George Bush

In response to litigation filed by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Justice Department today released four secret memos used by the Bush administration to justify torture. The memos, produced by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), provided the legal framework for the CIA's use of waterboarding and other illegal interrogation methods that violate domestic and international law.

18-page memo, dated August 1, 2002, from Jay Bybee, Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA

46-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counse

20-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counse

40-page memo, dated May 30, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counse

The Justice Department secretly authorized President George Bush to use the military inside the United States to snoop on, raid and even kill citizens in order to fight terrorism without regard to the Fourth or Fifth Amendment, according to a Oct 23, 2001 memo released by the Obama Administration Monday.

"We do not think a military commander carrying out a raid on a terrorist cell would be required to demonstrate probable cause or to obtain a warrant," the Office of Legal Counsel memo said. "We think that the better view is that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to domestic military operations designed to deter and prevent future terrorist attacks."

Department of Justice special counsel Robert Delahunty and John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general best known for penning a memo authorizing government agents to torture suspected terrorists, issued the memo after the administration asked whether it could use the military inside the United States.

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The memo found that the military could be deployed widely within the United States without being subject to the limits of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Those actions include using the National Security Agency to spy on communications inside the United States without getting court approval -- as the Bush Administration admitted it did for years.

So really, what is the constitution for then?

And didn't Bush on September 26, 2006, push for Congress to revise the laws so the military could seize control immediately after a natural disaster due to Hurricane Katrina? How is it that the Bush administration thought the Posse Comitatus Act would bar the government from rescuing flooded citizens from the roofs of their houses but would totally OK arresting terrorists?

The conservatives attending this week's Conservative Political Action Conference are generally hawkish when it comes to foreign policy, but they applauded Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) on Friday when he told them the US has no choice but to get out of Iraq.

"Part of the reasons why we lost this last election was the foreign policy issue," Paul insisted. "Generally speaking, the presidential candidate who argues the case for less war-mongering will win the election."

Paul noted that George Bush ran in 2000 on a pledge to end Bill Clinton's nation-building, but then he "joined the idea that the American taxpayers -- you -- have an obligation to take care of everybody and police the world."

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"So yeah," Paul acknowledged. "We want to get rid of a bad guy in Iraq -- we did. But ... another one million Iraqis got killed. Believe me, they weren't all terrorists. ... But nevertheless, it pleased Osama bin Laden."

Really, the war on terror is too expensive? We shouldn't have invaded Iraq because they had no WMDs? Christ, it took you this long to figure it out? Oh and Osama is still running around his mountain cave home laughing at us? And we've managed to give millions of people around the world some pretty legit reasons for hating us?

Way to go, the last eight years have been a complete waste of time.

The Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, is trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails.

Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President say that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush's eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort. They expressed disappointment that Obama's Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration's bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.

During its first term, the Bush White House failed to install electronic record-keeping for e-mail when it switched to a new system, resulting in millions of messages that could not be found.

The Bush White House discovered the problem in 2005 and rejected a proposed solution.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Interview with President and Mrs. George W. Bush

Aired January 13, 2009 - 21:00 ET

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KING: So does it hurt you that Colin, who worked for you, is saying that?

G. BUSH: I don't think he said George Bush has tortured. I can't remember his quote. But I'm comfortable with what we did and know it was necessary to protect the country. KING: So there's nothing you've done in the area of treatment of prisoners that causes you any kind of pause?

G. BUSH: No. No. Everything we did was -- you know, it had legal -- legal opinions behind it. Look, you're sitting there, you've captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He's the guy that ordered the September the 11th attacks. And we want to know what he knows in order to protect the United States of America.

And I got legal opinions that said whatever we're going to do is legal. And my job is to protect you, Larry. And I've given it my all. I've given it my all.

Emphasis mine.

What kills me is he thinks he's done the best job possible, that the war on terror was really what needed to be started, that torture and lack of due process was how to fight it and that everyone else who disagrees with him is not only a traitor, but is crazy.

Oh, and not only has god told him that this is all OK, but he's got legal opinions that let him do whatever he wants.

For his first annual budget next week, President Obama has banned four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller. The price of more honest bookkeeping: A budget that is $2.7 trillion deeper in the red over the next decade than it would otherwise appear, according to administration officials.

Who does their accounting? How do we know this number is "right"?

At his press conference on Monday, President Barack Obama had to remind Mara Liasson of Fox News and NPR that it was the Republicans who doubled the national debt over the past eight years and it's a little strange to be hearing lectures from them now about how to be fiscally responsible. That interchange was my favorite part of the press conference. A savvy inside-the-Beltway reporter of Ms. Liasson's caliber shouldn't have to be reminded that George W. Bush and the Republican Congress were among the most fiscally reckless politicians in U.S. history.

