Most, but not all, of Iraq’s provinces will be voting (awash in communal restrictions and major security precautions) in provincial elections on Saturday. It is – and remains – a sign, not anywhere near a solution.

So what can the Iraqi elections achieve? Hopefully, they will reverse the destabilizing repercussions of the January 2005 polls, when the absence of key constituencies led to highly imbalanced councils, and the preponderance of religiously-guided, exile-bred parties produced poor administration and pervasive corruption.

Likewise, the elections will be a good test-run for a parliamentary vote later this year. They are a potential bellwether for nationwide political trends including the role of religion, the endurance of ethnic and sectarian identities, and the deepening conflict over decentralization.

[snip]

…The voting will indeed be a sign of revival. We should see it as an indicator of things to come. But we should not interpret it as conclusive evidence that Iraq has been fixed. There, elections are just the beginning. Source

The State Department will not renew Blackwater Worldwide’s contract to protect American diplomats in Iraq when it expires in May, a senior U.S. official said Friday. The official told The Associated Press that the contract will lapse because of the Iraqi government’s decision to deny Blackwater a license to operate. Source

Missing from this and all previous related stories is whether any new or expanded contract with another private contractor shall include checks against hiring in or subcontracting for Blackwater employees.

It can now officially be replaced as a party mascot with by the image of a lemming.

As these House Republicans have now amply demonstrated, they hold no interest in actually governing, as opposed to their perceived emphasis on the importance of lockstep, Stepford-like recalcitrant partisanship.

Immediately reminded ye old scribe of this scene:

Except that the House lacks anyone willing to actually study the menu and subsequently make an informed choice. At least in the Senate, some R’s have already signaled that they will not willingly enter into this self-constructed pull-the-wagons-into-a-circle (and pray) mode.

Update (8:00 p.m.): Shorter version of what the House Republicans scrawled on the virtual wall of the town square today: Billions for Wall Street, bupkis for Main Street.

…There’s a fine line between being willing to compromise and being willing to surrender, and I think Obama generally stayed on the right side of it, while being open enough to compromise that he will get real credit for trying.

The House Republicans, by contrast, looked silly. They were carping about tiny bits of the stimulus (the capitol mall?!). They changed the bits they objected to from one day to the next, and looked for all the world like what I take them to be: people who were determined to oppose the stimulus bill from the outset.

The function of trying to win bipartisan support, it seems to me, is to clarify things to the American people. If the House Republicans could be induced to support the bill, that becomes clear, and everyone would have been better off. If, on the other hand, they were bound and determined to oppose it, no matter what, that also becomes clear. Neither would have been clear had Obama not bothered to try. Source

Or might the upshot be that it is a part of a longer-range legislative fallback strategy by the administraion (Rahm Emanuel?). To wit, operating under the sure knowledge that there will be a House-Senate reconciliation bill coming down the pike shortly, and that that is the one in which the Democratic majority assertively can reconfigure monies, cuts, programs and stimuli.

Based on the vote on just the separate House bill today, the worst that can happen with the real bill when it comes up (insofar as Republican voting is concerned) is exactly the same thing. That is, there is no on-the-record support in that camp to lose, so the administration and the House Democratic leadership need only to not lose more than 26 votes (probably a 24-karat given that not that many will switch to voting nay in any case).

The Senate vote on any final reconciliation bill is a tiny bit more dicey, but there is also much, much less wiggle room for those on the record in support on that chamber’s own first version of such a bill (that is, the natural constituency of any one senator is intrinsically more heterogenous while also – mostly – closer to the spectrum spread of the electorate than that of any one representative).

Please, if you read nothing else today, at least go now and read Hilzoy’s summation.

Gee, ya think?

Maybe, just maybe, the old (and increasingly, practically by the hour, spindly and decrepit) $hell game is about to be called out to face the bunco squad. And keep in mind that this is before confirmation of the new Treasury Secretary-designate.

Basking on the newly-swept bedrock of the United States of America’s principles and system of government.

