comment.

First, let's take a moment and reflect on where we are today. Glenn Greenwald puts the slow legalization of Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, first revealed in Decemer 2005, in stark terms:

To be sure, achieving this took some time. When Bill Frist was running the Senate and Pat Roberts was in charge of the Intelligence Committee, Bush and Cheney couldn't get this done (the same FISA and amnesty bill that the Senate will pass today stalled in the 2006 Senate). They had to wait until the Senate belonged (nominally) to Harry Reid and, more importantly, Jay Rockefeller was installed as Committee Chairman, and then -- and only then -- were they able to push the Senate to bequeath to them and their lawbreaking allies full-scale protection from investigation and immunity from the consequences of their lawbreaking.

Think about that for a moment. The Democratic Senate is about to give the Bush administration something that a Republican Senate was not able to do.

What, in the name of all that is holy, could possibly explain this spineless, cowardly behavior?

Here's Our Fearful Majority Leader Harry Reid, putting forth the word to his caucus that shit's heading south and he's getting the fuck out of the way:

If, as appears likely, none of the amendments to strike or modify the provisions of the bill concerning retroactive immunity are adopted, we expect Sen. Reid to oppose cloture and oppose final passage of the bill.

He probably think that is a statement of leadership, that he is calling his caucus to stand with him. Via press release. This is some profoundly weak tea. To borrow the word's of Jesse Lacey, I've seen more spine on jelly fish and I've seen more guts in eleven year old kids.

The definition of insanity, per Benjamin Franklin, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Harry Reid has repeatedly brought up legislation in contravention to his stated wishes for the policy course of the US government. On Iraq funding he allows weak-kneed suggestions for withdrawal to receive primacy over legislation with his (evidently worthless) name on it which sets a firm time table. On FISA, he says he opposes retroactive immunity, but puts forward a bill and a legislative course that guarantees immunity will pass. Either he thinks the rest of the Senate is going to magically over rule his procedural decisions and give him what he actually wants (but hasn't pushed for) or he simply doesn't want what he says he wants, what the Democratic base wants. In either event, the same behavior is not producing different results and Reid needs to drink a double espresso, pop a few NoDoze, and wake the fuck up.

Some people have argued that the Senate Democrats have Battered Wife Syndrome, in denial that their colleagues across the aisle don't share the same love for civil liberties and the rule of law that they do. Others think they might have Stockholm Syndrome, so used to being beaten by the GOP that they identify with the Republicans and seek to join them in their efforts. The reality is that the level of stupidity and ingrain failure is so high, one can only assume that Senate Democrats have a mental defect, courtesy of poor genes. Perhaps Down Syndrome is the best explanation, then, for the failures of Senate Democrats to do their jobs and defeat Republican efforts to shred the Constitution. Going a step further, I'd hazard that some Senate Dems were so captivated by the fun times the GOP was having with their paper shredder and the Constitution, that they rushed over to partake in the production of pretty confetti.

It occurs to me that it is both insensitive and politically incorrect to describe our cowardly Democrats as having Down Syndrome. I'd like to immediately extend an apology to the community of people with Down Syndrome. You are far better, smarter people than the Senate Democrats and I regret comparing you to them.

This is beyond pathetic. This is assuring the destruction of our Republic.

By which I mean the Republican party. The Republican party of Lincoln. I've given up on the Democrats. There is no Democratic party.

Governments like ours work when factions operate in their own self interest - when the self-checking branches of government provide oversight on each other, or when political tribes draw differences and push against each other.

It's only in pushing against each other that there is balance.

You can't blame the modern GOP for trying to control every branch of government and put as much power as possible into the hands of their political operation any more than you can blame Franklin Delano Roosevelt for going ballistic on the Supreme Court in 1937 threatening to appoint 6 young liberals in what was called the most grave Constitutional Crisis of the 20th Century in order to push through the parts of New Deal they deemed unconstitutional.

Democrats don't have a unified principle that they can push back from anymore. To be a Democrat is simple - it is simply in their political interest to avoid being called names by Rush Limbaugh. If they can achieve that, then their political concerns is secure.

There is no Democratic Party in Congress. There are a slim majority of Congressmen and Senators who have banded together in order to gather money. They're not even very much concerned with gathering power and influence.

But they are most certainly not using any of the resources that they are gathering to benefit the groups and causes who worked to put them in power in the first place.

Republicans know this, and they will use this knowledge to pass the bills that they feel the country needs. This is why 2007 was such a horrible legislative year for the progressive movement - and why 2008 will be no better for progressives.

Democrats don't push back. Democrats don't fight for their rights. As legislators they gave away their power of oversight. As Executives they gave away their right to set an agenda.

The progressive movement needs a party. A party that acts out of principle since this is how progressives operate.

Since, Democrats no longer operate anchored in a principle of any sort (Anything, fucking something, whatever - Civil Liberties... Rule of Law... whatever, it really doesn't fucking matter. Name a cause, guys - anything) they are not the party for progressives.

