This is an open letter of sorts to Keith Olbermann.  I don't know him but I have seen him post here in the past.  I am a HUGE fan of his show though.  In particular I enjoy the "Worst Person in the World" segment.  Well in light of recent events I would like to enlist the help of Mr Olbermann and in a certain sense this help could be self serving.  You see there is now a story going around the blogosphere that originated with a NYTimes article written last week.  The substance of that article and the lack of a viable response from the NBC network has given a lot of us pause about the credibility of that network.  So for the sake of the liberal blogosphere and for the sake of the credibility of your parent network, Mr. Olberman I ask you to name General Barry McCaffrey as "the Worst Person in the World"  because it would seem he has definitely earned it.

I have been following the excellent Glenn Greenwald and his take related to a very troubling lack of honesty from NBC's Brian Williams, that is what they have done to cover up the ties of their "military analysts" with the military/industrial complex:

Greenwald notes:

"Following up on yesterday's post regarding NBC News' suppression of the "military analyst" scandal and its ongoing reliance on the deeply conflicted Barry McCaffrey:  I have obtained, from a very trustworthy source, emails sent last week between NBC News executives and McCaffrey (which cc:d Brian Williams), reflecting the extensive collaboration between NBC and McCaffrey to formulate a coordinated response to David Barstow's story...  

Rather than honestly investigate the numerous facts which Barstow uncovered about McCaffery's severe conflicts, NBC instead is clearly in self-protective mode, working in tandem with McCaffrey to create justifications for what they have done..."

More follows.

After Torture: Discussing a Plan for Justice in the Post-Bush Era

An Open Forum hosted by the Center on Law and Security and Harper's Magazine

On publication of contributing editor Scott Horton's report, Justice After Bush, in the December issue of Harper's Magazine, a panel of legal experts will discuss methods available to the government with reckoning with a legacy of human rights abuses.

Event Details

This event is free and open to the public

Date: December 4, 2008
Time: 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Location: Lipton Hall, 108 W. 3rd Street, NY, NY [Yahoo! Maps link]

pragmatic

Definition: of or pertaining to a practical point of view or practical considerations.

If you've been reading the newspaper or watching television recently, you probably noticed the sudden ubiquity of the word "pragmatic." President-elect Obama has repeatedly used the term to describe his new administration, citing it in juxtaposition to "ideology." The media has followed his lead with lines like the one we see in today's Politico, which says Obama's new economic adviser Christina Romer "shares much of Summer's centrist, pragmatic perspective on economic issues."

Scarcely a day goes by on which Glenn Greenwald doesn't peel back the layers of obfuscation and deception to stick a needle directly in the bullseye of what ails our deeply ailing Republic regarding the rule of law and the attitudes expressed about it by our leaders, the megamedia and the go-along, get-along crowd wherever they are found.

Today, as he occasionally does, he exchanged his needle for a chainsaw and put it to the pathetic coverage of John Brennan's opting out as a candidate for the job of CIA director. Greenwald writes long, and an excerpt scarcely does him justice, so I recommend that you click through and read the whole piece. Here are some bits to whet your appetite:

Andrew Sullivan made a related point about an AP article by Pamela Hess which contains this wretched sentence: "Obama's advisers had grown increasingly concerned in recent days over Web logs that accused Brennan of condoning harsh interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, which critics call torture."  As Sullivan notes: "no sane person with any knowledge of the subject disputes the fact that waterboarding is and always has been torture. So why cannot the AP tell the truth?"

All of this underscores a crucial fact:  a major reason why the Bush administration was able to break numerous laws in general, and subject detainees to illegal torture specifically, is because the media immediately mimicked the Orwellian methods adopted by the administration to speak about and obfuscate these matters.  Objective propositions that were never in dispute and cannot be reasonably disputed were denied by the Bush administration, and -- for that reason alone (one side says it's true) -- the media immediately depicted these objective facts as subject to reasonable dispute.