It’s worth remembering that George W. Bush’s presidency hardly qualified as “normal.” Torturing prisoners? Not normal. Creating a prison system specifically designed to evade US responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions, let alone its own laws? Not normal. Invading another country on the slimmest shreds of evidence? Not normal. Arguing unsound theories of the vice president’s role in government? Not normal. Irresponsibly spending the government’s money while enacting ill-conceived tax cuts? Not normal. A supine Congress? Not normal. Not asking Americans to sacrifice during a time of crisis? Not normal.

[snip]

With President Barack Obama now in office, I do not see a need for revolution. Rather, I see a need to return to American tradiations of order in government, separated powers, and an executive that works with the legislature, rather than attempting to ignore or steamroller it when members of Congress grow inconvenient. I look forward to a foreign policy rooted in a cold assessment of US interests and a greater respect for other nations’ sovereignty. I look forward to a war policy rooted in continuing to prosecute this war on terror, but doing so in a way that is consistent with American values and a respect for individuals’ dignity and rights.

In other words, I want a return to normalcy. Source

As a country, as a people, we find ourselves very far beyond the trite and sappy “It’s morning in America” of not all that long ago, in the realm of “It’s America in America.”

America 2.0? Not by a long shot. While the landmarks may be familiar, the path ahead is virgin; may our journey leave it unsullied.

They were full of many things (among them hope, pride, joy, etc.), but apparently not too much of other, um, things.

…are now promises kept.

And methodically continuing onward.

President Barack Obama was to sign Thursday a series of executive orders to close the Guantanamo “war on terror” prison, end harsh interrogation tactics and shutter secret prisons, marking a dramatic reversal of policy from his predecessor.

[snip]

The president was to kick off the day by signing an executive order that would start the process of closing the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, a White House official said.

“The detention facilities at Guantanamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order,” said the draft order, posted on the website of the American Civil Liberties Union and confirmed by a White House source.

White House counsel Greg Craig told Democratic and Republican lawmakers late Wednesday “to expect ’several’ executive orders on Guantanamo Bay,” the Washington Post said citing sources familiar with the briefings.

The orders involve “altering CIA detention and interrogation rules, limiting interrogation standards in all US facilities worldwide to those outlined in the Army Field Manual, and prohibiting the agency from secretly holding terrorist detainees in third-country prisons,” it said.

[snip]

The New York Times said the “orders would bring to an end a Central Intelligence Agency program that kept terrorism suspects in secret custody for months or years.” Source

More:

The intelligence agency built a network of secret prisons in 2002 to house and interrogate senior Qaeda figures captured overseas. The exact number of suspects to have moved through the prisons is unknown, although Michael Hayden, the departing director of the agency, has in the past put the number at “fewer than 100.”

The secret detentions brought international condemnation, and in September 2006, President George W. Bush ordered that the remaining 14 detainees in CIA custody be transferred to Guantánamo Bay and tried by military tribunals.

But Bush made clear at the time that he was not shutting down the CIA detention system, and in the last two years, two Qaeda operatives are believed to have been detained in agency prisons for several months each before being transferred to Guantánamo Bay.

A government official said Obama’s order on the CIA would still allow its officers abroad to temporarily detain terrorism suspects and transfer them to other agencies, but would no longer allow the agency to carry out long-term detentions.

[snip]

The order also directs an immediate assessment of the prison itself to ensure that the men are held in conditions that meet the humanitarian requirements of the Geneva Convention. That provision appeared to be a pointed embrace of the international treaties that the Bush administration often argued did not apply to detainees captured in the war against terrorism. Source

In under-the-radar developments, if an integrated classified intelligence/Pentagon version of Google (Spookle?) is to be set up, better it and its rules and strictures be set up by the new administration than the last.

U.S. spy agencies’ sensitive data should soon be linked by Google-like search systems, nearly five years after the intelligence community was rebuked by the 9/11 Commission for failing to “connect the dots” and detect the attack.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has launched a sweeping technology program to knit together the thousands of databases across all 16 spy agencies. After years of bureaucratic snafus, intelligence analysts will be able to search through secret intelligence files the same way they can search public data on the Internet.

