From WaPo:

With his go-it-alone approach on Iraq, President Bush is flouting Congress and the public, so angering lawmakers that some consider impeachment an option over his war policy, a senator from Bush’s own party said Sunday.

So, it turns out Gonzo really was involved in the purge, thanks to some recently disclosed emails from that mysterious 18-day gap the Justice Dept. tried to get away with. Here’s the summary, in a nutshell, from Josh:

No surprise there, really. But keep this in mind. Everything the Justice Department has said that later turned out to be false was almost certainly known by the White House to be false, at the time the false statements were made, to the media, and most importantly, to Congress.

Let that sink in.

The title is from Patrick Henry. The context is a Metafilter discussion of this necessarily anonymous WaPo editorial about the surreal experience of receiving a National Security Letter from the FBI. Said letter demanded personal data about the editorial writer’s clients, and contained a gag provision prohibiting him from discussing any aspect of the request. And, of course, said letter was issued by the FBI with no Judicial oversight whatsoever, checks and balances be damned:

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case — including the mere fact that I received an NSL — from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I’ve now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point — a point we passed long ago — the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government’s use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

As discussed previously, the careful analysis of our Resident Anglican:

Yep, personally, it is easy to call bullshit on the actions of the AC. It is even easier if you disagree with them, as I do. However, I think that the overriding mind set with regard to cash distribution will remain Mr. Radtke’s response: “We certainly are in partnership with people who disagree with us, and that’s just fine. We give out our money based on the need, and not on the basis of some theological discussion.”

Of course, there is some pie-in-the-sky hopefulness to that. Politics is involved and will be forever. Property debates rage on right now over who owns churches and accounts that were previously associated with parishes that have withdrawn from ECUSA over the gay ordination issue. These issues will be in court for a long time. And, there are groups like Ekklesia who, while funding some of the same sort of mission programs ECUSA funds, blames ECUSA for trying to buy off its critics even while Ekklesia is spending more money on creating more critics as opposed to more poverty elimination. Makes the church look like the beltway. That is unfortunate.

It is enough to make you sick, really. Especially since it is likely that ECUSA will bend on the issue of gay ordination. I think the new Presiding Bishop has already mentioned that. Not sure. I don’t like that too much either. But, progress is slow when you’re trying to convince the world to end their prejudice. In order to keep working on that, ECUSA can’t afford an actual split from the AC lest they find themselves a “fringe” group with no weight to throw around. (Ed: isn’t ECUSA’s weight their cash?)

I guess the bottom line is that I find the waters are much more hopeful for change in the ECUSA camp than anywhere else. That said, the ECUSA camp has plenty of hurdles to cross itself. And, most of those hurdles are in this country. The tide is not overwhelmingly in support of the Very Rev. Gene Robinson, yet. So, we continue to work here and we continue dialogue there. Hopefully progress is being made, in spite of the politics of it all.

Heathen: We’ve got your experts.

The AC is the global body of Anglican/Episcopal folks; they’re at odds with the more liberal Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) over the ordination of homosexual priests and bishops, and the support of gay unions. There’s been lots of talk of a sectarian split over this, even, with the ECUSA going one way, and the AC going the other; it happens all the time in matters of faith, if you take the long view.

Except there’s a wrinkle. Nobody’s really saying it out loud, but it looks an awful lot like the AC wants the ECUSA to kowtow to its prejudices where gays are concerned, but really doesn’t want them to stop contributing to the global AC fund. The ECUSA contributes about a third of global AC money, apparently. From the NYT article:

American resentment at their role as the Communion’s deep pockets emerged last year when the Episcopal Church’s executive council was asked to increase its contribution to the Anglican Consultative Council, the Communion’s central coordinating body, by 10 percent each year for the next three years from $661,000 in 2007.

At the council’s last meeting, in England in 2005, the Episcopal Church’s representatives were asked to look on as observers, and not participate in decision making — a measure promoted by some conservative primates.

Mrs. Larom, the Episcopal Church’s director of Anglican relations, said some members of the executive council bristled at the budget request, saying, ” ‘Why should we give money when we’re not at the table?’ “

Something tells us the golden rule is about to come into play, and not the one that Jesus taught.

The only reason to refuse to testify on the record and under oath is if you want to be free to lie your ass off.

Read this and this and this, all of which make abundantly clear that Clinton did NOT fire USAs for political reasons, as Bush has now been shown to have done.

From Radley Balko:

Right now, I’m reading Dan Baum’s masterful history of the drug war Smoke and Mirrors for the third time. I can’t recommend it enough.

