MORNING MUST READS: PALIN & CHENEY

In addition to the TRULY HIDEOUS AND INCREDIBLY UNNERVING financial news (with more yet to come), and the slightly cheering, if belated, news that the state of California might nearly have a budget, here are FOUR Must Reads—THREE of them having to do with Sarah Palin or Dick Cheney.

(And so we commence fiddling while the economy burns.)

1. SARAH PALIN’S VERY PERSONAL POLITICS

For those of you have not read the New York Times Palin profile already (I linked to it on Saturday), it is absolutely a must read.

2. FRANK RICH & THE PLANNED PALIN PRESIDENCY

Frank Rich’s controversial column this week, also about Palin—or at least the GOP’s intentions re: Palin—is getting play all across the conservative and liberal ends of blogosphere. Rich suggests that, for many of the leaders of the GOP, it’s no longer about a McCain presidency (They never liked him that well anyway), the goal is a Palin presidency—even while McCain, should he be elected, is in office.

Here’s what Rich said:

…. if we’ve learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election.

No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for “victory,” whether in Iraq or in Michigan. A McCain victory on Election Day will usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional front man, an even weaker Bush to her Cheney.

3. DICK CHENEY: THE ANGLER

The Washington Post’s superb Pulitzer-winning series from last June about the influence of Vice President Dick Cheney on American policy generally, and George W. Bush specifically, has been made in to a book.

A 2-part excerpt from the book runs Sunday and today in the WaPo and it’s a reminder of how good, really good reporting can be.

Here is the opening of Sunday’s Part 1:

A burst of ferocity stunned the room into silence. No other word for it: The vice president’s attorney was shouting.

“The president doesn’t want this! You are not going to see the opinions. You are out . . . of . . . your . . . lane!”
Five government lawyers had gathered around a small conference table in the Justice Department command center. Four were expected. David S. Addington, counsel to Vice President Cheney, got wind of the meeting and invited himself.
If Addington smelled revolt, he was not far wrong. Unwelcome questions about warrantless domestic surveillance had begun to find their voice.

Cheney and his counsel would struggle for months to quash the legal insurgency. By the time President Bush became aware of it, his No. 2 had stoked dissent into flat-out rebellion. The president would face a dilemma, and the presidency itself a historic test.

Part 2, that runs this morning, describes how, the warrantless surveillance program that the President and Vice President were pushing was considered to be so legally objectionable that the top layer in the DOJ plus the director of FBI threatened to resign—and began to make good on the threat. Even a very ill John Ashcroft said that he thought his decision to approve the domestic spying had been a mistake. The DOJ and the FBI went eye to eye with the president. Bush backed down.

In other words, whatever rights-shredding warrentless domestic spying we got, Dick Cheney intended it to be much, much worse.

4. MY ILLEGAL DAD

There is no particular Must Read in the LA Times today, but a REALLY SHOULD READ may be found among the Op Eds in an opinion piece by Gustavo Arellano about his used-to-be undocumented father. It’s called Intrepid, indomitable, illegal Dad and here some brief clips from the piece.

Almost every Mexican family I know has followed the same trajectory we have: illegal entry, rough times, hard work leading to success and assimilation for the kids, with the 1986 amnesty helping mucho.

Twenty-nine years of living among illegal immigrants and their American-born children has taught me this truism. And that’s why my father’s example is crucial and I’ll retell it again and again. His story isn’t important because it’s special; it’s important because it’s the rule rather than the exception, a rule few want to believe and that therefore must be repeated as often as possible.

[HUGE CLIP & A CAUTION TO ALL YOU “BORDER FANATICS TO CHILL AND READ ON]

Does my pride in Dad’s outlaw past mean I support a free-for-all at the border? No. We deserve an accurate account of who enters and leaves the United States. We deserve immigrants who don’t cheat the system, don’t commit crimes against others, who better their communities and don’t become burdens. But the traits embodied by Dad and so many more immigrants that spurred them to enter this country illegally — courage, an indomitable spirit, the ambition to seek a better lot in this country — are to be lauded and copied. (And spare me the letters about the illegal-entry bit; the Sooners did the same thing, yet we don’t flinch when Oklahomans celebrate their spirit). To say this isn’t traitorous or even an endorsement of the Reconquista, it’s the truth.