Linking up the 16 agencies is the challenge at the heart of the job of director of national intelligence, created after 9/11. Dennis Blair, nominated by President Barack Obama to succeed Mr. McConnell, faces a confirmation hearing Thursday where senators are likely to ask how he will make agencies with different histories and missions work together.

The new information program also is designed to include Facebook-like social-networking programs and classified news feeds.…

[snip]

The program is likely to get a review from Mr. Blair. The new administration is expected to make sure it is adequately funded, effective and protects privacy.Source

That last bit in the snippet may be of the most import, expecially in consideration of keeping such a powerful tool within, and under the control of, mutliple entities (wherein the normalcy of bureaucratic tensions and inter-agency turf wars can act to mitigate and flag misuse, abuse and mission creep), ensuring it is not placed (or yanked) under direct, solitary control of any one of the departments or agencies designated as users and creating from the day it is switched on inextricably interwoven oversight and accountability with real teeth.

Addendum (10:45 a.m.):

It is well and good (and more than necessary) to virtually put a red ‘X’ through egregious, disreputable and venal policies of the last administration.

There remains more than sufficient room on the page (for example, number 3 as listed here) for the new administration to make its own marks.

Go for it.

Roll the credits; bring up the house lights. The most painfully composed, most maladroitly constructed B-movie yet seen is over.

Good riddance to bad rub-Bush.

Adieu to the panicked, the inept, the feckless and the scurrilous of the last woebegone administration, to those cohorts of it dedicated to employing and exploiting the flag as a shield and as a shroud, to the profligacy of the nefarious.

Looking back at the last great sea change in governance during the direst of economic times, from the March 8, 1933 issue of The Nation come sentiments all too contemporarily relevant:

…It was a Grand Old Party—for them—while it lasted. Makers and beneficiaries of our politico-economic system, these are the men whose failure is now written large in the towering empty edifices that scrape the New York sky, in the hundreds of thousands of “For sale” and “To let” signs which adorn our cities, in the closed banks, in the foreclosed farms, in the whole picture of devastation which has come under their rule.

Have these captains and kings departed—not to return? The epoch of their wanton and repulsive leadership is ending. Their incompetence and their betrayal are manifest. But much of the evil they have done lives after them. The coming years will see the struggle to purge America, to reassert the promise of American life, to validate, in consonance with the changed times and conditions, the high aspirations of the founders of the nation. Mr. Roosevelt has the opportunity to be the leader of this renaissance, but he will have to forge as his instrument a wholly different Democratic Party from that which so long has been indistinguishable from the Republican. Source

It is the end.

It is the Last Day of Madness.

For those conversant with Isaac Asimov’s Foundation triology, it has been akin to witnessing the regime of The Mule.

We bid sayonara to the sociopaths and the megalomaniacs, to a government dominated and controlled by the small, shriveled souls of thugs not seeking justice but bent on revenge.

It is the final stanza of the modern March of Folly. Removed from the helm and the levers of power are those, and their enablers, who would willfully and deliberately subvert and pummel the Constitution (and consequently, America) onto life support, even then all but reaching to yank the plug.

The Era of Crassness is waning away as we opt for the return of diplomacy as a viable, robust and preternaturally favored tool.

Good-bye to functioning from the gut and shooting from the hip. Hello to operating from the head — and the heart.

It is the passing of a time dedicated to tearing down the structures of government of, by and for the people, and the re-emergence of a time cognizant of the necessity of rationally and efficaciously building them up.

It is the return of the reality-based community.

It is the end.

It is the beginning.
 
 
 
 
 

N.B.: Some links overlaid on existing text after initial posting.

Pete Seeger, still a force at nearly 90.

There is a difference between celebration and celebrity. There is a line separating popularity and abject adulation.

Much too much of the mainstream media, in full ‘everything must be blown out of proportion’ mode, is right now shakily toe-dancing on the line and perilously close to free-falling well past it by constructing a cult of personality. In any time — in any government — a cult of personality is laden with a myriad of inalienable, self-evident built-in dangers.

Personality is an incidental ingredient; it is icing on the cake. What matters is the establishment of policy and the actions created or undertaken based on those policies.

