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TechnoratiTorture Her!
So Monica Goodling doesn't want to answer questions on Capitol Hill, eh?
This top official in the Justice Department, who serves as its liaison to the White House, is now refusing to answer any congressional questions about the US attorneys scandal. You know, the one in which George and Dick and Karl and Alberto have been hiring and firing federal prosecutors based on their willingness to politicize the legal system. That scandal (it's so hard to keep track of them these days).
Her lawyer says that Goodling doesn't actually have anything to hide, but rather that - just like the judicial travesty that recently took down Scooter Libby - a "hostile and questionable environment" has surrounded the case. As opposed to the good kind of investigations, you see, where the White House doesn't bother to answer the friendly questions that Congress and the press don't bother to ask. You know, like the last six years or so.
So Goodling's lawyer has just announced that his client will be invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination - even though, mind you, she didn't do anything wrong! - rather than testifying to Congress.
Fifth Amendment? Fifth Amendment? You mean like, the Bill of Rights? That Fifth Amendment?
Doesn't she know that the Fifth Amendment has been suspended?
Doesn't she know that all those amendments have been suspended?
Doesn't she know that the president considers that whole document that these amendments amend to be "just a goddamed piece of paper"?
She's joking here, right? I thought she worked for the Justice Department in the Bush administration? Hasn't she heard?
Or maybe she's still waiting for her interoffice mail from the last five years to clear NSA.
Boy, is she gonna be surprised. We all know how committed the Bush people are to protecting the country from evildoers. Next thing you know, little Miss Monica Goodling is going to find herself bound and gagged, and on a short but very uncomfortable flight to Guantánamo.
And that's if she's lucky. If not, she'll be getting a wee taste of extraordinary rendition to some place like Egypt or Syria. Those fellas know how to make a gal sing! Lemme tell ya, brother, there aren't any pesky amendments in Syria, and there never were.
I hope Ms. Goodling doesn't think that her attorney will get the charges dropped for her. In fact, she won't be having an attorney.
I hope she doesn't think that the evidence she presents will exonerate her. In fact, she won't be presenting any.
I hope she doesn't think there will be a fair trial before a jury of her peers. In fact, she's gonna be rotting away in a dank cell somewhere, never even charged with any actual offense.
And she can forget about making a habeas corpus appeal, too. Even though it was considered for centuries to be one of the great traditions of Western jurisprudence, Dear Leader knew better than that and had the foresight to eliminate it, so that evildoers couldn't get away on some minor legal technicality like unlawful imprisonment.
Habeas corpus? Ancient history. Just like all the rest of that Latin mumbo-jumbo. Bag 'em and tag 'em are the legal lyrics we sing these days. This president's a (nearly real) Texan! Don't mess with Texas!
Squeamish lily-livered liberals and their bleeding-heart fellow travelers might not like it, but I'm sure the president wants to get to the bottom of this just as much as he's wanted to solve the puzzle of who outed Valerie Plame (which he will, I assure you, as soon as he can locate that scrap of paper with Dick Cheney's phone number on it).
That's bad news for Ms. Goodling, because that whole annoying Geneva Protocol thing has now been determined to be both "quaint" and "obsolete" (didn't Alberto tell you?).
Uh-Oh. That means the t-word, I'm afraid. But, look, you gotta do what you gotta do to win the war on evildoers.
So I say, torture her! Hell yes.
If I know anything about this president, I know he won't be afraid to attach electrodes to her genitals and make her scream a little.
I know that he'll waterboard her until she gives up the guilty parties (though certain names may have to be redacted, of course, but we have people for that).
I know that nothing so quaint and obsolete as mere international treaties or constitutional provisions will stop our unfaltering crusader for justice from getting to the bottom of this obvious threat to our way of life.
And I know that once he has everything he needs from her forced confession, he'll have just the people in place as US attorneys to prosecute this evildoer. (But, of course, why bother at that point?)
Fifth Amendment rights. That's rich. We haven't had that around these parts since nigh about the twentieth century. Next I suppose she'll be claiming that her preordained death sentence is cruel and unusual punishment! Talk about quaint and obsolete.
Fifth Amendment rights. Hah. What does she think this is, the old United States of America?
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (mailto:dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.
10 Comments so far
Show AllElaine Boozler, sitting in for Stephanie Miller this am, spilled the beans on Ms. Goodling. She is a graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent "University" law school, as are another 150 members of the Bush administration. This "University's" stated goal is to train right-thinking "Christian" scholars to take leadership positions in government, and other opinion forming organization. This is part of the wing-nut's strategy to infiltrate our institutions and hijack the government and all of our other public institutions for their sick and twisted ideology.
By the same measure, those 15 British sailors who have been arrested by Iran can be classified as enemy combatants. Britain has supported the use of torture in Guantanamo, so accordingly the sailors can undergo torture and be held for the rest of their lives in solitary confinement. Seems fair to me.
I'll bet she never thought she'd be in this position when she was graduating from Pat Robertson's law school.
well put Cee. the time is now. unite!
