If Napolitano should resign, Bush and Cheney should have been impeached

By GottaLaff

See that blog title (by Brent Budowsky)? IMHO, the "if" part could have been dropped. Bush and Cheney should have been impeached. Period:

If Janet Napolitano should be fired for her role in the Christmas bombing plot, George W. Bush should have been impeached for being warned about planes flying into buildings in New York and ignoring those warnings, and Dick Cheney should have been impeached for his role in the CIA leak case and prosecuted for his role surrounding torture.

That cannot be be stated often or more strongly enough.

[...] Napolitano could have handled this better, but the consequences of her mistakes are nothing compared to the consequences of mistakes by Bush, Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and many others.

BushCo could have puffed themselves up, donned their codpieces, and strutted around spewing their fear mongering and threats for another decade, but that wouldn't have compensated for the thousands who died on their watch. They didn't follow through, people were killed, and yet they boast like 8-year-olds about "keeping America safe".

President Obama has "kept us safe" longer than BushCo did, and he gets attacked relentlessly from the very man who was in charge on 9/11: Dick Cheney. It is he and his gang of thugs who should be condemned.

Perhaps the Obama administration could have handled the Christmas day situation better, but nobody died. The Obama administration says they are working to improve national security. Good. It needs improving, and most likely always will. Has any country eliminated terrorism completely? Is that even possible? No.

At least this president didn't ignore a briefing that warned him of some guy with explosives in his underwear, nor is he acting like an arrogant flight-suited peacock, bragging and parading around like a spoiled brat.

And again, nobody died.

It's time that the Rushpublics practice what they preach and support their commander in chief. Here's a thought: Try coming up with some solutions for a change. That would be a real step toward "keeping America safe".

VIDEO: The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder - Trailer

By GottaLaff

Boy Georgie's worst nightmare:



Via Vincent Bugliosi, in part:

In The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, Bugliosi presents a tight, meticulously researched legal case that puts George W. Bush on trial in an American courtroom for the murder of nearly 4,000 American soldiers fighting the war in Iraq. Bugliosi sets forth the legal architecture and incontrovertible evidence that President Bush took this nation to war in Iraq under false pretenses—a war that has not only caused the deaths of American soldiers but also over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, and children; cost the United States over one trillion dollars thus far with no end in sight; and alienated many American allies in the Western world.

Whether or not you agree that this is even feasible, I believe we share Bugliosi's sentiments.

Four words: Throw away the key.

VIDEO: Oliver Stone's Tortured Logic-- A call for accountability

By GottaLaff



Please go here to demand that Attorney General Holder appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate those who committed and authorized torture -- wherever the evidence leads.

ACLU video features prominent figures like Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone and a 9/11 family member reading from one of the infamous Bush administration legal memos used to justify the use of torture against detainees in U.S. custody. The video calls for accountability and the restoration of the rule of law.

The video includes appearances by Oliver Stone, 9/11 family member Patricia Perry, actors Rosie Perez, Noah Emmerich, John Doman and Reg E. Cathey, and musical composer Philip Glass, among others, reading directly from a memo authored by Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel under the Bush administration. The memo was released in April as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

For more information, visit:
http://www.aclu.org/torturedlogic
http://www.aclu.org/torture

All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes one specific to only Fayiz al-Kandari's story here. Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you'd like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. You'll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I'm all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz's story here, at Answers.com.

Torture Watch: Interrogations and Prosecution

By GottaLaff

You've heard my spiel a million times. If you haven't, just follow the links below. This time, I'll let WaPo do the talking:

Mr. Holder [...] is now confronted with a different question: What to do about those who may have gone beyond -- perhaps far beyond -- even what the OLC sanctioned?

We reject the distorted interpretations that underpin the OLC memos and that serve as legal justification for harsh interrogation techniques that either border on or constitute torture. But those who relied on the memos and shaped their behavior in the good-faith belief that they were following the law should not be subject to prosecution. It is an entirely different story for those who went well beyond the often-extreme measures authorized by the memos.

Inserting my usual advice here: All this is chronicled in clear and gruesome detail in Jane Mayer's The Dark Side. Please take the time to read it and fully understand why I'm fighting this uphill battle:

Sorry to interrupt. Moving on:

In 2004, the Pentagon reported that 34 deaths had occurred in detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan; at that time, nine deaths were classified by military medical examiners as homicides. While the Defense Department has conducted several courts-martial of military personnel in abuse or death cases, the same level of scrutiny has not been applied to civilian personnel.[...]