I would have an easier time convincing Republicans, who are comfortable with the idea of fighting on behalf of a core set of principles, that they need to change their principles than I would with Democrats, who are incapable of fighting on behalf of core principles anyway.

I'm too enraged to write anything thought provoking or witty. The leadership of the Democratic party is a bunch of spineless, cowardly, weak, feckless, cowardly asshats, who all need to be primaried until they die. When they retire from the Senate, we need to primary their retirements. When they die and go to Purgatory (they are too milquetoast, feckless, traitorous and weak to justify their special place in hell, and they sure as shit aren't getting into heaven), I want to primary them there too. Make their lives miserable for all eternity. Seriously, this is beyond pathetic.

How many people failed? The little field where I select who is in the way on my blog form ran out of room before I could add everyone. That's how spectacularly our leadership has failed.

The only thing left to do on this issue is sign the petition over at FDL and pray that the house actually stands up and leads. Of course, that will happen when I start shooting my writing quills out of my nipples, but whatever.

Matt Browner Hamlin has all the gory details on todays spectacular failure of leadership. May God have mercy on their souls.

I should add that Feingold and Dodd were the only ones to rise up and take a stand on this issue in any significant way. (Obama voted the right direction, but never brought it the attention it deserved, which in his position as a candidate he had the ability to really do.) So kudos to them for behaving like Senators instead of little scared children.

In Plato's Republic, the question is put to Socrates, "Who will watch the watchers?" or, "Who will protect us against the protectors?"

Today there were more Senate votes seeking an answer to that ancient question. Here are a few notables:

• (Dem) Russ Feingold's S 3913: Prohibits the government from getting around FISA's court order requirement by wiretapping an individual overseas when it is really only listening in on a person in the U.S. with whom that "supposed foreign target" is communicating.

  Aim: Watches the watchers. Failed: 38-57.
  (Democrats voting nay - Inouye, Pryor and Salazar [Lieberman])

• (D) Feingold's S 3915: gives the FISA Court discretion to impose restrictions on the use of information about Americans that is acquired through procedures later determined to be illegal by the FISA court.

  Aim: Watches the watchers. Failed: 40-56
  (Democrats voting nay - Rockefeller, Johnson, Bayh, Inouye, Pryor and Landrieu [Lieberman])

• (R) Kit Bond's S 3941: Extends from 30 to 90 days the window of time that wiretaps can continue without any ruling from FISA court before the telecoms can petition for removal of the tap.

  Aim: Give the watchers more power.  Passes: by voice vote.

• (D) Ben Cardin's: 3920 To modify the sunset provision from 6 years to 4 so that the next president can amend, and so FISA can keep up with technology.

  Aim: Watch the watchers. Failed: 48-46 [needed 61 to override the GOP defacto filibuster]
  (Clinton not voting)

Plato's answer to this is that "They will guard themselves against themselves. We must tell the guardians a noble lie. The noble lie will inform them that they are better than those they serve and it is therefore their responsibility to guard and protect those lesser than themselves. We will instill in them a distaste for power or privilege, they will rule because they believe it right, not because they desire it."

Plato was overly naive. That's why a system of separation of powers, checks and balances, was devised.

That mechanism ended in America under this President Bush and this generation of Democrats.

Shame.

Senator Jay Rockefeller is a liar. Glenn Greenwald goes to great length to point out that Rockefeller is a smug Bush crony:

When Rockefeller smugly announces that he "thinks we will prevail," the "we" on whose behalf he is so proudly speaking is Bush and Cheney, lawbreaking telecoms, and all Republican Senators. The only parties whom Rockefeller is so happily "defeating" are civil liberties groups and members of his own party. That is what is making him feel pulsating sensations of excitement and "smugness."

He is being allowed to win only because he is advancing the Bush agenda and those of his largest corporate donors, and waging war against members of his own party, acting to destroy the allegedly defining values of that party.

The worst part of Rockefeller's statement, the most infuriating and mendacious is when he paints telcos as some poor, "helpless" victims unable to defend themselves.

"If people want to be mad, don't be mad at the telecommunications companies, who are restrained from saying anything at all under the State Secrets Act. And they really are. They can't say whether they were involved, they can't go to court, they can't do anything. They're just helpless. And the president was just having his way."

The solution isn't to bar Americans from suing telcos (even when they break the law), the solution is simply to add a provision to FISA enabling telcos to submit that evidence in secret, the way classified evidence is submitted to federal courts all the time. 50 USC 1806(f) already says that, but even if it didn't, Congress could amend it to do so.

But that would be work. And it would anger Bush and Cheney. And Rockefeller works for them. Apparently.

Rockefeller's claim that telecoms can't submit exculpatory evidence to the court is a lie, an absolute lie. There is no other accurate way to describe his statement.

As Greenwald says, "Under FISA (50 USC 1806(f)), telcos are explicitly permitted to present any evidence in support of their defenses in secret (in camera, ex parte) to the judge and let the judge decide the case based on it. That section of long-standing law could not be clearer, and leaves no doubt that Rockefeller is simply lying when he says that telecoms are unable to submit secret evidence to the court to defend themselves."

