Spies, Lies and Wiretaps

Wow! This New York Times editorial lays it all out. About friggin' time!

A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.

The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent Americans. And the second was that the Bush team could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only they had thought of eavesdropping without a warrant.
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Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation's guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking. The same officials who now say 9/11 could have been prevented said at the time that no one could possibly have foreseen the attacks. We keep hoping that Mr. Bush will finally lay down the bloody banner of 9/11, but Karl Rove, who emerged from hiding recently to talk about domestic spying, made it clear that will not happen — because the White House thinks it can make Democrats look as though they do not want to defend America. "President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," he told Republican officials. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

Mr. Rove knows perfectly well that no Democrat has ever said any such thing — and that nothing prevented American intelligence from listening to a call from Al Qaeda to the United States, or a call from the United States to Al Qaeda, before Sept. 11, 2001, or since. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act simply required the government to obey the Constitution in doing so. And FISA was amended after 9/11 to make the job much easier.

Only bad guys are spied on. Bush officials have said the surveillance is tightly focused only on contacts between people in this country and Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Vice President Dick Cheney claimed it saved thousands of lives by preventing attacks. But reporting in this paper has shown that the National Security Agency swept up vast quantities of e-mail messages and telephone calls and used computer searches to generate thousands of leads. F.B.I. officials said virtually all of these led to dead ends or to innocent Americans. The biggest fish the administration has claimed so far has been a crackpot who wanted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch — a case that F.B.I. officials said was not connected to the spying operation anyway.

The spying is legal. The secret program violates the law as currently written. It's that simple. In fact, FISA was enacted in 1978 to avoid just this sort of abuse. It said that the government could not spy on Americans by reading their mail (or now their e-mail) or listening to their telephone conversations without obtaining a warrant from a special court created for this purpose. The court has approved tens of thousands of warrants over the years and rejected a handful.

As amended after 9/11, the law says the government needs probable cause, the constitutional gold standard, to believe the subject of the surveillance works for a foreign power or a terrorist group, or is a lone-wolf terrorist. The attorney general can authorize electronic snooping on his own for 72 hours and seek a warrant later. But that was not good enough for Mr. Bush, who lowered the standard for spying on Americans from "probable cause" to "reasonable belief" and then cast aside the bedrock democratic principle of judicial review.

Just trust us. Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans' rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust. The domestic spying program is part of a well-established pattern: when Mr. Bush doesn't like the rules, he just changes them, as he has done for the detention and treatment of prisoners and has threatened to do in other areas, like the confirmation of his judicial nominees. He has consistently shown a lack of regard for privacy, civil liberties and judicial due process in claiming his sweeping powers. The founders of our country created the system of checks and balances to avert just this sort of imperial arrogance.

The rules needed to be changed. In 2002, a Republican senator — Mike DeWine of Ohio — introduced a bill that would have done just that, by lowering the standard for issuing a warrant from probable cause to "reasonable suspicion" for a "non-United States person." But the Justice Department opposed it, saying the change raised "both significant legal and practical issues" and may have been unconstitutional. Now, the president and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are telling Americans that reasonable suspicion is a perfectly fine standard for spying on Americans as well as non-Americans — and they are the sole judges of what is reasonable.

So why oppose the DeWine bill? Perhaps because Mr. Bush had already secretly lowered the standard of proof — and dispensed with judges and warrants — for Americans and non-Americans alike, and did not want anyone to know.

War changes everything. Mr. Bush says Congress gave him the authority to do anything he wanted when it authorized the invasion of Afghanistan. There is simply nothing in the record to support this ridiculous argument.

The administration also says that the vote was the start of a war against terrorism and that the spying operation is what Mr. Cheney calls a "wartime measure." That just doesn't hold up. The Constitution does suggest expanded presidential powers in a time of war. But the men who wrote it had in mind wars with a beginning and an end. The war Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney keep trying to sell to Americans goes on forever and excuses everything.