CIA operatives involved in the matter have thus far escaped accountability. This is inexcusable. Even under the warped logic of the OLC memos, interrogations are forbidden if they result in pain associated with organ failure or death. [...]

The task before Mr. Holder is not an easy one. If he authorizes an investigation, he could be accused by some of criminalizing policy differences with his predecessors. He may also appear to undercut President Obama's desire to leave the past behind and "look forward." The attorney general must put political considerations aside. He should assign a career prosecutor to look at the facts and apply the law. [...]

We continue to believe that an independent commission would best be able to shed light on a wide range of question [...] But some acts, including the violent deaths of detainees at the hands of U.S. personnel, must be investigated and addressed by law enforcement.

All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you'd like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. You'll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I'm all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz's story here, at Answers.com.

Guardian: CIA planned al-Qaida assassinations in friendly countries, officials say

By GottaLaff

Sy Hersh originally reported about Cheney's assassination ring, and I posted about that here. Now this:

Dick Cheney, the former vice president, ordered a highly classified CIA operation hidden from Congress because it pushed the limits of legality by planning to assassinate of al-Qaida operatives in friendly countries without the knowledge of their governments, according to former intelligence officials.

Former counter-terrorism officials who retain close links to the intelligence community say that the hidden operation involved plans by the CIA and the military to launch operations, similar to those by Israel's Mossad intelligence service, to hunt down and kill al-Qaida activists abroad without informing the governments concerned, even though some were regarded as friendly if unreliable.

The CIA apparently did not put the plan in to operation but the US military did, carrying out several assassinations including one in Kenya that proved to be a severe embarrassment and helped lead to the quashing of the programme. [...]

Another former senior intelligence official responsible for dealing with al-Qaida said that assassination plans were reined in after similar covert operations by the military were botched and proved to be embarrassing, particularly the killing in Kenya. [...]

The official said he believes from conversations with serving members of the CIA that the area of real concern in Congress is that the planned operations may also have involved the covert surveillance of American citizens, a particularly sensitive subject in the US.

There appears to be common agreement among knowledgeable former intelligence officials that the controversy goes beyond the immediate question of assassination and capture of al-Qaida operatives as there have been numerous killings and detentions since the 9/11 attacks. One former official said that the Bush administration discussed the assassination question in the context of a ban introduced in the 1970's in response to several failed CIA attempts to murder Fidel Castro and concluded that as the US had declared itself at war with Al-Qaida and the Taliban the ban did not apply.

Peter Bergen, a senior security analyst at the New America Foundation, said that the secret operation must have gone further than that to have created such a backlash in Congress. "If it's an assassination programme of al-Qaida leaders that is hardly surprising. Clinton had an assassination programme against Bin Laden. There have been 27 drone missile strikes against al-Qaida alone this year," he said.

But we shouldn't look back. Just keep moving along...

Former CIA station chief: Torture did not save lives, calls so-called terrorist plots "slapstick"

By GottaLaff

Torture. Does. Not. Work. Four simple words. Here's another one: Truth. Add them all together and we get two more: Prosecute BushCo. This is one time when 4 + 1 = 2:

Milton Bearden, a former Central Intelligence Agency Pakistan station chief who served at the agency for three decades, says claims that the Bush administration’s so-called enhanced interrogation techniques saved American lives are likely false.

The retired senior CIA officer also says that the former administration’s repeated assertions that attacks were foiled through torture are hurting US credibility abroad, endangering alliances and aiding the cause of would-be terrorists.

+...

He retired in 1994 but says he has communicated with contacts who agree they’ve heard of no evidence to support Bush officials’ claims.

If the Bush administration had proof of a plot stopped by enhanced interrogation, they would have produced it, Bearden says.

+...

Bearden is intimately familiar with the countries that some of the most prominent terror suspects have hailed from. He dismisses many of the alleged terror plots which have been made public.

“They dredge up the slapstick plot of the Liberty Seven or the strange Lyman Faris plot which included a blowtorch,” Bearden said. “But when asked for something more substantive, the [Bush administration] retreated behind the screen of protecting sources and methods. We are told to trust them.”

+...

Perhaps most significantly, Bearden believes that by making unsubstantiated claims of success in preventing attacks, the Bush administration has actually undermined US alliances with other nations. Bearden and the others he’s communicated with have not heard of any significant plots against the United States that were uncovered by the Bush administration’s harsh techniques — and that, he says, weakens US standing in the world.

+...

Two other CIA officers, who have asked to remain anonymous due to their ongoing involvement in covert operations, seconded Bearden’s skepticism that any domestic plots of significance were disrupted during the Bush administration.