Ye old scribe has no truck with putting any president (or president-elect) on a pedestal. What does matter (and what is a more sage indicator of success) is a president with feet firmly planted on the solid ground of reality who when in office (and whose advisers and staff) do not shy from or bedangle and disguise that reality, who do not shirk responsibility and accountability, from whom measurements of progress can be readily gleaned.

The signs are good and are promising for the metaphorical morning after, but please — let’s not let ourselves get carried away nor allow hyperbole reign.

To all the Republicans (and too those non-Republicans) bloviating about how tax cuts are the magic cure-all for now entrenched fiscal gagging:

Been there. Done that. Got the tattered T-shirt.

Oy vey.

Millions of people will be glued to the TV next week when President-elect Barack Obama takes his oath of office. But in Federal Way, students will need to get permission from their parents to watch the historical inauguration in school. Source

Quintuple yuppers.

This decision is so ridiculous that it can’t be boneheaded.…

[snip]

The televised inauguration of America’s next president is not a feature film. It’s a current event, one that everyone who has the opportunity to witness should watch. Our next Commander in Chief is going to speak to our future. Young people, especially, should hear his message. Source

The anti-knowledge, anti-history, anti-reality Leave No Child Educated phalanx, sad to say, is still kicking.

The woebegone G. Walker administration plays the fear card for (one hopes) the final time.

The martial drumbeat repetition of “kept us safe” is absolutely a wide-open question, particularly in terms of assigning cause and effect.

But, as they brought it up and are so insistent on inserting it into the zeitgeist, it leads ye old scribe to mention the obvious rejoinder:

Had Al Gore been inaugurated in January of 2001, would the deadly criminal acts of Sept. 11 of that year have been successfully carried out?

Both positions are ripe for fulmination (and speculation). Both are essentially unprovable fully in any concrete sense.

But if the former is posited, the latter must needs follow as a part of the context of having an administration in place before, during and after that point in time.

While ye old scribe would prefer not cherry-picking but rather razing the entire tainted cherry orchard, the dynamics of political realities and of setting precendents are an understandable (and bearable) concern.

Even so, it is good, good news that promises made will be promises kept (and more than certain hints are evident that the first round of repeal will be far from the last).

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to move swiftly to reverse executive orders regarding torture of terror suspects, the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and other controversial security policies, sources close to his transition said, in dramatic gestures aimed at reversing President Bush’s accumulation of executive power.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) said he’s been informed that President Obama will support his proposed legislation to make public some opinions from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which issued some of the Bush Administration’s most sweeping claims of executive power. Obama also has promised to limit President Bush’s practice of using “signing statements” to amend legislation.

“Every day we get indications that they’re serious about reversing the abuses of the Constitution,” Feingold, a harsh Bush critic, told Politico. Feingold said he thinks Obama is likely to issue executive orders rapidly reversing Bush policies, and others have indicate that those will likely cover the interrogation and detention of terror suspects, and keeping the records of past presidents secret.

“I don’t know in what order or how fast” Obama’s executive orders could come, he said. “It’ll be important that a couple of them be done immediately, and I think they will be, to show there’s a strong break from the current policy.” Source

Note that this specifically does still include order 13233.

The woebegone G. Walker admninistration (by their own admission) tried wrenching America back to the McKinley era of the 1890s. In many ways, they managed to get back to about Hoover’s 1929 instead. Repeal of executive orders setting up the framework of antiquated, superseded or discredited government is a great step.

Abandoning similar policies and overturning or mitigating laws (and expunging political-primacy bureaucrats) with the same core aims and flaws is also much in need, and a natural continuance of turning to progression rather than regression as a guiding tool.

There is nothing whatsoever amiss with studying history and with understanding (and placing in their proper context) historical precepts and policies. Unabashedly attempting to recreate history (as has been the wont of the woebegone G. Walker administration) is a fool’s errand. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattrery in interpersonal relationships, but blatant, square peg in round hole mimicry of dead eras is a disastrous method of governance.

Watching and hearing and reading about the waning woebegone G. Walker administration (and their enablers) frantically scrambling to polish their image and tout a supposedly successful ‘legacy’ is akin to viewing someone doing a self-congratulatory touchdown dance in the end zone — without having scored any points — after the game is over and the crowds have departed.

