Google the words “Lakota” and “secede,” and watch the fun. It’s an exercise in hysteria.

The story was first reported yesterday morning. The best version I’ve seen is an Agence France-Presse report, on the News Australia website.

THE Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the US.

“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means said.

A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department and said they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the Federal Government, some of them more than 150 years old.

The group also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and said they would continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas.

The article mentions visits to foreign embassies, declarations that old treaties with the U.S. are invalid, and the intention to issue passports and drivers’ licenses, and to live tax-free. It sounds radical and exciting, and the perfect response to the Bush Administration’s having made the United States an international pariah. In other words, lots of people are going to want to impute great significance to this declaration. There’s just one little problem.

Russell Means is a legendary activist. That’s a given. That’s also why many people seem to think this means more than it does. What they should be asking themselves is this: whom does Russell Means represent? By what authority are he and his fellow activists declaring independence. Because this is where we get back to reality.

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With a nod to Taegan Goddard, the New York Sun is reporting that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg again appears to be preparing to run for president.

Mayor Bloomberg’s aides have been reaching out to consultants from his past campaigns about whether they are free for a possible 2008 White House bid – including one who helped make his slick mayoral TV spots, The Post has learned.

Bloomberg aides are said to be contacting ad-makers, to see if they’ll be available.

That Bloomberg aides would look to lock up an ad team dovetails with what the mayor has privately told people about how he would spend up to $1 billion of his own fortune on an independent run, which would be played out mostly on the TV airwaves and through direct mail.

Bloomberg Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey is said to be leading the effort. Bloomberg continues to deny interest, but:

Sheekey has said publicly that the mayor doesn’t have to make a decision before March 5.

That’s the day after the Texas primary elections – but it’s also the first date that nominating petitions for an independent candidate in the state can be circulated.

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You see the Spiegel headline, and it seems obvious:

‘Bush’s Foreign Policy Is in Free Fall’

You think of the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, the obstruction of progress at the Bali climate conference, the transparently dishonest attempts to catapult the propaganda about Iran, Putin crushing democracy in Russia, Israel and the Palestinians farther than ever from making peace, and America more hated than ever, everywhere. The headline makes sense. Everything Bush touches, he destroys. He’s the anti-Midas. But then you see this:

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH FORMER US DIPLOMAT JOHN BOLTON

It must be a joke, right? Surely, John Bolton hasn’t come to his senses, and realized that the Bush Administration is a catastrophe, has he? Well, actually, he has made the realization. But for the wrong reasons. For the opposite reasons. If it weren’t on a credible news site, it would not be believable.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Ambassador, you worked closely with the president and you shared his hawkish views on Iraq. But your new book is fiercely critical of George W. Bush. Why?

Bolton: His foreign policy is in free fall. The president is turning against his own best judgment and instincts under the influence of Secretary (of State Condoleeza) Rice. She is the dominant voice, indeed, almost the only voice on foreign policy in this administration.

SPIEGEL: The popular reading of her looks a bit different. She is presumed to be weak and not particularly efficient.

Bolton: No. Rice is channeling the views of the liberal career bureaucrats in the State Department. The president is focusing all his attention on Iraq and, by doing so, has allowed the secretary to become captured by the State Department. He is not adequately supervising her. It is a mistake.

Got that? Bush is in free fall because he’s going soft! It includes the obvious garbage: North Korea is dangerous, Iraq was a threat, and the Iraq War has made us safer. Reality still eludes the deranged man’s grasp.

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With FISA Deform again imminent, discussion has focused on telecom immunity, Senator Reid’s inexplicable refusal to honor Senator Dodd’s hold, and Senators Clinton, Obama and Biden following Senator Dodd’s lead, in at least attempting to filibuster. In purely electoral terms, this has been one more reason why it is too bad Senator Dodd’s candidacy likely won’t have any impact on the presidential campaign. It is also further proof that we need him to replace Senator Reid, as Majority Leader.

But the real story is still about domestic spying. The real story is still about the Bush Administration breaking a law that was specifically designed to stop abuses of government that had been going on for decades, but most egregiously by the Nixon Administration.

