Michael Mukasey was approved by the Senate as the next Attorney General. The issue calling his confirmation into question was the fact that he refused to commit to the proposition that drowning an interrogation subject constituted torture. (Technically not drowning, but “waterboarding” in which the subject only thinks he or she is drowning.)

Among those who are comfortable with such ambiguity in America’s position on torture are Indiana’s own Evan Bayh and Richard Lugar. Not voting on the confirmation were Presidential candidates Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John McCain, and Barack Obama.

I tend to agree with Patrick Leahy on this. He suggests that Mukasey is a solid individual, but moral ambiguity on torture is unacceptable. Leahy said, “I am not going to aid and abet the confirmation contortions of this administration. I do not vote to allow torture.” He spoke at more length during the committee hearings:

Nothing is more fundamental to our constitutional democracy than our basic notion that no one is above the law. This Administration has undercut that precept time after time. They are now trying to do it again, with an issue as fundamental as whether the United States of America will join the ranks of those governments that approve of torture. This President and Vice President should not be allowed to violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions or disregard U.S. statutes such as our Detainee Treatment Act and War Crimes Act. They should not be allowed to overturn more than 200 years of our Nation’s human rights and moral leadership around the world.

The Administration has compounded its lawlessness by cloaking its policies and miscalculations under a veil of secrecy, leaving Congress, the courts, and the American people in the dark about what they are doing. The President says that we do not torture, but had his lawyers redefine torture down in secret memos, in fundamental conflict with American values and law. …

Some have sought to find comfort in Judge Mukasey’s personal assurance that he would enforce a future, new law against waterboarding if this Congress were to pass one. Unsaid, of course, is the fact that any such prohibition would have to be enacted over the veto of this President.

But the real damage of this argument is not its futility. The real harm is that it presupposes that we do not already have laws and treaty obligations against waterboarding. In fact, we do. No Senator should abet this Administration’s legalistic obfuscations by those such as Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, and David Addington by agreeing that the laws on the books do not already make waterboarding illegal. We have been prosecuting water torture for more than 100 years. …

I wish that I could support Judge Mukasey’s nomination. I like Michael Mukasey. But this is an Administration that has been acting outside the law and an Administration that has now created a “confirmation contortion.” When many of us voted to confirm General Petreas, the Administration turned around and, for political advantage, tried to claim that when we voted to confirm the nominee, we also voted for the President’s war policies. Just as I do not support this President’s Iraq policy, I do not support his torture policy or his views of unaccountability or unlimited Executive power.

No one is more eager to restore strong leadership and independence to the Department of Justice than I. What we need most right now is an Attorney General who believes and understands that there must be limitations on Executive power. America needs to be certain of the bedrock principles in our laws and our values that no President and no American can be authorized to violate. Accordingly, I vote no on the President’s nomination.

Rep. Kucinich’s resolution seeking the impeachment of Dick Cheney has moved to the judiciary committee. I suspect that’s where it will die without any substantial consideration, but let’s take a look at the allegations, consider whether they are true and, if so, whether they warrant impeachment. The first article lays a case for the assertion that Dick Cheney manipulated intelligence and made misleading statements to the American people in an effort to get us into a war with Iraq. The Second article alleges that Dick Cheney mislead the American people about the nature of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in an effort to get us into a war with Iraq. The Third alleges that he is now threatening aggression against Iran without any real evidence of a threat.

Some of the supporting allegations after the fold.

[Read more…]

A study released Thursday indicated that Iraq & Afghanistan could cost the United States $2.4 Trillion dollars by 2017, including interest on the borrowed money. This cost is something like 48 times what Bush originally promised and works out to something like $8,000 for every man, woman, and child in America.

So, my question is whether folks would rather be taxed now to pay for the wars or would rather pass the costs along to their children and grandchildren. I heard someone quip that the tax for these wars had already been imposed, the only question is how long the government is going to wait before collecting it.

Zach Wendling at In the Agora has an excellent post entitled The Pedigree of the Conservative Mongrel. (And I’m not recommending it merely because he gave me a hat tip on a related John Cole post.).

I fell off the GOP bandwagon somewhere between 1994 and 1998. I recall being pleased at the Republican sweep of Congress in ’94 and irate at the Clinton impeachment. So, I’m not sure how much I have in common with the erstwhile Republicans who are re-examining the Republican relationship to conservatism now. But still, some of the questions they are asking now are questions I’ve asked myself — albeit without the sort of intellectual rigor that would lead me to even know about the existence of Russell Kirk and Austin Bramwell, cited by Mr. Wendling.