Other presidents did it. Mr. Gonzales, who had the incredible bad taste to begin his defense of the spying operation by talking of those who plunged to their deaths from the flaming twin towers, claimed historic precedent for a president to authorize warrantless surveillance. He mentioned George Washington, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These precedents have no bearing on the current situation, and Mr. Gonzales's timeline conveniently ended with F.D.R., rather than including Richard Nixon, whose surveillance of antiwar groups and other political opponents inspired FISA in the first place. Like Mr. Nixon, Mr. Bush is waging an unpopular war, and his administration has abused its powers against antiwar groups and even those that are just anti-Republican.
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The Senate Judiciary Committee is about to start hearings on the domestic spying. Congress has failed, tragically, on several occasions in the last five years to rein in Mr. Bush and restore the checks and balances that are the genius of American constitutional democracy. It is critical that it not betray the public once again on this score.

Who'd a thunk it?

James Walcott has a way with words:

If Condoleeza Rice were a Jeopardy contestant, she'd still be staring at the board with a blank expression and an equally blank mind long after the vowels had been chosen, the puzzle solved, show wrapped, the studio lights dimmed, and Vanna White home doing whatever it is she does to stay shiny and peppy. Larry C. Johnson has the latest word on the clouded crystal ball of our Secretary of State in search of a clue.

I've quoted Johnston before and I'll do it again here: A New Intelligence Failure?

There she goes again. Miss "Who Could Have Imagined an Al Qaeda Attack" Rice has struck again. Are you kidding me? Secretary of State Rice was "surprised" by the election results in Palestine? According to the New York Times:

Ms. Rice pointed out that the election results surprised just about everyone. "I don't know anyone who wasn't caught off guard by Hamas's strong showing," she said on her way to London for meetings on the Middle East, Iran and other matters. "Some say that Hamas itself was caught off guard by its strong showing."

If she is saying that the no one at the CIA, the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or the Defense Intelligence Agency had a clue that something like this could happen, we should immediately dismantle the intelligence community and start over. I find it difficult to believe the system is that broken. We should learn in the coming days whether or not the intelligence analysts really did miss this.

Several informed analysts, however, got it right. Put me in that group. Here's what I wrote on December 16, 2005 on NoQuarter.typepad.com referring to the upcoming election in Iraq:

With voting already underway in Iraq we should harbor no illusion about the ultimate outcome -- the Iraqi Shias with the closest ties to Iran will secure the largest share of the votes. George Bush is right about one thing; this vote is likely to remake the face of the Middle East. Unfortunately, his vision that Iraq will become a launching pad for a new era of peace and understanding among the nations in the region is not only farfetched, but ignores what is actually taking place on the ground.

A few hundred miles to the west, the radical Muslim Brothers (spiritual kin of the Wahabis of Saudi Arabia) have secured an historic place in the Egyptian legislature. Despite intense pressure by the Mubarak government they rallied their supporters and got out the vote. At least they heeded Bush's call for democracy. On the northern border of Iraq, in Turkey, the Islamists also are on the upswing. And let's not forget Lebanon, where forces with close ties to Iran are consolidating power and influence. Remember, Hezbollah is no longer a rag tag band of terrorists, instead it has grown into a disciplined de facto Army of Lebanon.

We are unwilling to come to grips with a very simple truth -- the majority of people in the Middle East prefer an Islamic rather than a secular government. Economic development does not ensure a steady march towards a secular, diverse society. Heavens (irony intended) just look at us. Despite our economic prowess and alleged sophistication, religious fundamentalists in our own country have succeeded in bringing great pressure to bear on our government and our media.

So, say it loud and say it proud--in future elections Islamists will prevail over secularists. Got it?

