I've been watching the Senate confirmation hearings for attorney general nominee Alberto Gonzalez all morning. As with everyone there will be the good and there will be the bad. Thankfully for America, Gonzalez as possible leader for the Department of Justice he seems to have a lot of care for the law and seems on the exterior to be as independent a council as the current Bush administration is going to appoint. His disagreement with a lot of leading senators is grounded in law and not what seems to be a malicious dodging of the truth, they are fundamental differences of belief. He honestly seems to be a good man who is perhaps going to put a halt to the shadowy four years that Ashcroft left as his legacy.
I believe the most telling voice today was that of Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He like the Bush administration and Gonzalez believe that terrorists such as Al-Qaida are not covered by the provisions of the Geneva Convention. Bush, the dept. of justice, and Gonzalez are welcome to that belief because there has been a lot of examination into the issue and there are guidelines by which the geneva conventions should be applied. Lindsey despite his interpretation of the law concerning the Geneva convention retrospectively believes that Secretary Powell was right in saying we should apply the provisions of the Geneva convention to everyone.
Why? For reasons of protection for our own soldiers, we do not want our soldiers to be captured and tortured for information. so it is a military tradition, one that is written into their interrogation manual that military personnel are strictly forbidden to torture people. We believe we should take a moral highground so as to be respected in the world and have the same courtesy shown to us. I can see however how the Bush administration would feel like terrorists should not be shown this courtesy as they would not respect moral high grounds as they have been beheading people left and right, but why should we compromise American values as a means to an end, if we are conducting "operation enduring freedom" or whatever convoluted name we gave it, how are we to lead by example if we are suspending our morality in the face of an unknown and unforgiving enemy.
It irks me that the Bush administration came out and accused Senator Kerry of denigrating the troops during the Presidential debate. The Republicans jumped all over Kerry, Guiliani jumped all over him, then what has happened? It is easier to accuse first. Bush spokesmen have called the troops incompetent over the missing weapons issue, so did Guiliani and most recently with the leak of the torture memo to the Washington press, once again, torture was not a confusion created by a Gonzalez/Dept. of Justice memo that created a hazy view of torture [torture is defined in that memo as the equivalent of death or deadly harm to bodily organs], but it was the product of a few bad apples in the military, the bad people of the Abu Ghraib night shift. The military is very strict, I've seen my friends that have gone through training and officer's school, the marines, the navy, etc. There is a strict guiding principle that they instill in you, I'm sure that they all learned the basic tenets that is in the military manual that tells you that you WILL NOT torture as we discussed above. Where is the accountability in this administration. I will not be so quick as to blame Gonzalez as I do not think he was intentionally setting a precedent for the President allowing torture nor was President Bush, but accountability must be served to some one other than prison guards.
These questions of torture, they are discussable. That is why there is a confirmation hearing today where Gonzalez can explain things and show the Senate committee why he is an appropriate candidate for a job that desperately needs to be filled. I think everyone there is convinced that he is an honest man that will do a much better job than Mr. Ashcroft. Other questions to me are pretty simple, I think that it is partisanship that is creating the block to getting things done.
Besides torture and Gonzalez, what is the biggest issue right now facing American politics and society. Well besides the recount in Ohio (which is purely for the sake of making sure people's votes count, because every way you look at it Kerry lost), is Social Security.
Democrats say that social security needs to be reformed but it is alright and will be strong until at least the year 2060 or so.
Republicans have a fire in their pants and say if we do not fix social security right now the sky will fall and we retirees will have a crisis on their hands.