“Certain officials of the Bush administration would have had no qualms about exposing any of our officers, operational methods and sources of information if it meant scoring political points,” said one CIA covert officer, whose focus is the Middle-East, referring to the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. “The fact that [the Bush administration officials] continue to use the protection of sources and methods as a reason for why they can produce no evidence of a serious plot is not believable given what they have already made public.”

Another current CIA officer who works the Near East agreed that if any plot had actually been disrupted, someone from the Bush administration would certainly have leaked the proof, noting, “Nothing is sacred to them.”

= 2: Prosecute BushCo.

Double Quickie: Liberals happy + Conyers, Nadler Ask Holder to Name Counsel on Torture

By GottaLaff

I'm not sure how much more good news I can take today (both of these Quickies are from Roll Call, subscription only):

Progressives Pleased After Obama Meeting

House liberals got their day in the sun with President Barack Obama, who on Tuesday sat down with nearly the entire 77-member Congressional Progressive Caucus to hear their concerns on two key issues: health care reform and war funding.

Conyers, Nadler Ask Holder to Name Counsel on Torture

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) along with other Democrats on his committee are asking Attorney General Eric Holder to name a special counsel to investigate and prosecute torture of detainees by the Bush administration.

Those were today's Quickies. Were they good for you?

VIDEO-- Gibbs: Torture memo authors are "not being held accountable."

By GottaLaff



Robert Gibbs did a little tap dance for Ed Henry on the question of prosecuting the torture memo authors.

I'm still hoping other avenues open up and we can go into a fully choreographed performance entitled, "Prosecution: The Musical."

‘Confidential’ Red Cross torture report: ‘Suffocation’ and head-smashing'

By GottaLaff


Reports like these were just a matter of time. Too bad this one comes 3 years later than it should have. A no-longer “confidential” 2006 Red Cross investigation reveals what we already suspected. Hint: It includes phrases like “suffocation by water,” “prolonged stress standing,” “beatings by use of a collar,” and “confinement in a box”:

Danner notes that senior Bush officials were well aware of the techniques being used. Some accounts from detainees:

– “I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck; they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room.”

– “Both my feet became very swollen after one month of almost continual standing.”

– “A thick flexible plastic collar would also be placed around my neck so that it could then be held at the two ends by a guard who would use it to slam me repeatedly against the wall.

The report’s conclusion reads: “The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture.” Previously, the Bush administration had attempted to conceal harsh treatment from the Red Cross.

I repeat: Bring on the investigations/prosecutions. I will continue to repeat that until I see tangible evidence that it's happening. Department of Justice, hurry up and do your stuff.

More fuel: Secret e-mails show Iraq dossier was 'sexed up'

By GottaLaff

Is anyone surprised? .... Anyone....? ::crickets:: Who will be the first one to finally prosecute?

Secret Whitehall emails released yesterday provide damning new evidence that the notorious dossier making the case for invading Iraq was "sexed up".

They disclose that the intelligence services were skeptical over the "iffy drafting" of government claims that Saddam Hussein could mount a missile strike on his neighbours within 45 minutes of ordering an attack.

Officials privately mocked assertions that the Iraqi president was covertly trying to develop a nuclear capability and wisecracked that perhaps he had recruited "Dr Frankenstein" to his supposed crack team of nuclear scientists.

So much for that mushroom cloud. What was that you were saying again, Ari?

The release of a series of confidential memos and emails, following a protracted Freedom of Information battle, reignited the controversy over accusations that Tony Blair's government "spun" Britain into war.

Last night both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats renewed their demands for a full public inquiry into the decision to join the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The 45-minute claim – presented to MPs in a notorious dossier on 24 September 2002, six months before military action began – was central to the Blair government's justification for war.

But a memo sent 13 days earlier by Desmond Bowen, head of the Cabinet Office defence secretariat, to John Scarlett, who was head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, suggested he had grave reservations over the threat. [...]

Another memo, dated 16 September 2002, from an unnamed official, also suggests exaggerated claims were being included in the about-to-be-published report. [...]

Last night William Hague, the shadow Foreign Secretary, said: "This is the latest in a steady stream of damaging revelations about the events leading up to the Iraq war. These minutes shed interesting light on the process by which the caveats in the Joint Intelligence Committee's original assessment of Iraq's WMD programmes were stripped out of the dossier that was presented to Parliament and the British people." [...]

