Tis the Eve

Along with the revelry of New Year's Eve, the approaching new year always brings the end of year Lists -- Best, Worst, Favorite, etc.

My list is The List of Lists that I like.

Bill Maher's Dickheads of the Year in the Rolling Stone is a must see/read, in which Maher provides his picks for biggest assholes of 2007. All good, but my favs are:

Congressional Democrats

Who, when it came time to render judgment on the administration's patently illegal wiretapping, took advantage of a deeply unpopular lame-duck president by caving in to his every whim. They agreed to allow the Justice Department to spy on Americans without a warrant. I know it is unconstitutional and all, but hey, if you can't trust the sober judgment of Alberto Gonzales. . . .

Alberto Gonzales

At the Bush White House, a constitutional crisis is when somebody actually reads the Constitution. Gonzales obeyed Karl Rove's orders to decimate the Justice Department by firing the U.S. attorneys who weren't Bush loyalists to the point of corruption, then told Congress, I can't recall who put together the list of which attorneys to fire. But I stand by the decision to fire everyone on the list. Which I never read. Also, nothing improper occurred. And I know, because I can't recall.

George Bush

Come on, no list of assholes and fuck-ups could be complete without the Dipshit in Chief. Who will tell this president what everyone but him already knows? The theory of evolution. And the times tables. And where the sun goes at night. And that Iraq is going to be three different countries. And that everyone hates us and we've run our military into the ground and the Taliban is back and we still haven't caught bin Laden and the economy is tanking and we wasted eight years blowing the oil companies while the Earth is melting. We had a pretty nice house when this Cat in the Hat of presidents came in and made the mess of all time. And who's going to clean it all up — Rudy Giuliani?

Lawyer that I am, I have to include Slate's contribution by Dahlia Lithwick, The Bush administration's dumbest legal arguments of the year, in which she noted that her 2006 list of worst civil liberty violations remains intact, since "Bush administration continues to limit our basic freedoms, conceal its own worst behavior, and insist that it does all this in order to make us more free. In that spirit, it seemed an opportune moment to commemorate the administration's worst legal justifications and arguments of the year." So hard to choose, but a few memorable legal whoppers:

10. The NSA's eavesdropping was limited in scope.

Not at all. Recent revelations suggest the program was launched earlier than we'd been led to believe, scooped up more information than we were led to believe, and was not at all narrowly tailored, as we'd been led to believe. Surprised? Me neither.

8. The vice president's office is not a part of the executive branch.

We also learned in July that over the repeated objections of the National Archives, Vice President Dick Cheney exempted his office from Executive Order 12958, designed to safeguard classified national security information. In declining such oversight in 2004, Cheney advanced the astounding legal proposition that the Office of the Vice President is not an "entity within the executive branch" and hence is not subject to presidential executive orders. When, in January 2007, the Information Security Oversight Office asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resolve the dispute, Cheney recommended the executive order be amended to abolish the Information Security Oversight Office altogether. In a new interview with Mike Isikoff at Newsweek, the director of the ISOO stated that his fight with Cheney's office was a "contributing" factor in his decision to quit after 34 years.

5. Everyone who has ever spoken to the president about anything is barred from congressional testimony by executive privilege.

This little gem of an argument was cooked up by the White House last July when the Senate judiciary committee sought the testimony of former White House political director Sara Taylor, as well as that of former White House counsel Harriet Miers, in connection with the firing of nine U.S. attorneys for partisan ideological reasons. Taylor was subpoenaed in June and, according to her lawyers, she wanted to testify but was barred by White House counsel Fred Fielding's judgment that the president could compel her to assert executive privilege and forbid her testimony. As Bruce Fein argued in Slate, that dramatic over-reading of the privilege would both preclude congressional oversight of any sort and muzzle anyone who'd ever communicated with the president, regardless of their wish to talk.

2. State secrets.

Again, it's virtually impossible to cite the single most egregious assertion by the Bush administration of the state-secrets privilege, because there are so many to choose from. This doctrine once barred the introduction into court of specific evidence that might compromise national security, but in the hands of the Bush administration, it has ballooned into a doctrine of blanket immunity for any conduct the administration wishes to hide. The privilege was invoked in 2007 to block testimony about its torture and extraordinary rendition program, its warrantless surveillance program, and to defend the notion of telecom immunity for colluding in government eavesdropping, among other things. No longer an evidentiary rule, the state-secrets privilege has become one of the administration's surest mechanisms for shielding its most egregious activities.

Next up, the 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2007 from The Beast. Another rave rant on the year as it goes. Another one that should be reviewed in full. A few highlights:

9. You

Charges: You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism -- it's nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over. You still think Republicans favor limited government. Your knowledge of politics and government are dwarfed by your concern for Britney Spears' children. You think buying Chinese goods stimulates our economy. You think you're going to get universal health care. You tolerate the phrase "enhanced interrogation techniques." You think the government is actually trying to improve education. You think watching CNN makes you smarter. You think two parties is enough. You can't spell. You think $9 trillion in debt is manageable. You believe in an afterlife for the sole reason that you don't want to die. You think lowering taxes raises revenue. You think the economy's doing well. You're an idiot.

Exhibit A: You couldn't get enough Anna Nicole Smith coverage.

Sentence: A gradual decline into abject poverty as you continue to vote against your own self-interest. Death by an easily treated disorder that your health insurance doesn't cover. You deserve it, chump.