Beyond an extreme application of magical thinking, it is downright pathetic .

Unlike fabled March, they came in a-lyin’ and are going out a-lyin’.

With what has come out or is already etched on the record (and there is so much, much more yet to be revealed and corroborated), whenever Dick Cheney says “black” we must perforce always take that to mean “white” until unequivocally proven otherwise.

If the Dick Cheney of the past eight years sticks his noggin out of his hidey hole and says “legend,” we must perforce take that to mean “fact.”

Nearing the end of eight years as Vice President, Dick Cheney bluntly dismissed the frequent suggestion that he was the one calling the shots in the White House.

“It’s an urban legend,” he said. “It never happened.” Source

You can bet your sweet patootie, then, that it did happen. Evidence already extant is incontrovertible that the office of the Veep either was given (On what basis? By what ruling or order? By way of what Constitutional footing?), or baldly grabbed, or in the absence of fulfillment (or a vacuum at the top) usurped, powers, authority, processes and effectuation not a part of that office by any rational or cogent measure. Whether this occurred solo or in concert with the office of the President or with a wink and a nod from that office is irrelevant. It happened.

That he can’t or won’t fit it under the specific phraseology of “calling the shots” is irrelevant. It happened.

Whether he and G. Walker were metaphorically joined at the hip or not, it happened.

Whether through incapability, incompetence or disinterest at the top, it happened.

Whether such power and authority was abrogated or abandoned by its natural office, it happened.

Whether such power and authority was obtained or conferred deliberately, covertly, casually or informally, it happened.

A rose is a rose is a rose, and this one reeks like skunk cabbage.

To wit,

…There are virtually always “good reasons” that can be and are cited to justify war crimes and acts of aggression. It’s often the case that nationalistic impulses — or genuine fears — lead the country’s citizens to support or at least acquiesce to those crimes. War crimes and other atrocities are typically undertaken in defense against some real (if exaggerated) threat, or to target actual enemies, or to redress real grievances.

But we don’t accept that justifying reasoning when offered by others. In fact, those who seek merely to explain — let alone justify — the tyranny, extremism and/or violence of Castro, or Chavez, or Hamas, or Slobodan Milosevic or Islamic extremists are immediately condemned for seeking to defend the indefensible, or invoking “root causes” to justify the unjustifiable, or offering mitigating rationale for pure evil.

Yet here we have American leaders who now, more openly than ever, are literally admitting to what has long been known — that they violated the laws of war and international treaties which, in the past, we’ve led the way in advocating and enforcing.…

[snip]

The pressures and allegedly selfless motivations being cited on behalf of Bush officials who ordered torture and other crimes — even if accurate — aren’t unique to American leaders. They are extremely common. They don’t mitigate war crimes. They are what typically motivate war crimes, and they’re the reason such crimes are banned by international agreement in the first place — to deter leaders, through the force of law, from succumbing to those exact temptations. What determines whether a political leader is good or evil isn’t their nationality. It’s their conduct. And leaders who violate the laws of war and commit war crimes, by definition, aren’t good, even if they are American. Source

Or just watch a few minutes of related, stunning video form late last year:

We may not have the jetpacks and hover cars idealists and futurologists touted, but that is no reason not to fully cultivate a 21^st century sensibility and to vigorously progress or dismantle hidebound and archaic institutionalism.

Granted, there are a raft (indeed, a veritable flotilla) of immediately pressing issues boiling over on the front burners demanding attention and succor, but here is hoping this doesn’t get neglected while simmering on the back burner for too long while the so-called political capital account is still flush.

Sixteen years after Bill Clinton tried to end restrictions on gays in the military, the US armed forces under Barack Obama may be forced to give homosexuals the same welcome as non-gays.

Under president Clinton, the policy that once saw homosexuals discharged from US military service evolved to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” allowing gays to remain in the military so long as they did not reveal their sexual orientation.

Obama has pledged to overhaul current law.

