ThinkProgress now has a link to video of Whitehouse's speech:

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/07/whitehouse-speech-olc/

Watch a patriot in action.

Re: “What makes you think this isn't how we already ended up with Bush, if not the first time, then the second?”

I think I’ve been pretty clear about why I think we ended up with Bush. Kerry played fair, just like you wanted him to. But I could be wrong, maybe it was because millions of people wanted to try and make the frog jump. I don’t really hear that argument a lot, so I doubt it, but it is certainly possible. What of it? Oh, right. You don’t agree, so it’s wrong.

Re:“It's easy to make a comment like that when you can just sit and watch from the sidelines because you don't have much skin of your own in the game, but lots of people who do have been sorely affected by this maladministration.”

I understand you are a little upset because I didn’t drink the same color Kool-Aid as you, but this comment is at best a complete non-sequitur and at worst offensive. You have no idea how much ‘skin I have in the game,’ or how much I have been affected by this ‘maladminstration.’ But, hey, thanks for telling me that I don’t care. Allow me to give this statement the thoughtful rebuttal it deserves: YOU’RE an “it's easy to make a comment like that when you can just sit and watch from the sidelines because you don't have much skin of your own in the game, but lots of people who do have been sorely affected by this maladministration”

Re: “Now that you are addressing one another directly...” Well, I sort of thought that the directed headings might help people who, say, weren’t interested in the post avoid reading it.

L.W.M. had talked me down, but now I’m voting for Giuliani just to spite you.

Well, this revelation is a little upsetting (the frog metaphor being wrong, I mean, not the frogs plotting. Who could blame them?) I blame Gore Vidal.

I am just saying that sometimes I am tempted. It’s the frog in the pot thing. Raise the temperature slowly and the frog will sit there and will be boiled to death. Goose the temperature quickly enough, and the frog jumps.

As Ondolette explained, that's not what frogs really do. While many of us could survive a Giuliani administration, there are some people in this country who can't. I agree with Digby and others that this brand of "conservatism" is harmful and deleterious to the ever growing numbers of less fortunate citizens. I restrain my alpha male urge to go base jumping off the ledge in deference to those who might not choose to take the leap but have no choice but to come along for a ride they might not survive.

Besides, aren't we all looking forward to the day when right-wingers are screaming about the erosion of civil-liberties and the evils of executive overreach?!

-- Paul Dirks

the wire service report in my local paper (the Newark Star-Ledger), called the revelations of destroyed evidence "startling." The only thing I found startling was that the writer found the reveleations startling. I had to ask myself what planet the writer has been on for the last 7 years that he found himself "startled" at this admission.

I, on the other hand, was not at all startled to find the story on page 3 instead of page one above the fold...

That link only provides 2-3 minutes of the remarks. I would like video of the entire remarks so I can send it to all my friends. Hopefully it will show up soon. I think what Whitehouse has found could end up being a smoking gun and provide the ammunition we need to even allow the weak Dems to take action.

1) Glenn is right. Members of Congress can take a wide range of actions in the face of lawlessness by the executive. Most members chose to do nothing, and essentially all of them in positions of leadership did nothing, in the face of repeated examples of Bushevik lawlessness with regard to detainees, surveillance and other matters.

Well, no. "Nothing" isn't quite right. What too many of them did and continue to do is support and/or enable the lawlessness they were privy to.

Thus, what someone said earlier on is correct (sorry, I don't have the cite at hand): The Dems have to be prepared to investigate -- and indict if necessary -- some of their own if they are truly serious about restoring the Constitution and the Rule of Law. Obviously, they are NOT serious about it. Which is why they keep telling us to sit down and shut up.

2) From previous discussion. Term limits is a lousy idea. Term limits apply in California's Legislature. What it means is that the lobbyists rule the Legislature -- because they're the only ones with an institutional memory. Surprise, surprise. This was predicted and it has come to pass with a vengeance. Bad action by the Legislature and the executive -- at the behest of industry lobbyists -- is what got us into the bogus "Energy Crisis" of 2000-2001, which very conveniently looted the state's treasury of the entire $9 billion surplus, and continues to loot Californians of many hundreds of millions of dollars a year in higher energy costs. Term limits wasn't the only reason, but it had a pernicious effect. Besides, we have term limits called elections. Throw the bums out! Of course that only works if the Devil Machines are kept out of the polling places and there's a decent level of participatory democracy, neither of which seems likely soon.

2) The notion that we should engage in Shock Politics -- the post-modern notion that the worse things get, the better -- is worse than idiotic. It borders on criminal. Crises don't need to be manufactured, certainly not by Progressives. They'll come along on their own, thank you very much.

But Progressives can be a lot more pro-active in the face of crisis. The fact that they tend to hold back and let the Rs fuck things up again is truly disgusting. Crisis was necessary to get Progressivism jump-started in this country (specifically, the Galveston Hurricane of 1900); but the trick was that Progressives acted. They took charge, they forced change, they took care of the survivors and re-built the city. They didn't wait for permission. They just did it. (I will not defend everything they did. In fact, they deserve plenty of criticism for things like disenfranchising blacks and routine authoritarianism and racism.) My point is that they were not about to sit around and complain and wait for someone else to do something. They took action themselves. We need more of that in the modern Progressive arena. We're seeing a little tiny bit of what could happen in the actions cities and states are taking or considering regarding the mortgage mess the Busheviks have as a legacy. It's just a little bit, and it is late, but at least it is something. We're seeing it in state stem cell research; environmental and global climate change law, and so on. There are little hints here and there of what can happen. Not enough of it, but it's not nothing.

3) We recognize that both parties are deeply -- and perhaps irreparably -- corrupt. They are failed institutions -- right along with most of the rest of the institutions we've relied on for decades, centuries, millenia. But there is an important difference between them. As corrupt (and perhaps unsalvagable) as the Democratic Party is, at least it is trying to revive from the ground up. It is very slow and difficult slogging against entrenched -- and really quite offensive and vile -- interests and personnel who have wielded power in the Democratic Party since the sun first rose. Getting rid of them -- at least in California -- has proved to be nearly impossible. And yet the local and regional party structure, which had been moribund for decades, has been revived, and very progressive ideas and individuals are permeating the base of the Party. You don't see that on the other side, do you? Of course not.

But like many of those who hang out at this blog, people who are involved in taking back and remaking the Democratic Party are looking at a generation-long struggle -- or perhaps longer. For every success, there are two or three set backs, and what happens at the local level never seems to make much of an impression on those at the top of the hierarchy, almost all of whom are fully dedicated to supporting the status quo.

But at least the effort is being made in the Democratic Party.

4) My position is and has been that once we finally recognize that the institutions we rely on have failed fundamentally to protect the Constitution and to serve the People, then we will be able to build on a different or better foundation. So long as we try to make these failed institutions "work", I think we're in for nothing but disappointment. They are failed institutions. They don't work. They can't be made to work by all the hammering and tinkering going on. Their failure serves very powerful interests.

Go around them. Make new institutions. Discard those that don't work.

If the People are sovereign, and not a coterie of radicals who seized the government from the People, then the People are obligated to act in their own defense and on their own behalf.