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How Abu Ghraib Was Politically Defused, Part 2

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Part 1 | Part 2 From the first days of the torture scandal, the Bush administration followed a deny everything and praise American values strategy to defuse the controversy over Abu Ghraib. In a May 28, 2004, interview, a French journalist mentioned Abu Ghraib and asked President Bush, Do you feel responsible in any way for this moral failure in Iraq? Bush replied, First of all, I feel responsible for letting the world see that we will deal with this in a transparent way, that people will see that justice will be delivered. And what I regret most of all is that the great honor of our country has been stained by the actions of a few people. Bush reminded the Frenchman that America is a great and generous ...

The Campaign-Reform Crime, Part 1

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In 2002, Congress passed and George Bush signed the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). The McCain-Feingold Act was supposed to create an era of clean politics uncorrupt, untainted, and far loftier than what Americans had experienced in prior decades. If the 2008 election proved anything, it revealed that politicians cannot be trusted to clean up politics. Instead, the reform laws they pass are usually nothing more than attempts to suppress criticism and protect incumbents against challenge. At the time the McCain-Feingold Act was being debated, the supposed problem plaguing American politics was the proliferation of so-called soft money money given by individuals or political action committees in amounts not limited by federal regulations. President Bushs solicitor general, Theodore Olson, told the Supreme Court that soft money is a euphemism for money thats going around the system ... money that is prohibited to go to ...

The Campaign-Reform Crime, Part 2

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We saw in the last issue how the McCain-Feingold Act the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) sought to fundamentally change the American political landscape. Politicians did not allow the Acts power to lie idle in the first presidential election after its enactment. The BCRAs issue-ad ban the peril that Justice Antonin Scalia targeted in his dissent to the Supreme Court decision upholding the act quickly helped muzzle potential critics of incumbents. The BCRA protects citizens from exposure to a sweeping array of messages. The AFL-CIO noted that the act prohibits pre-election ads that call upon a Member of Congress to support or oppose imminent legislation, or ask viewers or listeners to urge the member to do so; inform the public, or express an opinion, about a Member of Congresss votes, legislative proposals or performance ...