“The key test for military service should be patriotism, a sense of duty, and a willingness to serve. Discrimination should be prohibited,” reads an entry on the president-elect’s transition website. Source

One can’t spell discriminate without c-r-i-m-e.

…and that is a Good Thing. All the more after the runaway power trip of a trumped up (and disastrous, and despotic) thesis of a universally unitary executive.

The announcement of the nomination of Dawn Johnsen as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) merits a chorus of halleleujahs.

Young and feisty, she is a welcome prescriptive to the aberration and constitutional callousness of the past eight years. Why? Just for starters, how about:

  • Recognition first and foremost that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is beholden to the Constitution and the rule of law

  • Further acknowledgment that, while its officers serve at the pleasure of the President, their client as counsel is we the people and not the executive

President-elect Obama’s broad and strong background in constitutional law is beyond heartening, it is – thus far – both a boon and a balm.

Some short background bits on the OLC, Ms. Johnsen, and her firmly rooted stances follow.

#1:

OLC does not provide “advice” to the President that he’s free to accept or reject. Its legal opinions are binding on the President. If OLC says that “X is illegal,” then — absent some extraordinary actions (such as the President formally rejecting the OLC opinion, which almost never happens) — then the formal position of the Executive Branch is that “X is illegal.”

[snip]

OLC isn’t the Superman of the U.S. Government. A President who is determined to break the law can do so even with a hostile OLC. But it’s not merely an advisory office. It has formal power, power which can bind the President, and its actions can make presidential lawbreaking much harder or much easier. Source

#2:

The lesson we should draw from the Bush administration is not that we should dramatically alter our understanding of longstanding presidential authorities. Rather, it is the urgent need for more effective safeguards and checks from both within and without the executive branch to preclude any future recurrence of the Bush administration’s appalling abuses. Citation

#3:

“OLC must be prepared to say no to the President. For OLC instead to distort its legal analysis to support preferred policy outcomes would undermine the rule of law and our democratic system of government. The Constitution expressly requires the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This command cannot be reconciled with executive action based on preferred, merely plausible legal interpretations that support desired policies, rather than an attempt to achieve the best, most accurate interpretations - especially when the enforcement of a federal statute is at stake. For OLC to present merely plausible interpretations framed as the best interpretations would, as the Guidelines acknowledge, “deprive the President and other executive branch decisionmakers of critical information and, worse, mislead them regarding the legality of contemplated action.” Alternatively, if such advice were given with a wink and a nod so that the President was not actually misled, OLC would be wrongfully empowering the President to violate his constitutional obligations.”

[snip]

“OLC should follow a presumption in favor of timely publication of its written legal opinions. Such disclosure helps to ensure executive branch adherence to the rule of law and guard against excessive claims of executive authority. Transparency also promotes confidence in the lawfulness of governmental action. Making executive branch law available to the public also adds an important voice to the development of constitutional meaning - in the courts as well as among academics, other commentators, and the public more generally - and a particularly valuable perspective on legal issues regarding which the executive branch possesses relevant expertise. There nonetheless will exist some legal advice that properly should remain confidential, most notably, some advice regarding classified and some other national security matters. OLC should consider the views regarding disclosure of the client agency that requested the advice. Ordinarily, OLC should honor a requestor’s desire to keep confidential any OLC advice that the proposed executive action would be unlawful, where the requestor then does not take the action. For OLC routinely to release the details of all contemplated action of dubious legality might deter executive branch actors from seeking OLC advice at sufficiently early stages in policy formation. In all events, OLC should in each administration consider the circumstances in which advice should be kept confidential, with a presumption in favor of publication…. Source

#4:

…Where is the outrage, the public outcry?! The shockingly flawed content of this memo, the deficient processes that led to its issuance, the horrific acts it encouraged, the fact that it was kept secret for years and that the Bush administration continues to withhold other memos like it–all demand our outrage.