As mcjoan wrote:

The illegal activities of the telcos in aiding our government in domestic, warrantless spying extends far beyond 9/11 and preventing another terrorist attack on the U.S. Not that that was a valid justification for the government to overthrow the rule of law in the first place, but what a cynical effort by this administration to deceive.

Congress should not be voting on any amnesty for the telcos until full investigations of these new revelations have been conducted. The pending legislation on FISA, or at least this provision of it, should be shelved until Congress has a full picture of what these companies have been doing on behalf of our government.

Just so. It’s not only about shielding the telcos for having violated the trust of their customers, and possibly the law, it’s about preventing a full, fair accounting of what exactly the Bush Administration was doing, spying on the American people. The Constitution, the law, history, and the concept of individual privacy demand this accounting. That’s the real story, here.

A lot of excited headlines are reporting an historic climate agreement, in Bali. Don’t believe the hype. This is what they want you to believe:

Agence France-Presse

BBC

CNN

As anyone paying attention knows, torture is nothing new to American security agencies. It was meticulously studied and practiced, and its techniques were then taught to our puppets and allies abroad. And never mind that, besides being a moral outrage and a crime against humanity, torture simply doesn’t work. Our nation has engaged in it. A brief glint of sunshine may have temporarily tempered its usage, but it’s never gone away.

That the Bush Administration engages in torture should come as no surprise. What it really means may be.

Hina Shamsi is a human rights observer at the U.S. military tribunal hearing of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, in Guantánamo Bay. Hamdan was supposedly Osama bin Laden’s driver and bodyguard. Shamsi writes, in Salon:

At issue in Hamdan’s hearing was whether under the Military Commissions Act the government had the authority to try Hamdan as an “unlawful enemy combatant.” Congress passed the law in October 2006, under pressure from the Bush administration, on the eve of the midterm elections. The law circumvents due process safeguards that are a hallmark of American justice, in both the military’s own court-martial system and in the federal courts. For the more than 300 men held in Guantánamo for over six years, the Military Commissions Act stripped their right to challenge detention without charge through the ancient writ mechanism of habeas corpus. (The prisoners’ challenge to this provision was before the Supreme Court last Wednesday.

Hamdan’s defense wants to call three witnesses who are considered “high-value” detainees, whom they claim can refute the charge that Hamdan was part of a conspiracy to murder civilians. The judge refused to allow the three to testify, because the request was not timely. This is where it gets fun.

Government lawyers argued that the three were part of a highly classified special access program — a situation of the government’s own making, of course — and that only those with top secret clearance had access to them, which took time.

In other words, there was only one catch.

Furthermore, even though Hamdan’s military defense attorney has top secret clearance, the government says treatment of the three witnesses is highly classified, and cannot be revealed, as it would undermine national security. All three, of course, have been reported by the media to have been abused, if not tortured. So, Hamdan cannot get a fair trial because the government doesn’t want it known that witnesses for his defense may have been tortured. This dynamic will play out again, in the trials of “high-value detainees.”

But this is where Bush administration policies will come back to haunt us with a vengeance: Unlike the majority of Guantánamo detainees who appear to be low-level players or even innocent, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and others did likely engage in serious and heinous crimes. If so, they should be prosecuted and sentenced — but based on lawfully obtained evidence in full and fair proceedings that comport with the best traditions of American justice.

But they won’t be. To Bush, they can’t be. People have been tortured, and for it, justice will continue to be tortured.

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I’ll be a little more scarce, around here, for the next several months…

As I already posted at that Orange Place:

Former Daily Kos Contributing Editor Steve Soto is taking a sabbatical from helming The Left Coaster, and I’ll be filling in as temporary principal writer. I should be posting at least twice a day, Monday through Friday, for the next several months. The rest of the site’s superb writers will always be there, and when Steve returns, I will remain as a Contributing Writer.