What becomes abundantly clear from Baum’s reporting: Everything, everything about the prohibition of marijuana is and has always been political. It basically boils down to Richard Nixon needing a wedge issue and a hammer with which to beat the dirty hippie anti-war protesters over the head. With just a bit of research, even hardened drug warriors in Nixon’s own administration in the late 1960s and early 1970s quickly realized marijuana was basically harmless.

From that, we have descended to a point where the government has determined it’s better that sick, crippled, suffering people (a) die, and (b) die in pain, than to give those dirty hippies the smallest of victories, even 35 years later.

Word.

Here’s a few extra facts the media seems unwilling to make clear:

• Clearing out USAs during a term is pretty much unprecedented, though (as we’ve said before) the 4-year-term usually means new Presidents get to pick their own as part of their new Administration. Saying “Clinton fired them all!” in this context, as a defense of the current gang, makes as much sense as complaining that Bush fired Clinton’s cabinet.
• Prior to PATRIOT, these appointees were subject to Congressional approval. After PATRIOT, they’re not. This creates a situation wherein Bush could replace his Congressionally-approved USAs with those who would not pass such scrutiny.
• Moving to clean out politically troublesome prosecutors smacks of a total disregard for the rule of law.
• Making such a move previously would have opened the door for Congressional oversight, since any replacement would have to be made with their approval. This is known as “checks and balances,” and you may recall somewhat hazily from your junior-high civics course.
• Post-PATRIOT, the executive branch is free to load the USA ranks with political functionaries presumably free to pursue prosecutions only of troublesome Democrats, as opposed to grotesquely corrupt Republicans like Duke Cunningham. As noted before, this purge-and-replace campaign has far more in common with the Saturday Night Massacre than anything else.
• Lying to Congress about why these USAs were dismissed is a big no-no.

Bush loyalists are attempting to use Clinton’s removal of the Bush-appointed USAs in 1993 as an example of similar behavior, but it just ain’t so. All presidents replace the USAs when they take office; they’re appointed to 4-year terms, so that’s not at all surprising.

The wacky part here is the idea of FIRING them in the middle of a term. Bush appointed these attorneys in the first place. And, curiously enough, several were involved in high-profile prosecutions of GOP lawmakers (e.g., Duke Cunningham) that were making waves for the Administration and the GOP in general. This is far more like the Saturday Night Massacre than the routine changing-of-the-guards that accompanies the shift from one administration to the next.

See more here and here. Oh, and here’s another bit on how Bush’s dismissal of a USA resulted in the halt of an investigation into . . . Jack Abramoff. Whups!

That is, you should, unless you already know the difference between Sunni and Shia.

The summary: Islam’s Whittenberg Door moment came when Muhammad died; the issue was not faith vs. works but instead one of sucession.

The more “orthodox” view, held by Sunnis — who comprise by far the largest chunk of Muslims worldwide — is that Abu Bakr, a relative and early convert, is the rightful heir to the Prophet. This was a big deal politically as well as spiritually. Muhammad had a close relationship with Bakr, and frequently asked him to lead prayers in his absence, and furthermore was selected by a large group of Muslims upon the Prophet’s death (at Medina, in 632), which gives credence to this view. About ninety percent of Muslims are Sunni.

There were, of course, those who refused to accept Bakr, and who instead supported Ali ibn Abi Talib, also a relative of the Prophet (and also his son-in-law). Complicating matters is that Ali did eventually become Caliph (the 4th), but this doesn’t seem to mollify the Shia. To them, he’s the first Imam, as opposed to the last of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs (as he is to Sunnis). Shia have a significant majority only in Iran and Iraq.

The divide was sufficiently far back that oral tradition has produced different traditions and spiritual laws as well as titles; Ayatollah is a Shia role, for example (apparently).

All this matters for lots of reasons, but one big damn deal to take note of is the fact that the Taliban and Osama are fundamentalist Sunnis, not Shia.

From the WaPo:

The White House suggested two years ago that the Justice Department fire all 93 U.S. attorneys, a proposal that eventually resulted in the dismissals of eight prosecutors last year, according to e-mails and internal documents that the administration will provide to Congress today.

Via Josh Marshall:

As has happened so many times in the last six years, the maximal version of this story — which seemed logical six weeks ago but which I couldn’t get myself to believe — turns out to be true. Indeed, it’s worse. We now know that Gonzales, McNulty and Moschella each lied to Congress. We know that the purge was a plan that began at the White House — and it was overseen by two of President Bush’s closest lieutenants in Washington — Miers and Gonzales. Sampson is the second resignation. There will certainly be more.

Jesus Fuck, Pelosi, grow some Goddamn balls.