Akkam’s Razor

In times past,  Judges would admonish defendants claiming they broke the law with the following, reportedly sourced from ancient law in Latin:

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”

Well, it appears Attorney General Michael Mukasey has moved the goal posts somewhat:

“But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime.”

Prior to his appointment and confirmation, Mukasey met with a cabal of shadowy arch-conservative types, and basically had to promise he would not convene special prosecutors with a charge to investigate Justice Department scandals and torture.  An official report contained findings confirming that Monica Goodling had violated the Hatch Act in the hiring of Justice Department Attorneys. Mukasey has officially declined prosecution, stating that the negative publicity suffered by those forced out was sufficient, ignoring the systemic indications and effects of the politicization of USDOJ.

• Primordial Ooze : How Americans Die… Which will it be for you?
  (tags: Graphics mortality Statistics visualization)
• Why Not the Best? Results from the National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance, 2008
  (tags: 2008 data health healthcare politics system)
• FRAMESHOP by Jeffrey Feldman
  Sunday’s mass shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church raise a difficult question for this country and, subsequently, for the progressive netroots: Will we take a stand against violent rhetoric?
  (tags: violence eliminationist rhetoric politics religion hatecrime)

You may recall my prior post about John Yoo and the politicization of the Justice Department.  One of the things several bloggers have mentioned, after reading through the content and footnotes of Yoo’s 81-page torture memo (drafted when he was a rising star in the Office of Legal Counsel) was the notable absence of a particular hallmark case…

But before that, take a gander at this post at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, regarding Bush, Chertoff, and the border fence, referencing a NYTimes column:

Well, in particular, this Mukasey claim is remarkable (fast-forward to 1:21):

Mukasey blubbers about how a missed phone call from a 9/11 Hijacker, if intercepted, could have stopped 9/11. Hamilton refutes this by essentially saying this is important, yet was not shared with the 9/11 Commission, implying one of three things:

1. Mukasey was making it up for dramatic appeal.
2. He was repeating something heard elsewhere, believing it to be true.
3. Somehow, something quite important was suppressed from the 9/11 Commision.

I’ve wanted to write something about John Yoo and the torture memos, but it’s depressing and secondly I don’t like to write things that the more well-read political junkies already know, and I’m not sure how to sum up the intricacies of the entirety of Yoo, Bush, and the law in a way that will challenge any of the uninformed, misinformed, or Bush cheerleaders.  Regardless, I’m tackling it anyway.

John Yoo, an Ivy League educated scholar, American Enterprise Institute scholar and fellow, current professor at UC Berkley, and former clerk for two Supreme Court Justices, has been a central figure in many of the central rethinking controversies of President Bush’s administration, including (via ThinkProgress):

Not so fast, you crazy libertarians.

Between digg and crazy college boys, the fandom and fawning for Ron Paul rivals some sort of political 'Tiger Beat'.

Although I don't doubt the sincerity of many libertarians, and welcome their splintering with the GOP, the fact remains that some of them, at their heart, are no more than Republicans who like to smoke pot.

I'll admit, there is an appeal to the skepticism of the modern libertarian. Their goal though, of limited government, when taken to its logical extremes, actually results in the outcomes of GOP activist Grover Norquist, advocating the "drowning of government in the bathtub". Mind you, the GOP still wants to collect taxes for the services they outsource and privatize, they just want them performed outside of governmental oversight and be able to be incentivized by them via campaign contributions.

Here is the win-win for liberals, conservatives, and libertarians…

I'm not being sarcastic nor am I being accusatory.  Although Blackwater has detained US soldiers at gunpoint and there has been reports of them 'taking shots' at soldiers, I've seen no direct evidence to suggest the mercenary private contractors had murdered uniformed US military personnel.   But it's also not quite that simple…

"…I knew it was you all along."

NYTimes call for the Impeachment of Alberto Gonzalez.  Finally.

It confirmed what most people long ago concluded: that Mr. Gonzales is more concerned about doing political-damage control for Mr. Bush — in this case insisting that there was never a Justice Department objection to a clearly illegal program — than in doing his duty. But the White House continued to defend him.

As far as we can tell, there are three possible explanations for Mr. Gonzales’s talk about a dispute over other — unspecified — intelligence activities. One, he lied to Congress. Two, he used a bureaucratic dodge to mislead lawmakers and the public: the spying program was modified after Mr. Ashcroft refused to endorse it, which made it “different” from the one Mr. Bush has acknowledged. The third is that there was more wiretapping than has been disclosed, perhaps even purely domestic wiretapping, and Mr. Gonzales is helping Mr. Bush cover it up.

Democratic lawmakers are asking for a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Gonzales’s words and deeds. Solicitor General Paul Clement has a last chance to show that the Justice Department is still minimally functional by fulfilling that request.

If that does not happen, Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales.

Ironically enough, Bush's nickname for Abu Gonzalez is "Fredo".