Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Him Now!

Impeach Richard Cheney and Alfredo Gonzales as well:

Gonzales Was Told of FBI Violations: As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. The acts recounted in the FBI reports included unauthorized surveillance, an illegal property search and a case in which an Internet firm improperly turned over a compact disc with data that the FBI was not entitled to collect, the documents show. Gonzales was copied on each report that said administrative rules or laws protecting civil liberties and privacy had been violated....

[D]epartment spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said that when Gonzales testified, he was speaking "in the context" of reports by the department's inspector general before this year that found no misconduct or specific civil liberties abuses related to the Patriot Act. "The statements from the attorney general are consistent with statements from other officials at the FBI and the department," Roehrkasse said....

Each of the violations cited in the reports copied to Gonzales was serious enough to require notification of the President's Intelligence Oversight Board, which helps police the government's surveillance activities. The format of each memo was similar, and none minced words. "This enclosure sets forth details of investigative activity which the FBI has determined was conducted contrary to the attorney general's guidelines for FBI National Security Investigations and Foreign Intelligence Collection and/or laws, executive orders and presidential directives."... Roehrkasse said the fact that a violation is reported to the board "does not mean that a USA Patriot violation exists"...

Comments

[Carlos]

Brian,

Don't you see? Gonzalez was being absolutely truthful:

"There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse,"

Right. There had been many more than one.

[Charles]

This story was written by uberliar John Solomon, so it deserves careful parsing. Solomon has framed this as basically technical violations, which have to be reported only because this Administration is so careful of our civil liberties. What is more likely, given the history of the FBI in lawbreaking, is that what we now know is what they are willing to let us know. More dangerous and damaging operations will very likely be found in compartmentalized, classified operations that the investigators had no access to.

[John H. Morrison]

I'm thinking of Harry G. Frankfurt's book, and his categorization of BS: liars say something they know or believe is false. When someone is BSing, he pays no regard to the truth. The truth does not enter his consideration.

I suspect that in his testimony to Congress, Gonzales was BSing.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/books/14bull.html?ex=1266123600&en=32440f7c34fc8b0e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

February 14, 2005

Between Truth and Lies, An Unprintable Ubiquity
By PETER EDIDIN

Harry G. Frankfurt, 76, is a moral philosopher of international reputation and a professor emeritus at Princeton. He is also the author of a book recently published by the Princeton University Press that is the first in the publishing house's distinguished history to carry a title most newspapers, including this one, would find unfit to print. The work is called "On Bull - - - - ."

The opening paragraph of the 67-page essay is a model of reason and composition, repeatedly disrupted by that single obscenity:

"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much [bull]. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize [bull] and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry."

The essay goes on to lament that lack of inquiry, despite the universality of the phenomenon. "Even the most basic and preliminary questions about [bull] remain, after all," Mr. Frankfurt writes, "not only unanswered but unasked."

The balance of the work tries, with the help of Wittgenstein, Pound, St. Augustine and the spy novelist Eric Ambler, among others, to ask some of the preliminary questions - to define the nature of a thing recognized by all but understood by none.

What is [bull], after all? Mr. Frankfurt points out it is neither fish nor fowl. Those who produce it certainly aren't honest, but neither are they liars, given that the liar and the honest man are linked in their common, if not identical, regard for the truth.

"It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth," Mr. Frankfurt writes. "A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it."

The bull artist, on the other hand, cares nothing for truth or falsehood. The only thing that matters to him is "getting away with what he says," Mr. Frankfurt writes. An advertiser or a politician or talk show host given to [bull] "does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it," he writes. "He pays no attention to it at all."

And this makes him, Mr. Frankfurt says, potentially more harmful than any liar, because any culture and he means this culture rife with [bull] is one in danger of rejecting "the possibility of knowing how things truly are." It follows that any form of political argument or intellectual analysis or commercial appeal is only as legitimate, and true, as it is persuasive. There is no other court of appeal.

The reader is left to imagine a culture in which institutions, leaders, events, ethics feel improvised and lacking in substance. "All that is solid," as Marx once wrote, "melts into air." ...

[Bernard Yomtov]

Perhaps Marx did write "All that is solid melts into air."

Did he ever read The Tempest?
(Act IV, Scene I)

"Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. "

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/tempest/full.html

[anne]

Nice Bernard. Remember the MIT Shakespeare link.

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/Comedy/tempest/thetempest.4.1.html

1611

The Tempest
By William Shakespeare

Act IV. Scene I.

Before Prospero's cell.

[anne]

Ah, my link will be the final MIT link, but Bernard's is the one for now.

http://shakespeare.mit.edu/tempest/full.html

[andres]

"Impeach Richard Cheney and Alfredo Gonzales as well:"

A Freudian slip? Maybe Brad was looking forward to Italian food for dinner? All I know is that my liking for Fettuccini Alfredo is now rather spoiled. The again, Alberto Gonzalez is so non-descript looking that I'm not surprised people forget his first name.

[Bernard Yomtov]

Anne,

I do enjoy Shakespeare.

Remember the reader who didn't understand the fuss:

"All Shakespeare did was take a bunch of well-known quotes and string them together."

[anne]

Notice then the level of crazed Administration [bull] :

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/washington/11surgeon.html?hp

July 11, 2007

Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised
By GARDINER HARRIS

WASHINGTON — Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm....