Bloggers and Reporters

Kate Gilbert commenting in Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: Henry Farrell and His Commentors Say Smart Things says some smart things of her own. I've been interested in (and written something about) the roles of (and differences between) bloggers and reporters and I think that she has something worthwhile to add:

I've been thinking about this a lot but in a different vein. I think one of the "issues" for "real journalists" is that they think the world consists of professional writers and amateur readers. Our job when we read them is to accept what they say (pace minor corrections) in an utterly passive way. But blogs blur that distinction--not only for writers but for readers. Because every person who posts and comments on someone else's blog is also blogging/reporting/commenting. Shafer's main complaint, the main source of his indignation, is that "someone sent their readers over..." to criticize Howell. Its analogous to the second order Howell/Post untruth that Abramoff "directed" the indian tribes to donate money.

As a blog reader and occasional commenter I read and commented over on Howell's thread--but of course not because I was "sent" or because I was a wholly owned "reader" of Atrios or whoever. For one thing, I read a lot of blogs as I read a lot of newspapers, so the idea of being labled as one kind of person/owned by one kind of blog is absurd. For another thing, cyberspace means I was already "over there" through links. I wasn't "going somewhere" I was already there. And finally, of course--through comments on comments of comments, through links and links and links--I and all the other commenters were already in a dialogue with Howell and the WaPo even if they didn't recognize it or refused to participate in it. Just as it was legal for the Indian tribes to make donations to both democrats and republicans.

Shaefer thinks the reader's job is clearly separate from the writer/pundits job. But on blogs that simply isn't the case. Great blog posts often get elevated to the main page. Good comments spin off new threads. Links from commenters create new information for other readers. By contrast, the WAPO/Shafer model is that the reader simply reads and then either rejects or aborbs the information privately. We are to to read/buy/consume news from an authoritative source. When told about tissue paper I should buy tissue paper. When told about wealthy getaways to the islands I should long for one. When told about political "facts" I should nod my head. Anything *other* than that makes me some kind of raving lunatic who simply doesn't know my place.

The WaPo, the Times and other journalists who don't blog regularly, and who think of themselves as above the political fray, are actually frightened to discover that their formerly anonymous, passive audience contains large numbers of active, angry, politically informed people. That's not who they were writing for. Its not the job they signed up for.

Putting the terrorist threat into perspective

IMHO, Joseph J. Ellis has written a very important op-ed in the New York Times which I am quoting in its entirety just because I do think it is so important. Almost everything the US has done since 9/11 has been done while looking through that prism and the distortion has caused huge problems. Prof. Ellis tries to provide some much-needed perspective and the picture he shares is refreshingly clear:

Finding a Place for 9/11 in American History
By JOSEPH J. ELLIS
Published: January 28, 2006
Amherst, Mass.

In recent weeks, President Bush and his administration have mounted a spirited defense of his Iraq policy, the Patriot Act and, especially, a program to wiretap civilians, often reaching back into American history for precedents to justify these actions. It is clear that the president believes that he is acting to protect the security of the American people. It is equally clear that both his belief and the executive authority he claims to justify its use derive from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

A myriad of contested questions are obviously at issue here — foreign policy questions about the danger posed by Iraq, constitutional questions about the proper limits on executive authority, even political questions about the president's motives in attacking Iraq. But all of those debates are playing out under the shadow of Sept. 11 and the tremendous changes that it prompted in both foreign and domestic policy.

Whether or not we can regard Sept. 11 as history, I would like to raise two historical questions about the terrorist attacks of that horrific day. My goal is not to offer definitive answers but rather to invite a serious debate about whether Sept. 11 deserves the historical significance it has achieved.

My first question: where does Sept. 11 rank in the grand sweep of American history as a threat to national security? By my calculations it does not make the top tier of the list, which requires the threat to pose a serious challenge to the survival of the American republic.

Here is my version of the top tier: the War for Independence, where defeat meant no United States of America; the War of 1812, when the national capital was burned to the ground; the Civil War, which threatened the survival of the Union; World War II, which represented a totalitarian threat to democracy and capitalism; the cold war, most specifically the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which made nuclear annihilation a distinct possibility.