2. Dick Cheney

Charges: Worst president ever. So openly horrible, he now makes jokes about being Darth Vader. Unashamedly advocating for executive abuse of power and corporate theft. In and out of public office since his congressional internship during the Nixon Administration. Didn't care about the quagmire he foresaw in '94, because since then he'd deftly maneuvered to profit from it. Polling lower than HPV.

Exhibit A: His Halliburton stock options rose 3000% in value from 2004-2005. No joke.

Punishment: Raped by the sun.

1. George W. Bush

Charges: Is it a civil rights milestone to have a retarded president? Maybe it would be, if he were ever legitimately elected. You can practically hear the whole nation holding its breath, hoping this guy will just fucking leave come January '09 and not declare martial law. Only supporters left are the ones who would worship a fucking turnip if it promised to kill foreigners. Is so clearly not in charge of his own White House that his feeble attempts to define himself as "decider" or "commander guy" are the equivalent of a five-year-old kid sitting on his dad's Harley and saying "vroom vroom!" Has lost so many disgusted staffers that all he's left with are the kids from Jesus Camp. The first president who is so visibly stupid he can say "I didn't know what was in the National Intelligence Estimate until last week" and sound plausible. Inarguably a major criminal and a much greater threat to the future of America than any Muslim terrorist.

Exhibit A: "And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it."

Sentence: Dismembered, limbs donated to injured veterans.

Dan Kurtzman, writing as a guest humorist at NYTimes' Laugh Lines, on The Year’s Most Laughable Political Antics.

From Dick Polman's American Debate, The 2007 Aberrant Behavior Awards. As always, Polman's take on the political landscape is on target. My favorites here:

Updating FDR, The “We Have Nothing to Spin But Fear Itself” Award goes to President Bush, for invoking the specter of “World War III” while discussing Iran’s nukes in October - even though he had been privately tipped off months earlier that an impending intelligence community report would reassess whether Iran had any nukes in the first place. Turns out, the intelligence community concluded that the nuke program was halted in 2003. But after this report surfaced earlier this month, Bush (true to form) insisted that his bellicose talk remains entirely appropriate, because, even though he acknowledges that the Iranians did halt the program, they might some day opt to restart the program…which apparently means that “World War III” rhetoric is justified regardless of the circumstances. Sort of like tax cuts for the wealthy.

And The "Ouch, that Hurts! Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another?" Award naturally goes to the Democrats of Capitol Hill, for their year-long inability to thwart an unpopular president’s unpopular war. Granted, they did show courage on a few major matters of statecraft – such as voting to condemn moveon.org for its nasty newspaper ad about General David Petraeus, and voting to condemn some mass atrocities committed by the Ottoman Turks 92 years ago. But it seems like a lifetime ago – it was actually only last January - when the Democrats warned that if Bush didn’t change course in Iraq, the new majority would be “showing him the way.” Dream on. I’ll stick with what Washington analyst Charlie Cook said to me back in 2002, when the Democrats were first fumbling for a response to Bush on Iraq: “They couldn’t find a unified message if it was tattooed on their butts.”

And then there's Salon's Glenn Greenwald on his Favorite Quotes of 2007, including:

'Our most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive' --

Mitt Romney, invoking the cowardly flagship of the modern GOP in arguing for limitless presidential powers and, with one short sentence, completely repudiating the core, founding American political value as most famously expressed by Patrick Henry.


'What the bill seeks to do is set back basic rights by some 900 years' --

Sen. Arlen Specter on the Military Commissions Act, in a speech he delivered on the Senate floor almost immediately before voting in favor of that bill (that was actually from September, 2006, but I cheated and included it anyway because it's my all-time favorite political quote).

Dave Berry provides his annual month-by-month distillation of the year, in An Inconvenient Year. As he summarizes:

It was a year that strode boldly into the stall of human events and took a wide stance astride the porcelain bowl of history.

It was a year in which roughly 17,000 leading presidential contenders, plus, of course, Dennis Kucinich, held roughly 63,000 debates, during which they spewed out roughly 153 trillion words; and yet the only truly memorable phrase emitted in any political context was, "Don't tase me, bro!"

* * * *

But, other than that, 2007 was a disaster. American consumers came to fear products manufactured in China, which covers pretty much everything in the typical American home, except the dirt. Global warming continued to worsen, despite the efforts of leading climate experts such as Madonna and Leonardo DiCaprio, who emerged briefly from private jets to give the rest of us helpful tips on reducing our carbon footprints.

On the economic front, the dollar continued to lose value against all major foreign currencies and most brands of bathroom tissue. There was a major collapse in the credit market, caused by the fact that for most of this decade, every other radio commercial has been some guy selling mortgages to people who clearly should not have mortgages. ("No credit? No job? On death row? No problem!") It got so bad that you couldn't let your dog run loose because it would come home with a mortgage. The subprime mortgage fiasco resulted in huge stock market losses, and the executives responsible, under the harsh rules of Wall Street justice, were forced to accept lucrative retirement packages.

(For prior Barry years, see Mirth, Musings, & More).

Almost Update:

Sure, just as I'm ready to post this, I discover that Kurtzman has compiled the List of Lists at his About.com Political Humor site, 2007 in Review: Best of the 'Best of' Lists. Of course, he has most of mine, plus many more.

Good time to break out the bubbly.

Happy New Year's!