The Democratic Party caucus wouldn't hold strong if their lives literally depended on it. Literally.

Democrats will always have at least have one stray, retarded sheep who thinks that being all alone dancing on edge of the cliff is somehow "Maverick" and that such fairy tale behavior is the best way to quickly become a globetrotting celebrity "Straight Talker". 

This is the delusion that infected Joe Lieberman.  It's based on the image that John McCain cultivates with his furiously masturbating press corps, but notice, that when push comes to shove, McCain always protects his party's power.  Democrats who play Maverick always go too far and give away their power.

Today, under Mitch McConnell's Republican leadership, not a single Republican voted against helping Dick Cheney.

But on our side? Sad.  It's really so sad how easily we crumble.

Rockefeller*, Bayh*, Mikulski*, Nelson (FL)*, Pryor, Salazar, McCaskill, Carper, Nelson (NE), Landrieu, Inouye, Johnson all votes aye to Cheney's law.
*SSCI (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) membership.

Jay Rockefeller doesn't understand basic evidentiary court rules.

And too many liberals who are on his case about FISA don't understand what retroactive immunity is all about. This is about Cheney.

First, retroactive immunity has very very little to do with the telecoms (particularly since they're cutting off wiretaps anyway, since the FBI isn't paying its bills).

Telcos will be indemnified for anything that they've done with AG approval (though there is that sticky episode in the period following the Ashcroft hospital incident, when then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales forced the approval of the illegal program of the body of ailing Ashcroft, but never mind). Nope, rather, any immunity is immunity for those who decided it was a swell idea to illegally wiretap Americans. And that list of people begins with Dick Cheney.

Dick Cheney is saying that it is impossible for telecoms to defend themselves against the "dozens" of court cases pending against them for breaking the law and compromising customers' privacy rights.

Dick Cheney has a way to eliminate the problem he says the telecoms have: he can take the advice he once gave Senator Patrick Leahy and fuck himself. Then he can stop declaring State Secrets for any freaking thing that comes into Cheney's field of vision.

The entire logic to Administration/Telco/Rockefeller claims that the telecoms need this magical immunity is because they can't defend themselves in Court.

Hey, Jay, stupid, that's Dick Cheney's fault, because he and the Administration have declared State Secrets even in the face of abundant public evidence that the telecoms did what they're accused of doing.

It's not a good sign for Politicians when they are tarred by anti-Corporation blogs like this one, The DailyTelco Outrage, a blog dedicated to chronicling all of the ways in which major telecommunications companies abuse customers. Jello Jay Rockefeller is also apparently being called 'telecom Jay.'

Rockefeller and President Cheney had tangled previously over the N.S.A. domestic surveillance program. In July 2003, after a briefing for leaders of the Intelligence Committees from which staff members were barred, Mr. Rockefeller hand-wrote a protest note to the vice president, saying that as ”neither a technician nor an attorney,” he was not able to satisfy his concerns about the legality of eavesdropping without warrants. He then locked the note in his safe. I am not kidding. A lot of good that did.

After that faux outrage yellowed in the safe, Jay got to work...

The blog picks apart the West Virginian's scheming: "Rockefeller’s claims that surveillance efforts will “come to a screeching halt” without his amnesty plan is nothing more than the sort of deceitful fear-mongering which the Bush administration has relentlessly churned out over the last six years.

"Worse, still, Rockefeller worked out this retroactive amnesty boondoggle with Sith President Dick Cheney himself."

It's pretty shameful for Rockefeller to be so hated by Verizon haters - if Rockefeller were capable of shame, that is.

The hate is spreading too:

We’re in the midst of a slow-moving, long-running Constitutional crisis, where the authoritarians in the White House and the Republican party have, in large part, freed themselves from the restraints of Constitutional authority, and are governing as despots, in an extra-legal fashion.

What Digby said:

The simple fact is that Jay Rockefeller, Jane Harman and Nancy Pelosi have known since 2002 that the US Government was engaging in torture. They have done next to nothing to stop it and have not used the power of their offices to reveal it or guide the congress to investigate it.

Pelosi knew and lied, she knew and mocked voters for caring that civilized countries don't torture innocent people. She joked about it to reporters when she foolishly thought that Lindsay Graham would get Dick Cheney to be more humane!

Read that again. It's true. She thought that the GOP would splinter on its own over the use of torture - no need for Democrats to weigh in on this little issue! This is a miscalculation so grievous that Nancy Pelosi is officially a braindead shitbag.

What could Dems who were briefed do? Civil Disobedience was suggested by some, including me - the reason being that these lawmakers were not allowed to go public with the classified information - so leaking the news is a crime. However, they could have gone to the floor and included the question into privileged speech and debate - - thereby vastly increasing the possibility of leakage.

Because Jane Harman, Jay Rockefeller and Nancy Pelosi could not be bothered to do the right thing they could have at least increased the likelihood that SOMEONE in the caucus would.