Author Archives: Kyle Kimberlin

made men

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When I first saw the title of this column by William Rivers Pitt, “Was Commuting Libby an Impeachable Offense?” I thought “Bah, that’s like accusing Genghis Khan of littering. Who cares? Bush is prosecuting a personal war, at unimaginable expense, just for kicks and profit.” But then I read the column and found that it poses a very interesting issue:

Libby’s legal defense from the first day of his trial was that he was a fall guy taking the rap for others.

Fitzgerald pointedly stated that the details surrounding Libby’s actions put a cloud of suspicion over Vice President Dick Cheney.

Combine these two details and you wind up with Libby standing as a patsy taking the rap for Cheney.

Bush has the constitutional power to offer commutations, of course. But if this commutation was granted to Libby in order to derail a criminal investigation, if it was granted to cover up prior or ongoing criminal activities, that is itself a crime meriting the impeachment of George W. Bush.

Of course, the dunderheads democrats on capitol hill will never see this light. I suspect that if Bush nuked a major US city, then headed off to the ranch to clear brush, and Cheney got Halliburton on the line to start failing to rebuilding Ground Zero, the democrats might hold a news conference. Patrick Leahy would deliver a tersely worded statement. But they do not want to impeach George Bush. They want him right where he is, so he can play their MacGuffin through the ’08 elections.

Fahgeddaboudit. Deys untouchable.

pardon me, hoss, but while you’re at it …

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Well, we’ve had a night to get over our giddy enjoyment of the Libby commutation. We’ve seen W on TV, declaiming the ponderous difficulty of his decision. He looks sober, if not grave, about it, doesn’t he? And that scene would’ve played much funnier if he hadn’t been at Walter Reed, handing out Purple Hearts. The man has all the depth of a horse trough.

The Libby pardon would also be more amusing if Bush wasn’t holding hundreds of people in prison without trial, charge, or the rights to counsel and habeas corpus. And if he hadn’t passed, without comment, on the opportunity to commute the sentences of two Border Patrol agents, each serving over a decade in prison for shooting a drug dealer in the ass.

On Saturday, while Bush was perhaps deep in contemplation of Scooter’s fate, protesters rallied in San Antonio for the release of the two agents.

Waving American flags and chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A.,” protestors angry about the imprisonment of two U.S. Border Patrol agents rallied Saturday, demanding the release of the men and calling for the dismissal of the prosecutor who handled the case.

The demonstration drew about 200 activists to the office lawn of U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, the top prosecutor for the Western District of Texas who won the convictions last year and has become a main target of groups fighting for tighter immigration controls.

I can’t find reference to any comment by Bush on the Ramos-Compean case. And that’s a shame. It’s a travesty of justice and it proves that W didn’t intercede for Libby because it’s fair, but because it appeals to W’s sense of fraternity. Libby is one of his boys; he wears the old school tie, so to speak.

When did the White House become Omega House? Same as it ever was.

Bush spares Libby from prison!

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Bush spares Libby from prison – Financial Times – MSNBC.com

President George W. Bush on Monday commuted the 30-month prison sentence handed to Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to vice president Dick Cheney, for lying and obstructing justice.

Oh, splendid!  The presidential Tony Lamas find their mark, squarely amidst yet another big, smelly political cow pie.  This couldn't be better theater, unless of course Scooter gets the Medal of Freedom. I'd pay a buck to see that, wouldn't you? Great photo op for the history books.

W must stand for What A Legacy. 

Scooter: do not pass Go

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Scooter Libby Cannot Delay Sentence – CommonDreams.org

A federal appeals court panel has unanimously ordered that a former White House aide, I. Lewis Libby Jr., is not entitled to remain free while he appeals his convictions for obstruction of justice, false statements, and perjury in connection with an investigation into the leak of a CIA officer’s identity. Barring intervention from the Supreme Court or President Bush, Libby is likely to be required to report within the next few weeks to begin his 2 1/2-year prison sentence.

I think this sucks. Libby should not be going to prison under these circumstances. The fish rots from the head. Scooter should certainly be packed off to the Graybar Hotel, but only on the heels of Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, and Rove.

way to go

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I was just sitting here, watching The Weather Channel with the sound off, contemplating writers’ block and watching this guy standing on the hood of his pickup, in the midst of a flood. He’s obviously waiting for rescue, and perilously close to being washed to his just desserts, truck and all, but the raging torrent.

A thought occurred: That would be a bad way to die.

A second thought: What’s a good way?

I used to think I could think of a few preferable ways to meet one’s demise. But over the years I’ve forgotten all but one, because I never actually heard of anyone going in those ways.

So I put it to you: What would be your end, if you could chose it? And have you ever known of anyone to depart in that manner?

My remaining druther, for the record: Having gone to bed in full possession of my faculties, of a painless cerebrovascular accident, in my sleep.

protest in rhode island

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NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) — About 100 protesters are gathered outside the Naval War College in Newport to protest President Bush and the war in Iraq.