The emails: How 'sexing-up' was achieved:

11 September 2002 Desmond Bowen: "The question we have to have in the back of our mind is: 'Why now?' I think we have moved away from promoting the ideas that we are in imminent danger of attack and intend to act in pre-emptive self-defence... In looking at the WMD sections, you will clearly want to be as firm and authoritative as you can be. You will clearly need to judge the extent to which you need to hedge your judgements with, for example, 'it is almost certain' and similar caveats."

11 September 2002 Mark Sedwill: "I would expand the history of weapons inspections. It is an interesting story and would give the media a better feel for the difficulties they faced and the persistence of the Iraqi obstruction... We need a very simple table somewhere... This should be brief enough to get on to the Sky wall – ie no more than five bullets."

16 September 2002 Unnamed official (thought to be intelligence agent): "I note that the paper suggests that Saddam's biotech efforts have gone much further than we ever feared. Page 4 Bullet 4: '[Iraq] has assembled specialists to work on its nuclear programme' – Dr Frankenstein I presume? Sorry. It's getting late... We have suggested moderating the same language in much the same way on drafts from the dim and distant past without success. Feel free to try again!... Lots of 'ranges' close together – iffy drafting."

At the risk of repeating myself, what more does it take? Now that Bush and Blair are out of office, and troops are coming home, more evidence is being revealed. What excuse can anyone come up with to justify avoiding a full investigation, not just some white-washy commission?

Maybe we the people need to be a little louder with our demands.

VIDEO-- Sheldon Whitehouse: "Blanket immunity a mistake" for BushCo

By GottaLaff


Is the rest of the Senate Judiciary listening?

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on the creation of a “truth commission” to investigate Bush administration wrongdoings. Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) has suggested that the commission may grant “blanket immunity” to Bush officials, though Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has balked at this idea. Today on MSNBC, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said he agreed with Pelosi and cautioned against “blanket immunity” for Bush officials.

If there was a new word for "agree strongly" I would use it. I agroo? Agraaaa? The point is, why set a terrible precedent? The country is behind the idea of (appropriate) prosecutions, Jonathan Turley (and I'm sure, others) has made the case multiple times on the Tee Vee Machine, and it seems the obvious, logical way to go.

And of course, as Whitehouse said, if prosecutors feel that immunity is warranted, then so be it.

Do you agroo?

UPDATE-- Apparently some Rushpublics do:

But what was most surprising was that the Senate Republicans and their witnesses, in the process of ripping apart the idea, made the strongest case I’ve heard yet for why the Department of Justice should prosecute former senior officials of the Bush administration.

Sen. Arlen Specter, the ranking committee Republican, after noting his previous support for judicial review of the Bush administration’s terrorist surveillance program, referred to the recent disclosures of Office of Legal Counsel memos as potentially supporting the case for prosecutions. [...]

The witnesses called to present the Republican opposition to Leahy’s proposal made the same point.

David Rivkin, a former Justice Department official in the Reagan and first Bush administrations and now a partner at the law firm Baker & Hostetler, said a truth commission “is a profoundly bad idea, a dangerous idea, both for policy and for me as a lawyer for legal and constitutional reasons.”

Objecting that Congress would be improperly delegating its oversight power, and that witnesses would be called out for criminal conduct without the right to defend themselves in a trial, he said: “this is to establish a body to engage in what in essence is a criminal investigation of former Bush administration officials,” and that “the subject matter areas, which such a commission would investigate – among them the interrogation and handling of captured enemy combatants and the gathering of electronic intelligence – are heavily regulated by comprehensive criminal statutes, and ensures that the commission’s activities would inevitably invade areas traditionally the responsibility of the Department of Justice.”

Jeremy Rabkin, a law professor at George Mason University who also opposes Leahy’s idea, similarly insisted that in the United States, where we have a fully developed legal system, prosecutions — not truth commissions — are the appropriate course. [...] If people think we need to have prosecutions, we should have prosecutions.”

Proponents of the truth commission idea, meanwhile, while not ruling out the idea of prosecutions, saw a truth commission as serving a different, and broader purpose. But it was surprising that, at a hearing cautiously called to discuss “a nonpartisan commission of inquiry,” we heard the strongest case yet for the prosecution of former Bush administration officials — being made by Republicans.

The rule of law, yeah, there's that.

Nancy Pelosi thinks some Bush officials will be prosecuted

By GottaLaff

How many times have I posted expressing my fervent wish that BushCo would be investigated, prosecuted, and eventually imprisoned? Let me count them: One, two, three, four, five... two thousand one hundred twenty-four, two thousand one hundred twent-three...:

But in a new interview with Rolling Stone, Pelosi went a step further, saying that she believes some senior Bush officials — such as Harriet Miers, Josh Bolten, and Karl Rove — will be prosecuted:

RS: Do you foresee a scenario in which senior members of the Bush administration are actually prosecuted?