"We wonder now why there is more crime and prisons in this country than anywhere else in the world."
the war on drugs. thats where all the crime and full prisons come from. vote libertarian and clean up this hell hole.
One of your best, Michael Green!!!
jp, it reads thus:
"Amendments:
"Article II
"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
That evolved into each State having it's own State Guard and National Guard group. Those are the poor guys and gals tapped for service in Iraq. Bush and Company knew a draft was out of the question because of the lessons LBJ and Nixon learned in the Vietnam era.
But nowhere in that Article I does it say that private parties can have AK-47's and anything they desire as lethal as that in their homes for personal use. Give me a break. A good rifle and shotgun was in order for shooting game, and to protect self and family at that time, especially one lived in the wild western towns and the wilderness.
The judges who ruled otherwise more recently overlooked the grammar and the punctuation and ruled for the NRA gun lobby and all the bucks this country makes from selling guns and other weaponry to other countries and our own people.
Jefferson was vehemently against this Article, but compromised with a fellow Virginian on some other matter, and he removed his objection. Too bad.
We wonder now why there is more crime and prisons in this country than anywhere else in the world.
And we are the suppliers of anything anyone wants elsewhere, even if we sell the stuff to the army of a particular country at the same time we are selling and supplying to three different rebel groups opposing the army and each other in that country.
General Studley: "War is the biggest racket of all."
John Stockwell, former C.I.A. agent in the 70's and early '80's and in charge of the "Angola Operation," wrote a book when he quit the C.I.A. The Feds got it banned by a court decision. Stockwell travelled all over the country to warn about what was going on. One of the things he always told his audiences were: At all times the C.I.A. has at least forty (40) scenarios at the ready and several going on at the same time ... with the purpose of destabilizing third-world and other countries' governments and populations.
ENTER U.S.A. ... It's always about power, control, the money, the resources.
We sure are not the country I learned about in the history books as a little girl. The real possibility of that country ended with Eisenhower's farewell, JFK's assassination, and then Martin Luther King's, then Bobby's ... and it's been heading straight to hell ever since.
Karl Rove, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld cut their teeth on Nixon's weird nose. George Herbert Walker Bush was a player with Kissinger. And the you can trace the Neo-con rot ... and with voting fraud we get the hand-picked wooden-head, valued for his 87 I.Q. and his ability to read a script, just like someone else named Reagan. Same scenario. Reagan was already showing signs of Alzheimer's in his first year. The model that worked so well, that they used it for Election 2000 with the new twist of phony tallies and tampered-with machines, votes, and purge lists.
The hypocrisy written about by Michael Green in this article reflects exactly what we have living for a long, long time.
The U.S. government is the Grand Casino mostly run by racketeers, and the House, not the people, always wins.
Anyway, let's get this show on the road, folks. Let's get our country back.
And no, jp, not with a personal stash of guns in a cabin. With the technology and weaponry that our government has to put down insurrections, nobody has a chance ... plus VIolence breeds more violence and revenge--an eye for an eye went out with a guy named Jesus. I'm not religious, but the Jesus of my childhood was one loving person who liked kids and one tough dude when he was angry with righteous anger about the phony-baloney holies and oppressive, violent leaders of all stripes.
Creative, non-violent, non-cooperation ... think about it. There's many ways to peel an onion without wounding or killing somebody.
************************************************************
The refusal to acknowledge that we are destroying our planet and we are on the brink of nuclear holocaust ... again ... and we really are running out of time ... is to engage in one of the most dangerous of all human behaviors: DENIAL.
Mohandas Gandhi, when he described the course of movements for social justice: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." [but nobody said it was easy ...]
In these very troubled times:
Let's not ask God to guide our footsteps if we won't move our feet.
So how about it? . . . If not now, when? . . . If not you and me, who?
Well, thank goodness we still have that amendment that says a president may be around for only two terms. We do still have that one, don't we? Because if we don't, and he "runs" for another term, he's sure to be "elected" just like the other two times.
"Doesn't she know that the Fifth Amendment has been suspended?
Doesn't she know that all those amendments have been suspended?
Doesn't she know that the president considers that whole document that these amendments amend to be "just a goddamed piece of paper"?"
Well, Professor, she isn't you or me. She is a full-fledged member of the Bush cheerleading team; a team that has positioned itslelf, with the help of Congress, to function in any way it wishes and not be burdened by "inconvenient" truths or laws of the land.
At some point in time, the citizens of this country have to stop pointing fingers at King George and start asking their House and Senate representatives why they were complicit in his coronation. King George would not have the power he wields without the help of Congress. They apparently think it's just a "goddamed piece of paper" as well.
There are so many players involved in the malfeasance that is Bush that when the damn finally breaks there won't be enough cameras or microphones for all the rats who want to come clean.
Nice piece, Prof, but you are forgetting one other consititutional amendment that is still extant: the right to bear arms! So I say Miss Goodling should avail herself of that god-given, Founding Fathers-hallowed right, hole up in a cabin in Idaho, and we'll just see about that there summons to appear before Congress, now won't we?
You could never in a thousand years convince this lady of her kinship with gitmo detainees.