Sept. 11 does not rise to that level of threat because, while it places lives and lifestyles at risk, it does not threaten the survival of the American republic, even though the terrorists would like us to believe so.

My second question is this: What does history tell us about our earlier responses to traumatic events?

My list of precedents for the Patriot Act and government wiretapping of American citizens would include the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which allowed the federal government to close newspapers and deport foreigners during the "quasi-war" with France; the denial of habeas corpus during the Civil War, which permitted the pre-emptive arrest of suspected Southern sympathizers; the Red Scare of 1919, which emboldened the attorney general to round up leftist critics in the wake of the Russian Revolution; the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which was justified on the grounds that their ancestry made them potential threats to national security; the McCarthy scare of the early 1950's, which used cold war anxieties to pursue a witch hunt against putative Communists in government, universities and the film industry.

In retrospect, none of these domestic responses to perceived national security threats looks justifiable. Every history textbook I know describes them as lamentable, excessive, even embarrassing. Some very distinguished American presidents, including John Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, succumbed to quite genuine and widespread popular fears. No historian or biographer has argued that these were their finest hours.

What Patrick Henry once called "the lamp of experience" needs to be brought into the shadowy space in which we have all been living since Sept. 11. My tentative conclusion is that the light it sheds exposes the ghosts and goblins of our traumatized imaginations. It is completely understandable that those who lost loved ones on that date will carry emotional scars for the remainder of their lives. But it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy. History suggests that we have faced greater challenges and triumphed, and that overreaction is a greater danger than complacency.

--Joseph J. Ellis is a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College and the author, most recently, of "His Excellency: George Washington."

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Glenn Greenwald has written an article focusing on Ellis's op-ed which seems to shout "the emperor has no clothes". Here's a sample...

All of this seems obvious at this point. The total number of Americans killed by Islamic terrorists in the last 5 years -- or 10 years -- or 20 years -- or ever -- is roughly 3,500, the same number of deaths by suicide which occur in this country every month. This is the overarching threat around which we are constructing our entire foreign policy, changing the basic principles of our government, and fundamentally altering both our behavior in the world and the way in which we are perceived.

And yet, one almost never hears anyone arguing that the terrorism threat, like any other threat, should be viewed in perspective and subjected to rational risk-benefit assessments. That's because opinions about terrorism are the new form of political correctness, and even hinting that this threat is not the all-consuming, existential danger to our Republic which the Bush followers, fear-mongerers and hysterics among us have relentlessly and shrilly insisted that it is, will subject one to all sorts of accusations concerning one's patriotism and even mental health.

Professor Ellis makes another important point: that even with regard to the genuinely existential threats in our nation's history, the extreme abridgment of liberties we embraced in response to those threats have almost always come to be viewed -- retrospectively and by consensus -- as excessive and unwarranted

[...]

Most people this side of Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter recognize that those reactions were excessive and nowhere near justified by the actual threat which was posed. And yet we don't seem to be able to apply those lessons to the threat of terrorism, which is causing us to engage in all sorts of extreme measures based on the warped notion that the terrorism threat is -- to use George Bush's formulation -- an "unprecedented danger."

[...]

It would be a good start to at least arrive at the point where we can have this discussion openly and rationally -- without the discussion being drowned out by manipulative emotional appeals and cheap and cynical smears. That there is even an Op-Ed in a major American newspaper with the words "terrorism" and "perspective" in the same sentence is something we haven't seen for four years, and it is an encouraging first step.

Digby, in an article titled Thrill Ride echos the point that the reaction to the so-called terrorist threat is all out of proportion.

Glenn Greenwald points to this op-ed in today's NY Times which points out something that many of us have been hammering for years, namely that Islamic fundamentatlist terrorism is not an existential threat.

This is something I've been on about myself but Digby's take is a little different. It's not just that Bush and his cronies have been fear-mongering in order to more easily control the passively quaking public but that the public is also complicit in getting its jollies with this terrorism stuff.

