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Ethics Committee ready to investigate DeLay

Looks like the hurdle created by Doc Hastings has been removed. 

The House Ethics Committee will move ahead now in its investigations of DeLay.  The problem was the decision Hastings made to put the actual investigations in the hands of Republican staff members.  He's backed down.  The Washington Post reports:

The logjam was broken by Chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash., and senior Democrat Alan Mollohan of West Virginia. The latest dispute was over the powers allotted to Hastings' chief of staff, Ed Cassidy, who will work part-time for the committee but not be part of the investigative staff. The two leaders swapped proposals for several hours Thursday night before agreeing on Cassidy's role.

But none of us should believe this creates a wide open road to the end of Tom DeLay.  The Republicans will surely use the Committee in an effort to "level the playing field"  and nail Democrats for dubious travel arrangements or anything else they can find to create embarrassment for Congressional Democrats.

US: torturing prisoners, abetting criminals

Elizabeth Holtzman, whose Nation article on torture and impeachment has been noted and excerpted here, has also given a long interview today to Amy Goodman at Democracy Now!

Here are some excerpts:

What happened was in the 1990s, during the, I guess it was the Clinton administration at that time, Congress decided that it wanted to adopt laws to take it into full compliance with its obligations under an international torture statute and an international torture treaty and the Geneva Conventions. And so, it passed two laws. One is a statute making it a U.S. crime to engage in torture. It was passed two years before the 1996 law, and then you have the War Crimes Act of 1996.

And basically, what it does, it makes grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions a federal crime. Got it? Just like kidnapping or interstate burglary or child pornography, it is a federal crime. And the other thing, that's interesting is that it carries the death penalty. If death

Impeachment

Here is the rationale.

Here are the numbers.

So what?

You're kidding, is that true?

Sure it's true.

But what proof do you have?

What does it matter!  It's what everyone believes.

So it's not really true.

Okay,  Maybe not.  But it works.

Not very honorable.

"Honorable"?  What the hell! Some naive concept?  I tell you, it works.  People believe it.  It's not about honorable for god's sake.

But you can't run a democracy this way, it just isn't...

Democracy?  You've got to be out of your mind.  That is not what this is about.  It's about winning.

Well, about half of us in America are trying to preserve democracy, to find out what's true and not just how many lies people are willing to believe.

 Go ahead.  That way you lose.

Read this.  Listen to this.

Iraq: No way back, no way forward

Simon Tisdall, Guardian columnist, writes:

His Fort Bragg moment, if handled skillfully, might have enabled him to refute the Republican senator Chuck Hagel's widely quoted, armour-piercing jibe that the White House is "disconnected from reality [and] making it up as they go along".

But the president fluffed it.

Cooper, Miller, Novak, Plame and contempt

New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said the newspaper group... is "deeply disappointed by Time Inc.'s decision to deliver the subpoenaed records." The newspaper "faced similar pressures in 1978 when both our reporter Myron Farber and the Times Company were held in contempt of court for refusing to provide the names of confidential sources," he said. "Our focus is now on our own reporter, Judith Miller, and in supporting her during this difficult time."

Okay.  So now what? Anything from Novak?

Columnist Robert Novak, who was the first to identify the CIA agent in print, told CNN he "will reveal all" after the matter is resolved, adding that it is wrong for the government to jail journalists. Novak, who has not been held in contempt, has not commented on his involvement in the investigation.

That's not true about Novak not being held in contempt.  Everyone I know holds him in contempt.