Today’s Washington Post article and poll results show that 76% of Americans think “Bush should disclose all contacts between disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and White House staffers.” The Abramoff scandal was a tough enough when it just implicated the GOP House leadership and threatened the 2006 midterms. Throw in the White House and some calls for accountability and you have a real stew going. Refusing to answer to the Press Corps not only makes them look guilty, but also is bad for transparent democracy. (Not that this White House has ever been called “transparent” with a straight face…)

What’s the red line beyond which the White House realizes it is politically untenable (for both the midterms, and for their policy initiatives) to continue to obfuscate about the Abramoff-Bush meetings? 76%? 85%?

Do 100% of Americans need to call for disclosure before they’ll comply?

One of my great discoveries over break was that fifty-three Frontline reports are online.

These I watched over break and suggest:
The Persuaders

ANNOUNCER: It’s everywhere you look.
BOB GARFIELD, Columnist, Advertising Age: You cannot walk down the street without being bombarded.
ANNOUNCER: They call it a “clutter crisis.”
NAOMI KLEIN, Author, No Logo: Consumers are like roaches. You spray them and spray them, and after a while, it doesn’t work anymore. We develop immunities.
ANNOUNCER: And the multi-billion-dollar advertising industry is in a desperate struggle to break through.
JOHN HAYES, Chief Marketing Officer, American Express: We don’t just come forward with what we want to sell, we engage you with things that you want.
ANNOUNCER: Advertisers have blurred the line between programming and product.
SCOTT DONATON, Editor-in-Chief, Advertising Age: It’s advertising that people not only will tolerate but will actually go in search of.
ACTRESS: ["Sex and the City"] The way God and Madison Avenue intended.
ANNOUNCER: But how is advertising affecting our lives and the world around us?
MARK CRISPIN MILLER, New York University: Once a culture becomes entirely advertising-friendly, it ceases to be a culture at all.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE “
DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF, FRONTLINE Correspondent: “ask me this all the time. What about the environment?
ANNOUNCER: Correspondent Douglas Rushkoff takes you inside the changing world of The Persuaders.

Is Walmart Good for America?

ANNOUNCER: There’s never been a company like it.
Prof. GARY GEREFFI, Duke University: Wal-Mart is probably the broadest and most powerful company in U.S. business history.
ANNOUNCER: Its everyday low prices benefit millions of Americans.
BRUCE BARTLETT, National Center for Policy Analysis: Wal-Mart has really given an increase in income to every American.
ANNOUNCER: But some say it’s a bad bargain.
STEVE RATCLIFF: It’s putting people out of work, that’s what it’s doing.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight, correspondent Hedrick Smith investigates how Wal-Mart is changing the American economy “
HEDRICK SMITH, FRONTLINE Correspondent: The Chinese guys bought the big machine?
ANNOUNCER: “following the trail of low prices in America to low-cost production in China “
DONALD HAY, Entrepreneur: I said, “Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. The next one’s China. I got to get here.”
ANNOUNCER: “tracking the nation’s growing trade deficit “
YVONNE SMITH, Port of Long Beach: Wal-Mart’s our number one customer.
HEDRICK SMITH: Wal-Mart’s your number one customer?
YVONNE SMITH: Number one customer.
ANNOUNCER: “and examining the growing controversy over the Wal-Mart way.
ALAN TONELSON, U.S. Business & Industry Council: The lowest prices have to lead to the lowest wages and to job loss and to lower living standards.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE, Is Wal-Mart Good for America?

Secret History of the Credit Card

ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE: The average American family has eight.
JIM MUELLER: “Zero percent for life on transfer balances” ”
ANNOUNCER: Credit cards, plastic money, have become both a necessity and a ticket to a better life.
[television commercial]
ACTOR AND ACTRESS: Hawaii!
BEN STEIN, Actor/Author: A credit card is an extraordinary, unbelievably great convenience for the consumer.
ANNOUNCER: But the credit card industry plays by its own rules.
Prof. ELIZABETH WARREN, Harvard Law School: I don’t know any merchant in America who can change the price after you’ve bought the item, except a credit card company.
ANNOUNCER: Credit card banks earn record profits.
LOWELL BERGMAN, FRONTLINE Correspondent: MBNA’s profits last year ” one-and-a-half times that of McDonald’s.
EDWARD YINGLING, American Bankers Association: Well, McDonald’s didn’t do too well last year.
ANNOUNCER: But the profits come at a price.
ANDREW GUILE, Consumer: Now they’ve raised my rate to 19.98, and I have not been late ever.
PAT WALLACE, Bay Area Better Business Bureau: There are irritated, unhappy, dissatisfied customers in this industry.
Prof. ELIZABETH WARREN: They are the new loan sharks in America.
DUNCAN MacDONALD, Fmr. Citibank General Counsel: I certainly didn’t imagine that someday we might have ended up creating a Frankenstein.
LOWELL BERGMAN: Frankenstein? What do you mean, Frankenstein?
ANNOUNCER: Tonight, FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman and The New York Times investigate the secrets of your credit card
.