The most inexcusable action the Republican Congress and the Bush administration took vis-à-vis the federal budget was to launch two wars and two open-ended occupations without raising one dime in revenues to pay for them. Never in the history of this country has an administration and Congress cut taxes while launching open-ended wars.

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The posturing of the Washington Republicans since Obama was elected proves correct the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard when he outlined his understanding of "simulacrum" in advanced capitalist societies where ideologies and images are copies of copies without originals. It's the kind of Reaganism mass produced on T-shirts and coffee mugs, not the real record of Reagan's actions when he was president like his "cutting and running" in Lebanon, or his raising taxes 13 times to ward off an even worse fiscal crisis, or his negotiating in an atmosphere of detente with the Soviet Union he once called an "evil empire." The Republicans today are conforming to an ideology based on a myth that other Republicans created in 1997, a copy of a copy without an original.

Bush and the Republican Congress didn't think twice before throwing the entire $850 billion price tag for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars right onto the national debt. Not only did they refuse to pass new "revenue enhancements" to pay for the wars, but they also fought tooth and nail to block any legislation that would raise revenues.

A Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge yesterday that the Bush administration will meet its legal requirement to transfer e-mails to the National Archives after spending more than $10 million to locate 14 million e-mails reported missing four years ago from White House computer files.

Civil division trial lawyer Helen H. Hong made the disclosure at a court hearing provoked by a 2007 lawsuit filed by outside groups to ensure that politically significant records created by the White House are not destroyed or removed before President Bush leaves office at noon on Tuesday. She said the department plans to argue in a court filing this week that the administration's successful recent search renders the lawsuit moot.

Hong's statement came hours after U.S. District Court Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. ordered employees of the president's executive office -- with just days to go before their departure -- to undertake a comprehensive search of computer workstations, preserve portable hard drives and examine any e-mail archives created or retained from 2003 to 2005, the period in which e-mails appeared to be missing.

So here, too, George W. Bush has let us down. Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43. He is not a memorable villain so much as a sometimes affable second banana whom Josh Brolin and Will Ferrell can nail without breaking a sweat. He's the reckless Yalie Tom Buchanan, not Gatsby. He is smaller than life.

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Bush's first and last photo-ops in Iraq could serve as bookends to his entire tenure. On Thanksgiving weekend 2003, even as the Iraqi insurgency was spiraling, his secret trip to the war zone was a P.R. slam-dunk. The photo of the beaming commander in chief bearing a supersized decorative turkey for the troops was designed to make every front page and newscast in the country, and it did. Five years later, in what was intended as a farewell victory lap to show off Iraq's improved post-surge security, Bush was reduced to ducking shoes.

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The joke was on us. Iraq burned, New Orleans flooded, and Bush remained oblivious to each and every pratfall on his watch. Americans essentially stopped listening to him after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, but he still doesn't grasp the finality of their defection. Lately he's promised not to steal the spotlight from Barack Obama once he's in retirement -- as if he could do so by any act short of running naked through downtown Dallas. The latest CNN poll finds that only one-third of his fellow citizens want him to play a post-presidency role in public life.

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Bush kept America safe (provided his presidency began Sept. 12, 2001). He gave America record economic growth (provided his presidency ended December 2007). He vanquished all the leading Qaeda terrorists (if you don't count the leaders bin Laden and al-Zawahri). He gave Afghanistan a thriving "market economy" (if you count its skyrocketing opium trade) and a "democratically elected president" (presiding over one of the world's most corrupt governments). He supported elections in Pakistan (after propping up Pervez Musharraf past the point of no return). He "led the world in providing food aid and natural disaster relief" (if you leave out Brownie and Katrina).

The Human Rights Campaign today hailed the passage of a law that protects partners who inherit retirement savings. The Worker, Retiree and Employer Recovery Act of 2008 (WRERA), signed by President Bush today, contains technical corrections to the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA). PPA made it possible for employers to allow any nonspouse beneficiary of an employee's retirement plan--including an employee's same-sex partner--to roll inherited retirement benefits directly to an individual retirement account (IRA) and avoid immediate taxation. WRERA requires that all employers provide this rollover opportunity to nonspouse beneficiaries.

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Before 2007, partners who inherited retirement plan savings typically faced immediate taxation on inherited benefits, unlike different-sex spouses, who could roll savings over to an individual retirement account (IRA) with no tax penalty. Under the PPA, as of January 1, 2007, qualifying plans could permit any nonspouse beneficiary--including a domestic partner, parent or sibling--to roll over inherited retirement benefits paid as a lump sum directly to an IRA. Qualifying plans include defined benefit plans (pensions), 401(k) plans, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), profit-sharing plans, money purchase plans, 403(b) plans and governmental 457(b) plans.

A tiny step in the right direction.