Yes, we’ve seen much of it before. And yes, we are counting down the remaining months. But we must regain our ability to feel outrage whenever our government acts lawlessly and devises bogus constitutional arguments for outlandishly expansive presidential power. Otherwise, our own deep cynicism, about the possibility for a President and presidential lawyers to respect legal constraints, itself will threaten the rule of law–and not just for the remaining nine months of this administration, but for years and administrations to come. Source

#5:

…whenever any government or people act lawlessly, on whatever scale, questions of atonement and remedy and prevention must be confronted. And fundamental to any meaningful answer is transparency about the wrong committed. . . .

The question how we restore our nation’s honor takes on new urgency and promise as we approach the end of this administration. We must resist Bush administration efforts to hide evidence of its wrongdoing through demands for retroactive immunity, assertions of state privilege, and implausible claims that openness will empower terrorists. . . .

Here is a partial answer to my own question of how should we behave, directed especially to the next president and members of his or her administration but also to all of use who will be relieved by the change: We must avoid any temptation simply to move on. We must instead be honest with ourselves and the world as we condemn our nation’s past transgressions and reject Bush’s corruption of our American ideals. Our constitutional democracy cannot survive with a government shrouded in secrecy, nor can our nation’s honor be restored without full disclosure. Source

Putting Justice back into and paramount at a DOJ which has come to stand for Department of Janus* over the course of the woebegone G. Walker administration is laudable — and a dire necessity.

*In Roman mythology, the doorkeeper of heaven, guardian of doors and gates, entrances or beginnings of things; represented with two faces – one on the front and another on the back of his head; the doors of his temple in Rome were always open in time of war and closed in time of peace. Source

Does the phrase “buying a pig in a poke” ring a bell? (All emphasis added.)

As the new owner of $172.5 billion of preferred shares and warrants in 208 U.S. financial institutions, the Treasury Department hasn’t succeeded in thawing frozen credit markets, leaving taxpayers propping up an industry that won’t lend to them.

[snip]

Jeffrey Garten, a professor of international trade and finance at the Yale School of Management in New Haven, Connecticut, and a Commerce Department undersecretary during the Clinton administration, says banks should be forced to increase their lending or risk having taxpayer money taken away.

“The government isn’t acting aggressively enough to demand a quid pro quo,” Garten said. “The public good is the key to the private good in this case. It’s not the other way around.”

Although the government has committed more than $8.5 trillion to energizing the economy, and the Fed cut a key lending rate almost to zero, banks haven’t made it easier to borrow.…

[snip]

Last week the government announced that $5 billion of TARP funds would be used to purchase preferred shares and warrants in GMAC LLC, the automaker’s financing arm, with Treasury separately lending another $1 billion to GM to support GMAC’s transition into a bank holding company.

With the exception of GMAC, which immediately began offering loans to GM customers with lower credit scores in order to halt the decline in auto sales, most financial institutions that received TARP funds have been reluctant to lend.

[snip]

A report released Dec. 2 by the Government Accountability Office in Washington questioned whether Treasury is policing the cascade of federal money closely enough.

“Although Treasury has said that it expects the institutions to increase the flow of credit,” the report said the department “has not yet determined whether it will impose reporting requirements on the participating financial institutions.” Source

As the dawn breaks on a fresh year, the wide and welcoming horizon and a path to it mayhaps (and thankfully) is coming into illuminated focus as the past eight years’ trail of woeful, dangerous and calculated aberration spirals into whichever dark, dank place it deserves to decompose.

Out of sight, but never out of mind. Dazed, but not confused. We shall never forget what transpired. We shall never forget the panoply — the odious blot — of twisted, malevolent, shameful, conscienceless. neo-Orwellian undertakings and overreaches besmirching our stalwart name.

By Cam Cardow of the Ottawa Citizen, courtesy of caglecartoons.com

And, as the U.N. mandate regarding Iraq expired at midnight, today can be viewed from one angle as the first day of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

The walls of the majestic Republican Palace in Baghdad’s Green Zone have been stripped bare. The vaults that secured American cash and classified documents are gone, and the cement blast walls that protected the front entrance were taken down this week. The U.S. military dining facility inside what was once the American Embassy served its last meal New Year’s Eve. Source

A is for Accountability. It is also for Always. And come accountability shall. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but the scales of justice will recover balance.

Off-topic, but 90^th birthday wishes to J.D. Salinger.