Bill Hall, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said that the administration disagreed with Dr. Carmona’s statements. “It has always been this administration’s position that public health policy should be rooted in sound science,” Mr. Hall said.

Emily Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman, said the surgeon general “is the leading voice for the health of all Americans.”

“It’s disappointing to us,” Ms. Lawrimore said, “if he failed to use this position to the fullest extent in advocating for policies he thought were in the best interests of the nation.” ...

[anne]

So, then, we have America's former Surgeon General telling us as we have repeatedly been told by scientists that the Administration censors scientists and distorts and supresses scientific discussion and reporting. An Administration spokewoman immediately deals with the Surgeon General's report by attacking and slandering the Surgeon General.

[anne]

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/07/paul-krugman-he.html

July 9, 2007

Paul Krugman: Health Care Terror
Edited by Mark Thoma

Paul Krugman discusses how the "medical-industrial complex and its political allies have used scare tactics" to prevent Americans from making health care available to all:

NY Times: These days terrorism is the first refuge of scoundrels. So when British authorities announced that a ring of Muslim doctors working for the National Health Service was behind the recent failed bomb plot, we should have known what was coming.

"National healthcare: Breeding ground for terror?" read the on-screen headline, as the Fox News host Neil Cavuto and the commentator Jerry Bowyer solemnly discussed how universal health care promotes terrorism.

While this was crass even by the standards of Bush-era political discourse, Fox was following in a long tradition. For more than 60 years, the medical-industrial complex and its political allies have used scare tactics to prevent America from following its conscience and making access to health care a right for all its citizens.

I say conscience, because the health care issue is, most of all, about morality.

That's what we learn from the overwhelming response to Michael Moore's "Sicko." Health care reformers should, by all means, address the anxieties of middle-class Americans, their ... fear of finding themselves uninsured or ... den[ied] coverage when they need it most. But reformers shouldn't focus only on self-interest. They should also appeal to Americans' sense of decency and humanity.

What outrages people who see "Sicko" is the sheer cruelty and injustice of the American health care system — sick people who can't pay their hospital bills literally dumped on the sidewalk, a child who dies because an emergency room that isn't a participant in her mother's health plan won't treat her, hard-working Americans driven into humiliating poverty by medical bills.

"Sicko" is a powerful call to action — but ... defenders of the status quo ...[are] very good at fending off reform by finding new ways to scare us.

These scare tactics have often included over-the-top claims about the dangers of government insurance. "Sicko" plays part of a recording Ronald Reagan once made for the American Medical Association, warning that .... the program now known as Medicare ... would lead to totalitarianism...

Mainly, though, the big-money interests with a stake in the present system want you to believe that universal health care would lead to a crushing tax burden and lousy medical care.

Now, every wealthy country except the United States already has some form of universal care. Citizens ... pay extra taxes as a result — but they make up for that through savings on insurance premiums and out-of-pocket medical costs. The overall cost of health care ... is much lower...

Meanwhile, every available indicator says that in terms of quality, access to needed care and health outcomes, the U.S. health care system does worse, not better, than other advanced countries. ...

All of which raises the question Mr. Moore asks at the beginning of "Sicko": who are we?

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics." So declared F.D.R. in 1937, in words that apply perfectly to health care today. This isn't one of those cases where we face painful tradeoffs — here, doing the right thing is also cost-efficient. Universal health care would save thousands of American lives each year, while actually saving money.

So this is a test. The only things standing in the way of universal health care are the fear-mongering and influence-buying of interest groups. If we can't overcome those forces here, there's not much hope for America's future.

[anne]

These years we have been continually engulfed by [bull] to an extent that mere rational thought becomes a continual problem for otherwise rational people. As Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong have shown so well, the level of [bull] is beyond deceiving to terrorizing.

[anne]

John Morrison has done us a singular favor in reminding us of the destructiveness of [bull]:

http://www.gwinnettdailyonline.com/articleB5BD6D4417AF444DBD8F9770AA729B26.asp?printerFriendly=true

1986 - 2005

On Bull....
By Harry Frankfurt - Princeton University

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bull..... Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bull.... and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bull.... is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory. I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bull...., mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis. I shall not consider the rhetorical uses and misuses of bull..... My aim is simply to give a rough account of what bull.... is and how it differs from what it is not, or (putting it somewhat differently) to articulate, more or less sketchily, the structure of its concept. Any suggestion about what conditions are logically both necessary and sufficient for the constitution of bull.... is bound to be somewhat arbitrary. For one thing, the expression bull.... is often employed quite loosely -- simply as a generic term of abuse, with no very specific literal meaning. For another, the phenomenon itself is so vast and amorphous that no crisp and perspicuous analysis of its concept can avoid being procrustean. Nonetheless it should be possible to say something helpful, even though it is not likely to be decisive. Even the most basic and preliminary questions about bull.... remain, after all, not only unanswered but unasked. So far as I am aware, very little work has been done on this subject. I have not undertaken a survey of the literature, partly because I do not know how to go about it. To be sure, there is one quite obvious place to look -- the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED has an entry for bull.... in the supplementary volumes, and it also has entries for various pertinent uses of the word bull and for some related terms. I shall consider some of these entries in due course. I have not consulted dictionaries in languages other than English, because I do not know the words for bull.... or bull in any other language....