Hence: "war crimes" were transformed into "policy disputes" between hawkish defenders of the country and shrill, soft-on-terror liberals.  "Torture" became "enhanced interrogation techniques which critics call torture."  And, most of all, flagrant lawbreaking -- doing X when the law says:  "X is a felony" -- became acting "pursuant to robust theories of executive power" or "expansive interpretations of statutes and treaties" or, at worst, "in circumvention of legal frameworks." ...

All of that is what has created the warped Beltway consensus that Bush officials who broke the law, committed war crimes and other felonies, should be absolutely immunized from the consequences of their crimes.  That's because when government officials commit "crimes," they're not actually crimes -- they're mere "policy disputes among people in good faith."  Only "incendiary" liberals believe that government officials who break the law should be subject to accusations as shrill and extreme as: "they committed crimes."

Behold the excuses which former Bush DOJ lawyer and current Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith offers up today in The Washington Post on behalf of his former colleagues, as he argues not only that Bush's torture regime shouldn't be criminally prosecuted, but also that no new investigations of any kind -- including by Congress or an Executive branch truth-finding Commission -- should be pursued ...

The Goldsmith piece is a loathsome essay in double-think and double-standards, which is presented in an astonishing deadpan. As Greenwald points out, this remarkable piece was published in a newspaper in a country that glories in its tough-on-crime approach and currently imprisons a larger proportion of its population than anywhere else on earth.  

Yet the same political establishment that has created and continues to fuel this incomparably merciless justice system has made themselves exempt from the rule of law. When they flagrantly violate even the most consequential criminal prohibitions -- laws criminalizing torture, spying on American citizens, obstruction of justice -- it's only the shrill rabble (the "incendiary Democratic base") who would possibly believe that they should be held accountable and investigated, let alone prosecuted and imprisoned.

Over the next few weeks, we can expect more in the nature of lousy media framing on this issue and additional outrageous columns by the likes of Goldsmith. That's what we've come to expect from the enablers. Progressives have a simple choice. Will we choose to let an investigation and prosecution of torture and other outlawry go by the wayside in favor of dealing "with more important matters"? Or will we exert the clout we supposedly incendiary members of the Democratic base have by spurring our representatives to prevent the culprits from walking away with a final thumbing of their noses at the rule of law they have violated thus far with impunity?

One sign is that no discussion of "the problem", including the problem of the perennial official US relationship with Israel's right tilted government is tolerated. A sign is the vandalism of the keywords in my most recent diary entry:
Tags: Naderite troll bullshit, anti-Semitic crap
Do the members who attacked me, deleted most of my comments, and vandalized the tags, OWN this site? In the poll results in my diary entry, 86 of 301 respondents agreed with my concerns....

These are the consequences of the problem: courtesy of Glenn Greenwald
with the turn towards the right and the unquestioning support from the DKos majority, of just about anything coming out of the transition team now:

Yesterday I read several pieces about the Democrats’ refusal to strip Joe Lieberman of his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.  A couple were by my hero, Glenn Greenwald, who laid out clearly the compelling reasons why the Democrats, if they had a shred of integrity, ought to boot Lieberman out.  His logic was direct and devastating, as it almost always is, and I thought, "Yes, that’s absolutely right!"

Greenwald points out (Nov. 18) that Howard Dean, my hero, wasn’t bothered by Lieberman’s keeping his chair, saying it is up to the senators and president-elect, "and that’s fine."  Naturally, I followed the links to Firedoglake, where Jane Hamsher had a transcript of her questioning Dean in a conference call with bloggers.

I read with some interest the mean things that Markos said about Ralph Nader, arguably the greatest journalist who has ever lived. I voted for Barack Obama but with eyes wide open. I think he'll be better and more sensible than the Republicans in power. But we really need to take a deeper look at our loyalty to the democratic party and the democratic party only if we're really serious about things like the rule of law applying to everyone or even getting out of wars that would be more honestly defined as crimes. In short: if you really want to put the fear of god into Democrats, then you need to start supporting third party candidates. This crazy idea that we just keep giving them more money no matter how horribly they treat us simply isn't beginning to fly anymore.