So, anyway, worth a read.

This opinion by the Evansville Courier Press seems to get it about right:

If President Bush had a history of opposing big government and big spending, his choice of a child health insurance bill for only the fourth veto of his presidency might be more understandable.

But he has calmly presided over the largest increase in spending and the creation of the largest government entitlement — prescription drugs — since the Great Society.

. . .

As for competing with private insurance, as Bush charges, the president greatly overestimates the availability and affordability of purely private insurance.

The opinion goes on to note some of the problems with the legislation, but those problems seem to have precious little to do with Bush’s reasons for vetoing the bill. We can spend billions per week and get nothing in return in Iraq, but God forbid we spend the money on sick kids. (Actually, I say “the money” as if we have it. We don’t. We’re borrowing it from great market economies like China. In fact, these kids are going to be paying the tab for today’s expenditures, they might as well get some of the benefits.)

John Cole has a good post on a column written by David Brooks on the recent troubles of the Republican Party.

Brooks suggests that the Republicans have lost their way because they “have made ideological choices that offend conservatism’s Burkean roots.” Choices that reflect the wishes of “creedal conservatives” have offended the sensibilities of Midwestern, suburban, and business conservatives who care “about order, prudence and balanced budgets more than transformational leadership and perpetual tax cuts.”

Cole calls this hogwash. He cites the overt the top reaction of right-wing bloggers to Obama’s statement that he prefers talking to people about his patriotism over wearing a flag-pin on his lapel. Cole suggests that people are tired of being associated with these “drooling retards.”

Like me. It had nothing to do with Burke, and everything to do with what the party had become. A bunch of bedwetting, loudmouth, corrupt, hypocritical, and incompetent boobs with a mean streak a mile long and no sense of fair play or proportion.

Seriously- what does the current Republican party stand for? Permanent war, fear, the nanny state, big spending, torture, execution on demand, complete paranoia regarding the media, control over your body, denial of evolution and outright rejection of science, AND ZOMG THEY ARE GONNA MAKE US WEAR BURKHAS, all the while demanding that in order to be a good American I have to spend most of every damned day condemning half my fellow Americans as terrorist appeasers.

And also, you know, the corruption.

But I think they’re both right. Time after time, I’ve seen Republicans on the national level appeal to emotion over reason. They don’t have a monopoly on this tactic, of course. A campaign is going to lose if it is appealing exclusively to the rationality of the electorate and the other side is stoking the electorate’s lizard brain. But, when you start disdaining reality-based policies because they offend emotionally-appealing dogma, you’ve gone off the rails. You will no longer be very appealing to those voters who simply want an opportunity to make a profit in an orderly society. Furthermore, self-appointed watch-dogs of ideological purity have a tendency to get ugly when there is no objective reality to keep them in check.

I suspect the Republicans’ time in the wilderness this time out will be especially ugly. But, eventually they’ll regroup — my preference would be as economic conservatives and social libertarians, but I’m not holding my breath — and the more unchecked power the Democrats have, the more corrupt they will become, and the tide will turn once again.

Sylvia Smith, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an interesting article on farm subsidies, particularly the disaster relief program. She reports that growers and ranchers in 10 disaster prone state got more than half of the disaster relief. For example, North Dakota farmers received $1.9 billion over the same period that a comparable number of Hoosier farmers received $340 million.

The Environmental Working Group argues:

When Congress provides money to growers in the same states year after year for the same weather-related reasons, the Environmental Working Group’s president said, it encourages people to farm or ranch in climates that don’t make sense for agriculture.

“You have the government sending signals encouraging people to take chances … where Mother Nature is saying, ‘You’re pushing things,’ ” Ken Cook said Tuesday when his group released a report analyzing 21 years of disaster payments.

Senator Lugar has a plan:

Federal farm subsidies are already excessive, focused on only a handful of crops, and mostly go to farmers in a few states,” he said. “Over the past 10 years, farm subsidies have gone to just one out of three farmers with six percent of farms receiving more than 70 percent of that money – $120 billion.

“Adding ‘permanent disaster assistance’ only adds to this egregious system, targeting certain crops.”

Lugar has proposed a different approach: a combination of federally backed insurance and tax deferred savings accounts for farmers.

“All farmers could participate regardless of crop or animal raised,” he said. “This would be a more than adequate safety net at much less taxpayer expense, particularly given the changes that are occurring from biofuels production and economies of scale.”

We spend a ton of money on a pretty messed up farm system. Want smaller government? Farm welfare might be a rational first target, though politically it seems pretty impossible.