PELOSI: I think so. The American people deserve answers. Where we are now, in terms of prosecution of White House staff, is that we have charged them with contempt of Congress. We’re talking about Harriet Miers, Josh Bolten and Karl Rove. The natural course of events from here is that the speaker will determine what charge we’re going to pursue, because there are more than one. Under Bush, the Justice Department told the U.S. attorney not to prosecute the case. So the beat goes on — it just gets worse. We don’t know what will happen, because they’ve delayed it a long time.

Pelosi later said that “we should have a full examination” of the Bush administration’s alleged crimes, adding that what Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) “is putting forward, in terms of a truth-and-reconciliation committee, has always been helpful. It was helpful in South Africa, [and] it was helpful in Rwanda.”

Prosecuting one should lead to prosecuting many, many more... I hope.

VIDEO-- Keith Olbermann's Special Comment: Prosecute Bush for torture

By GottaLaff

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Prosecuting Bush, redux: Eight Years of Madoffs

By GottaLaff

Barry Blitt

It seems everyone's on the same page today. Frank Rich:

THREE days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, The Times led its front page of Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized Bush management at home and abroad.

The source for this news was a near-final draft of an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal history of this nation-building fiasco. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction — led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a “new” Iraq. [...]

Those of us who questioned these astonishing numbers were dismissed as fools, much like those who begged in vain to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to challenge Madoff’s math.

What’s most remarkable about the Times article, however, is how little stir it caused. [...]

After all, next to big-ticket administration horrors like Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and the politicized hiring and firing at Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department, the wreckage of Iraq reconstruction is what Ralph Kramden of “The Honeymooners” would dismiss as “a mere bag of shells.” The $50 billion also pales next to other sums that remain unaccounted for in the Bush era, from the $345 billion in lost tax revenue due to unpoliced offshore corporate tax havens to the far-from-transparent disposition of some $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money. In the old Pat Moynihan phrase, the Bush years have “defined deviancy down” in terms of how low a standard of ethical behavior we now tolerate as the norm from public officials. [...]

Not even a good old-fashioned sex scandal could get our outrage going again. Indeed, a juicy one erupted last year in the Interior Department, where the inspector general found that officials “had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.” [...]

It took 110 pages for the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan research organization, to compile the CliffsNotes inventory of the Bush wreckage last month. It found “125 systematic failures across the breadth of the federal government.” [...]

Who put that bogus “uranium from Africa” into the crucial prewar State of the Union address after the C.I.A. removed it from previous Bush speeches? How high up were the authorities who ordered and condoned torture and then let the “rotten apples” at the bottom of the military heap take the fall? Who orchestrated the Pentagon’s elaborate P.R. efforts to cover up Pat Tillman’s death by “friendly fire” in Afghanistan?

And, for extra credit, whatever did happen to Bush’s records from the Texas Air National Guard? [...]

Though he [Henry Waxman] remains outraged about both the chicanery used to sell the Iraq war and the administration’s overall abuse of power, he adds: “I don’t see Congress pursuing it. We’ve got to move on to other issues.” He would rather see any prosecutions augmented by an independent investigation that fills in the historical record. “We need to depoliticize it,” he says. “If a Democratic Congress or administration pursues it, it will be seen as partisan.” [...]

While our new president indeed must move on and address the urgent crises that cannot wait, Bush administration malfeasance can’t be merely forgotten or finessed. A new Justice Department must enforce the law; Congress must press outstanding subpoenas to smoke out potential criminal activity; every legal effort must be made to stop what seems like a wholesale effort by the outgoing White House to withhold, hide and possibly destroy huge chunks of its electronic and paper trail. [...]

As if to anticipate the current debate, she [Dawn Johnsen, a law professor and former Clinton administration official who last week was chosen to run the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice] added that “we must avoid any temptation simply to move on,” because the national honor cannot be restored “without full disclosure.”[...]

To make the policy decisions ahead of us in the economic meltdown, we must know what went wrong along the way in the executive and legislative branches alike. [...]

If Bernie Madoff, at least, can still revive what remains of our deadened capacity for outrage, so can those who pulled off Washington’s Ponzi schemes. The more we learn about where all the bodies and billions were buried on our path to ruin, the easier it may be for our new president to make the case for a bold, whatever-it-takes New Deal.