Which is it? This is something that is seemingly very black and white, either we do or we don't have enough money. Either or structure is able to self sustain itself indefinately or it is not. How could something that we have all of the facts on be so polarized? Our nation is in debt, a lot of debt. Democrats have been pushing that social security is a fixable problem but is not an issue for another 50+ years, our real problem is prescription drug costs from Medicare and Medicaid that is a definite immediate problem that threatens to push us further into debt. These things that people are putting on the table seem to me to be empirically verifiable truths. Either we need to take care of social security now or we don't. Either we need to fix a more immediate problem like prescription drug costs and Medicare or we don't. There shouldn't be a polarized problem like this. If the Bush administration wants to be remembered for something other than creating a disaster of a war in Iraq than he should do what's best for America. If he wants to be the big hero and fix social security at the expense of screwing America and sidestepping more immediate problems than he needs to be far more realistic and humble. But if that's not the case then by all means, Bush should keep on pushing social security reform (with discussion of course because social security privatization is the DUMBEST idea ever, especially everyone is speculating that because of weakening of the American dollar 2005 will be economically flat, and we will sink to new lows in 2006). BUT whatever the case, this issue should be black and white. Either we need to fix it or we don't. Which is it? Politicization must stop if the American people are going to succeed. The weakening of the dollar is scarier than most think.
What else should be black and white? The Bush administration after the 2000 election said that they were going to fix the election process. Being in Florida, we saw first hand how mishandled the election was and I hoped that 2004 would be clean. 2004 was clean in a sense, the sense that any kind of conspiracy theory craziness that there was mishandling of ballots is rendered irrelevant when you view the margin of victory. My question to the Bush administration is what do they have to hide? They pledged to fix elections. Katherine Harris our director of elections in Florida had 4 years to fix things, 6 months before the 2004 election there were still problems, many precincts didn't have updated polling processes and what did Harris say? "we don't have enough money". NOT ENOUGH MONEY? NOTHING IS DIFFERENT?! Black leaders pushed her to open more early voting precincts near black neighborhoods instead of being an hour across town. Her answer? "not enough money, no time". Absolutely ridiculous. We are one of the largest cities in Florida, not enough money for us but enough to open 3 early voting precincts in a tiny town south of us? Of course, after pressed and pressed she caved and opened a few more. I guess the money came from somewhere. Or maybe she was trying to avoid public embarassment.
So back to my question, what does the Bush administration have to hide? We the American public want the most accurate election results possible, we moved to electronic voting machines, why was the source code to the machines not made open source? Wouldn't it be in the best interest of everyone to allow every programmer out there who was interested to put their time in (and you know they would have) and make sure the code was as perfect as humanly possible? Why wasn't it open source? why wasn't the code at least open for the public to examine. It would have eliminated a lot of conspiracy theories and mistrust of the administration of they showed a little more good faith. Sure there might have been difficulties getting Diebold who is privatized to expose their code, but that's be serious, that code would not have been that difficult to write, they aren't going to sell it to anyone else, for something as important as the election of our United States President wouldn't the administration have put every effort into making sure there was a very low likelyhood of failure. How many instances were reported around the country from voting machines. Ones that crashed, ones that outputted the wrong vote, that is irresponsible and absolutely unacceptable to me, and it should be to everyone else.
Final thoughts. Watching the confirmation hearing gave me faith in politics, bipartisan politics. There are incredibly ridiculous people in the Senate. I like Ted Kennedy, he's incredibly sharp, but his motives are far to the right and obviously propounded by agenda of strengthening the Democratic party. Then there are Republicans like congressman JD Hayworth and John Cornyn who's actions in Congress and the Senate today have been a silly act of Republican ass kissing. But through all of it, there are people you can tell who actually care about moving politics forward and not beating up opponents on the other end of the aisle. Republican senator Lindsey Graham is a prime example. If he was running for President i'd give him serious consideration. Senator Feingold and Senator Schumer, all good people. There is far too much talk about fielding Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008. To me, that is plain stupid. There are plenty of ranking Democrats in the Senate who are worthy prospects that in my opinion are far better than jumping on the Hilary/Obama bandwagon (as much as I love them both). Also, Judge Gonzalez is a fair man who tries his best to interpret the law and follow it to a T. His problem might be not being able to see outside of this box and see implications of following it so tight for the sake of appeasing GW Bush, but I don't see any reason why he should not be confirmed. Blaming him for Abu Ghraib is ridiculous.