Of course we all felt real fear in the early days, none so much as those who lived in New York and DC. It was almost unbelievable to see those scenes. But there was a sense of spectacle and drama about it that was literally unreal to those of us who watched it on television. This was fear put to music, with dramatic title treatments and a soaring voice-over. Because of that, on some level, 9/11 was a thrill for many people, even some Democrats. It was sad and horrifying, of course, but it was also stimulating, exciting and memorable because of the way it was presented on television. (When we were talking about this, Jane described it as if "the whole country was watching porn together every time the rerun of the towers falling was broadcast.") And we subsequently fetishized the "war on terrorism" to the point where some people become inexplicably excited whenever it is mentioned. They want that big group grope again, that sense of shared sensation. That is the "fear" that people say they have. And it's why they want to vote for the guy who keeps pumping it into the body politic.

[...]

Greenwald and Ellis both argue very persuasively that islamic fundamentalist terrorism does not present an existential threat to our country. I think that idea is beginning to get some traction in the national security debates. I don't know how long it might take to break this country out of its shared fetish for the "war on terrorism" but perhaps it's time to start addressing that as well. Until we finally admit that we aren't "at war" by any real definition of that term, we are going to be hamstrung in addressing the very real national security challenges we do face.

I haven't the vaguest idea how to do it, though. This nation is on the "war on terrorism" thrill ride and is enjoying it so much they've bought a season pass. And like most thrill rides these days, after the first little while I start to feel nauseated.

Palace Revolt

I've written before about how much and why I like people like Fitz & Comey so it was a treat to learn today in an article in Newsweek that they are not alone. There are other good, principled people in government offices who believe that the laws should be enforced regardless of who is involved.

These Justice Department lawyers, backed by their intrepid boss Comey, had stood up to the hard-liners, centered in the office of the vice president, who wanted to give the president virtually unlimited powers in the war on terror. Demanding that the White House stop using what they saw as farfetched rationales for riding rough-shod over the law and the Constitution, Goldsmith and the others fought to bring government spying and interrogation methods within the law. They did so at their peril; ostracized, some were denied promotions, while others left for more comfortable climes in private law firms and academia. Some went so far as to line up private lawyers in 2004, anticipating that the president's eavesdropping program would draw scrutiny from Congress, if not prosecutors. These government attorneys did not always succeed, but their efforts went a long way toward vindicating the principle of a nation of laws and not men.

ReddHedd over at FDL has posted an article she calls Comey and the Rule of Law Versus the Cult of Cheney which begins...

For anyone who has doubted that there is, indeed, still some integrity left in the world, look no further. Newsweek has a story out today on James Comey and a band of conservative appointees in the DoJ and elsewhere throughout the intelligence legal community in the Bush Administration who stood up to what I'm going to call the "Cult of Cheney" -- the VP, David Addington, John Yoo and others, who continuously pushed the envelope and the rule of law to get what they wanted in terms of overreach of Presidential power.

Go read it... and you'll be introduced to another of the "good guys" named Jack Goldsmith, a former assistant attorney general in the DoJ and his battle with another operative for the Dark Side, David Addington, formerly counsel, now chief of staff to the vice president Darth Cheney.

Do the right thing!

It's amazing how often members of Congress decide what they will do by considering appearances and political advantage and how seldom based on what they think is right. They seem to have internalized the notion that to not go along is somehow being "obstructionist" i.e. disagreeing just to be disagreeable or partisan and that one looks weak if one loses. Whatever happened to the idea: do the right thing? or stand up for what you believe in?

Regarding the Alito nomination, Senator John Kerry is planning to lead a filibuster and it seems to be gaining some traction. But why should that be a surprise? Alito's a dreadful choice from the perspective of any progressive person. So why not stand up and object to someone that you find objectionable? It's not about winning, it's about doing the right thing.

So go do it...!