Needless to say, this is a somewhat daunting and very flattering position to have been offered. Because of that, it will now be my top blogging priority. I will crosspost at DocuDharma, in addition to writing one exclusive, per week, there, and I will also crosspost some to Daily Kos; but those of you who enjoy my writing will now find most of it at The Left Coaster. Those of you who are tired of my haranguing about candidate-bashing diaries will also want to visit The Left Coaster, just to keep site traffic up, and keep me distracted from distracting you. And those of you who neither know nor care who the hell I am can continue safely neither knowing nor caring, but you’ll also want to visit The Left Coaster, because it’s where the cool people get informed!

I’ll still be here, sometimes diarying, sometimes commenting, and generally trying to help the cause. The Democratic Party remains a very imperfect vehicle, but within the political system, I do believe it is the best vehicle for effecting positive change. I remain an ideological idealist, but a pragmatist. I remain a partisan. I continue to hope that, after the primary wars are finally over, we will come together and rid ourselves, once and for all, of this dangerously hyper-extremist iteration of the Republican Party. At the same time, I am determined to help reestablish the Democratic Party as the people’s party. Daily Kos is a big part of that movement, and I hope The Left Coaster will also continue to do its part! Hope to see many of you there!

I’ll be here when I can. Where else in the tubes can I find such civility?

Once again, House Democrats appear ready to punt.

According to the Washington Post:

House Democratic leaders could complete work as soon as Monday on a half-trillion-dollar spending package that will include billions of dollars for the war effort in Iraq without the timelines for the withdrawal of combat forces that President Bush has refused to accept, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday.

In a complicated deal over the war funds, Democrats will include about $11 billion more in domestic spending than Bush has requested, emergency drought relief for the Southeast and legislation to address the subprime mortgage crisis, Hoyer told a meeting of the Washington Post editorial board.

If the bargain were to become law, it would be the third time since Democrats took control of Congress that they would have failed to force Bush to change course in Iraq and continued to fund a war that they have repeatedly vowed to end. But it would also be the clearest instance yet of the president bowing to a Democratic demand for more money for domestic priorities, an increase that he had promised to reject.

So, let’s be clear: for eleven billion dollars more in domestic spending, House Democrats are willing to waste hundreds of billions more on the disastrous war in Iraq. Not to mention, you know- lives. Perhaps it should occur to them that there would be a helluva lot more for domestic spending if we weren’t busily bankrupting ourselves in Iraq. Not to mention, you know- lives.

I’m sure it will come as great comfort to our troops, the families and friends of our troops, and the Iraqi people that we’ll have more money for domestic spending. Certainly, their lives are worth it. Or something.

Meanwhile, our ostensible coalition has all but evaporated. According to a different Post article:

President Bush once called it the “coalition of the willing,” the countries willing to fight alongside the United States in Iraq. The list topped off in mid-2004 at 32 countries; troop strength peaked in November that year at 25,595. The force has since shrunk to 26 countries and 11,755 troops, or about 7 percent of the 175,000-strong multinational force, according to mid-November figures provided by the U.S. military.

Everyone else is coming to their senses, but not us. Not even with a Democratic Congress.

Armando?

With the world we know in just a little bit of trouble, thanks to global warming/climate change and other human-caused environmental disasters, three different countries are pursuing three very different approaches to dealing with it.

In Germany, Spiegel Online reports:

The cabinet of German Chancellor Angela Merkel approved a package of emissions reduction policies representing a 2008 commitment of €3.3 billion ($4.8 billion) on Wednesday. Cabinet members say it is among the most ambitious national initiatives of its kind in the world.

“The government is taking a big step forward to achieve its climate protection goals,” government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said, according to the Associated Press. “Germany will maintain its leadership role.”

The plan breaks down into 14 new laws and regulations, each designed to encourage businesses to conserve energy or expand Germany’s production of renewable energy.

Germany’s goals are to cut their greenhouse emissions by 40% by 2020, which would put it in compliance with the the overall European Union’s target, and to increase the share of its energy consumption that comes from renewable sources from a current 14% to 25-30%, by the same date.

Some other countries, however, are backing off previous promises.

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