They’re holding signs saying “Shame,” “Impeach,” and “War is never the answer,” and chanting “No justice. No peace. U-S out of the Middle East.” [Link]

possible worlds, possible blogs

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(… or, feeling full, needing to void)

Apologies in advance to all of you, to Western philosophy, physics, Vonnegut, Shakespeare, and Douglas Adams.

In comments to my post veterans protest the war, my friend Corewell asks, “How about amnesty for all the illegal Mexicans, Indians, Arabs, Chinese,etc? Do you deliberately ignore this issue?”

That’s an extremely interesting question. I have posted about immigration several times. But I’m currently ignoring that, and an infinite number of other topics. Actually, all media, and all conceivable expressions of human consciousness, are always ignoring infinite topics. In fact, when you compare the infinite topics that I’m ignoring with the few that I’m not ignoring, my blog is grain of sand on an endless beach.

If this blog is compared to just the known world of the Internet, which is just a crapload of stuff on a bunch of computers, a recent and perhaps ill-advised invention on a small and insignificant planet on the outer spiral arm of a low rent galaxy, this blog blinks out of perceivable existence altogether. I mean, I get an average of six readers a day … God bless you, every one.

One of the next ideas to arrive (admittedly, I have no idea how many ideas I’ve had in the minutes I’ve been writing this, and only a fleeting apprehension that I’m thinking at all) is to say So It Goes. This is not an expression of indifference, but an allusion to the premise held forth by the Tralfamadorians of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. It’s true that I’m not currently blogging about immigration, but there are unknowable moments along the timeline of the universe – and across possible worlds – in which I am blogging about immigration.

Watch your step! We have been shoved off the rail fence of phenomenology into the sticky pastures of ontology. But I’ll be brief.

We can blame a Greek guy named Leucippus, who lived about 2500 years ago, for the idea that the universe consists of two elements – for our purposes, issues. He called them the Full (Solid), and the Empty (Void). Both the solid and the void in the universe are infinite, he said. And everything is made of these two issues. Before that, nobody believed in things that weren’t solid; i.e., didn’t exist. They said that what is (solid) is finite and immutable, because change can only happen if what is not becomes what is, which is an unintelligible concept to George W. Bush.

Wait, how did he poke his snout in here? Let’s come back to him in a minute.

Leucippus sets the foundation of multiple – hence infinite – possible worlds. And proves that the things I have blogged about, and the things I haven’t even thought about, are equally possible and infinite. Now, given that the world we think we know and live in is as beset by paradox as the universe is infested with what appears to be space, I have no problem conceiving a possible world in which I am Lou Dobbs. But since this world has one of him, I’ll stick to being what I think of as being Me.

And Me wants to assert that the war is a solid, immigration is a void, and Bush is a gas.

Which brings us back to George W. Bush and the non-issue of immigration. It’s a situation. It’s not an issue until the issue is defined, which it hasn’t been, and until a solution is devised, which seems less plausible than me being Dobbs, or Vonnegut, or Shakespeare for that matter, in any possible world.

Well this has been fun. You got to watch me write and shake my eclectic cap and bells, and pretend I know stuff. But look, now Bush is on stage in his Henry V “Once more into the breach dear friends” official US Navy flight suit, declaiming on immigration reform, to dissolve the gathering clarity of his total and totalitarian incompetence, high crimes, and misdemeanors.

veterans protest the war

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Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

The protest was led by Mike Sanger, an Iraq war veteran who along with two other veterans recently started the Kansas City chapter of a national organization called Iraq Veterans Against the War.

“Everybody needs to be united to put an end to this madness,” said Sanger, who was dressed in desert camouflage pants, a black T-shirt and a desert boonie hat.

America, off the table

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I was listening to Democracy Now on PBS today, and heard some remarkable comments by Salt Lake City’s democratic mayor on the subject of Bush-Cheney impeachment, and the failures of the Democratic Party.

ROCKY ANDERSON: It seems very odd to me that any Democrat would say that a constitutional remedy, a remedy the founders felt very strongly about, when a president through his or her wrongdoing is doing damage to our country, that that remedy would ever be off the table. There can only be one reason for it, and that’s the Democrats want to politically cash in on this disastrous administration in the 2008 elections. And I think that’s wrong.

I think that when we have a president who has blatantly violated our own Constitution, our own treaty obligations, our own statutory law, abused his powers in remarkable ways, undermined the balance of power, exerted a unitary executive power unknown to this country and to our democracy, and at the same time betrayed his trust with our Congress, with the American people, by his deceit in leading us into this war and through his utter incompetency — if impeachment were ever called for, this is certainly the time, and this is exactly what the founders had in mind.

I strongly recommend the whole interview.

collateral demise

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Meanwhile, over in Afghanistan, Karzai is pissed.

“Innocent people are becoming victims of reckless operations” because the troops had ignored Afghan advice for years, Mr Karzai told reporters.

He was speaking after a week in which up to 90 Afghan civilians were killed.

“You don’t fight a terrorist by firing a field gun 37 kilometres (24 miles) away into a target. That’s definitely, surely bound to cause civilian casualties,” he said.

More civilians have been killed this year as a result of foreign military action than have been killed by insurgents, correspondents say.

The south of the country has seen the worst violence since the Taleban were ousted from power in 2001 by US-led troops.