Karl Rove– The Architect

ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE: Karl Rove had a master plan.
MIKE ALLEN, The Washington Post: He was the architect. His hand was in all of it.
ANNOUNCER: It took 40 years, but he changed the political landscape.
POLITICAL OBSERVER: Karl Rove came to town with one goal, and that was this massive Republican realignment.
ANNOUNCER: How did he do it? And what does it mean for America?
POLITICAL OBSERVER: Karl Rove wants a permanent Republican majority.
POLITICAL OBSERVER: He’s the God inside the machine.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight, FRONTLINE and The Washington Post examine Karl Rove: The Architect.

The Torture Question

ANONYMOUS INTERVIEWEE: There was a lot of soldiers that had digital cameras at Abu Ghraib, and they would take pictures of literally everything that they would do.
ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE, the story about what really happened in cell block 1A.
Spc. ANTHONY LAGOURANIS, Interrogator, US Army, 2001-’05: Part of it is, they were trying to get information, but part of it is also just pure sadism.
ANONYMOUS INTERVIEWEE: They felt righteous in doing it, and that’s what made it really dangerous and diabolical.
ANNOUNCER: With exclusive interviews ”
ANONYMOUS INTERVIEWEE: And this escalated all the way to make them fear that rape could be performed on prisoners.
ANNOUNCER: ”and never before seen footage.
GI: [home video] We’re all mad! We’re all mad!
ANNOUNCER: How high did it reach?
Gen. JANIS KARPINSKI, Cmdr., 800th MP Brigade, 2003-’04: General Sanchez put his finger in Colonel Pappas’s chest and told him he wanted the information.
ANNOUNCER: And what does it reveal?
Gen. RICHARD MYERS, Joint Chiefs Chairman: We’ve dealt with that. If it was only the night shift at Abu Ghraib, it’s a pretty good clue that it wasn’t a more widespread problem.
Sen. JOHN McCAIN (R), Arizona: This isn’t about who they are, this is about who we are.
ANNOUNCER: Where else did it spread?
Spc. ANTHONY LAGOURANIS: It’s not at Abu Ghraib, it’s all over Iraq. The infantry units are torturing people in their homes.
ANNOUNCER: FRONTLINE exposes the dark secrets behind “The Torture Question.”

That’s impeachment. Today on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulus Senator Specter had the following to say:

STEPHANOPOULOS: There was a lot of talk about that at the Alito hearings, and listening closely to you I certainly seem to take away that you believe the president does not have the right, does not have the inherent power under the Constitution to circumvent a constitutional law, and as far as you are concerned, the FISA law is constitutional, isn’t it?

SPECTER: Well, I started off by saying that he didn’t have the authority under the resolution authorizing the use of force. The president has to follow the Constitution. Where you have a law which is constitutional, like Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, there still may be collateral different powers in the president under wartime circumstances.

That’s a very knotty question that I’m not prepared to answer on a Sunday soundbite. But I do believe that it ought to be thoroughly examined. And when we were on the Patriot Act and found the disclosure of the surveillance, I immediately said the Judiciary Committee would hold hearings, and I talked to the attorney general, and we’re going to explore it in depth, George. You can count on that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, if the president did break the law or circumvent the law, what’s the remedy?

SPECTER: Well, the remedy could be a variety of things. A president ” and I’m not suggesting remotely that there’s any basis, but you’re asking, really, theory, what’s the remedy? Impeachment is a remedy. After impeachment, you could have a criminal prosecution, but the principal remedy, George, under our society is to pay a political price.

As to the legality, Think Progress points to this article in the Washington Post regarding a report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. The report states “that the administration’s justification for the warrantless eavesdropping authorized by President Bush conflicts with existing law and hinges on weak legal arguments.”

Wouldn’t it be a twist of fate if things moved in the direction they should? After all Stephanopolous was the first in the media to mention impeachment during the Clinton scandal, and on his show it’s been mentioned again by a member of the President’s own party.

In Sunday editorial section the Gray Lady had some choice words for the president. The article details the growing imperialism of the current presidency, pushed forward by it’s increasing annexation of governmental power, including warrantless wiretaps, the treatment of detainees, and the make up of our judicial processes. In closing the Times says:

The administration’s behavior shows how high and immediate the stakes are in the Alito nomination, and how urgent it is for Congress to curtail Mr. Bush’s expansion of power. Nothing in the national consensus to combat terrorism after 9/11 envisioned the unilateral rewriting of more than 200 years of tradition and law by one president embarked on an ideological crusade.

Now if only the rest of the Democratic Party saw what was at stake here.