I tend to be pretty bombastic in conversation and writing, on occasion I have been known to use fowl language even. That stems largely from the fact that I tend to be a bit over passionate about certain things, and I go way over the edge. Sometimes it's just an act to help make a point. But in politics for the last eight years, I have had good reason, since the actions of the Bush Administration and Republicans were far outside the realm of mere political differences, and were beyond anything that I would reserve kind language for.

Glenn Greenwald writes on this today and is, as always, far more eloquent:

As dems and the media have been focused on the circular firing squad that is the gop the congressional implications of wiping out the republicans has been to a certain extent ignored. To be fair the election is not over yet and it is somewhat premature to treat it as if it is. Still, it is worth looking into the future just a little to examine the next moves of the dems as they consolidate power on the hill.

Yesterday I posted a comment on one of teacherken's diaries about my hopes for a progressive future.

I love Glenn Greenwald in his unrelenting efforts to expose government secrecy and hypocrisy - from either the left or the right. Today he leads with Poor John McCain: Forced against his honor to run an ugly campaign

Yes, that is a U.S. congressman in this Youtube video, and yes, he is referring to treason, which is what martial law is in the United States.  We don't do martial law. The Constitution provides only for the suspension of habeas corpus in times of war, by a vote in the legislature, and nothing else. The post-Civil War Posse Comitatus Act bars the use of regular military, as opposed to national guard, in the "Homeland" to quell civil disturbance. This is precisely why the Founders didn't want "standing armies." They knew that the first thing on the minds of tyrants is to turn them against their own people.

That congressman, Brad Sherman is saying a few members were even told that "there would be Martial Law in America if we voted "No"" on the bailout.

Glenn Greenwald reports the Third Army Brigade is putting a unit of regular army troops seasoned in Iraq, in the "Homeland" for the first time since Posse Comitatus, to "help with civil unrest and crowd control."  Why isn't Rep. Sherman getting sat down before a committee, under oath, and asked "Just WHO approached whom and talked about martial law, congressman? What exactly did they say, and what did they mean by it?" In other countries this is called a coup,..

Let me start with an extended quote from Glenn Greenwald:

Retired New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston, writing at The New Republic yesterday, makes a critical point, in a piece entitled "Celebrating the Bailout Bill's Failure":

Whether you favor the $700 billion bailout or not, the House vote today should make you cheer -- loudly.

Why?

Because the majority vote against it shows that Washington is not entirely in the service of the political donor class, by which I mean Wall Street and the corporations who rely on it for their financing. These campaign donors, a narrow slice of America, have lobbied and donated their way into a system that stacks the economic rules in their favor. But faced with as many as 200 telephone calls against the bailout for every one in favor, a lot of House members decided to listen to their constituents today instead of their campaign donors.

http://www.salon.com/...

Glenn Greenwald is indisputably a great writer, but today he offers a Top 10 List that should be found in every high school and college text book in America.

Greenwald's list is about the bail-out essentially, but he nails how our government works via the first sentence of every list.

To wit:

Glenn Greenwald posts at Salon a very intriguing question, quoting an Army Times article several bloggers pointed out to him:

"beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the [1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division] will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North" -- "the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities." [emphasis GG]

Now Greenwald rightly doesn't go all tin hat on you, since a brigade isn't full meltdown, but it's still dangerous and possibly illegal.

I won't pretend to be an expert in the financial market, and much of what I know has been from posts read here as well as various headlines in the media's websites.  I thought today's post by Bonddad summed up my feelings well about Republican philosophy and the supposed "free marketers."  But my feelings ran deeper than that as I watched the market roller coaster this week, and I looked toward Glenn Greenwald's blog as I always do everyday to see what he might have thought.

Thankfully, he didn't disappoint.