Why is that some Democrats seem to think losing will make them look tougher than will winning?

--Atrios

This is, as Senator Kennedy reminded us, a generational battle. Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court could turn back a generation's worth of progress in civil rights, in worker protections, in equality for women, in environmental protection, in the fight of the little guy against the corporation. And Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court will affect the generations to come. We cannot afford to refight the battles of the past 40 years during the next 40 years.

This is an uphill battle, but one in which we can at the very least achieve a moral victory. Approached with principle, with passion, and with vigor, a moral victory is not a hollow victory. As Senator Kennedy told us, "You don't ever lose fighting for principle, for what is decent and right. You don't ever lose when you have the power, the force of being correct."

-- mcjoan at DailyKOS


Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

--Abraham Lincoln


"Now you know that in this environment if a Democratic president nominated a pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, pro-government secrecy judge to the high court that many Republicans would want to filibuster. Sometimes politicians do things out of conviction and many Democrats are supporting a filibuster because they really believe that he should not be on the Supreme Court."

--Bob Beckel

The Democrats shocked Washington today by holding together, dropping a mighty turd in the punchbowl of the Bush administration, dealing a deadly blow to his nomination of Alito. The president won't be too happy tonight as he gives the 2006 state of the union speech.

--Atrios (prediction for headlines the day after the SOTU speech)

Update Jan/29/2006:

Georgia10 at DailyKOS writes a Dear Senators letter which cites a new poll with encouraging numbers for Democrats:

With numbers like those screaming out to you that Americans want Democratic leadership and Democratic opposition to Bush's policies and choices, why in the world would you be afraid of being labeled "obstructionist"? You do not win elections by cowering from the fight. You win by proving to the American people that no amount of spin, no amount of intimidation, and no amount of taunting by the opposition can make you compromise your principles.

You may think a vote against cloture will hurt your campaigns; I say it will invigorate them. Because with that single vote, you will prove yourself not as a politician, but as a true civil servant. And that entire body of energy and spirit you saw displayed this weekend in your inbox and voicemail, we will use that to your advantage during your campaigns. Moreover, by standing up against this power-hungry Executive--even in the face of failure--you will prove to America that there is such a thing as "Democratic leadership." And that, Senators, is how we truly regain our majority status: by proving to America we're willing to fight every battle, even if we're destined to lose the war.

Like I said...

Brad DeLong says:

Matthew Yglesias says, until the press corps cleans its own house, those seeking objective news and information will continue to rely on internet sources of good reputation. A press corps that includes Fox News, the Washington Times, National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and CNN is hopelessly corrupt. How can it be worth anyone's time to figure out which reporters are straight and which are bent?

By contrast, it is much much easier to assess reputations and reliability on the web.

See also these pearls of wisdom...

How do you like your democracy now, Mr. Bush?

Read Juan Cole about the Hamasa victory in the Palestinian elections. In the Digby article that steered me to it, he says:

I'm sure all the warbloggers have been feverishly typing "bring it on!" all day. But this is actually very serious stuff and it is a direct result of a simpleminded American policy. It isn't the first failure and it is going to be far from the last. You cannot successfully run the world on comic book slogans and third rate biblical homilies. When the Supreme Court installed a halfwit in the oval office we reaped the whirlwind.

Oh, and in case anyone's thinking that this really wasn't in the hands of Americans:

MARTIN INDYK: ... And, by the way, one should say in this regard, that there was an opportunity to postpone the election. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the PA wanted to do so. But this administration insisted that it go ahead.

When it comes to elections, there is nothing more sacred to a Republican than an arbitrary, meaningless deadline.

Another Bush Flip-Flop

The Carpetbagger tells us that "Maybe that Kerry guy knew what he was talking about".

In the 2004 presidential race, John Kerry offered a very clear approach as to how the United States should deal with Iran: have the international community offer Iran nuclear fuel to be used in a peaceful nuclear energy program. As Kerry put it at the time, "We should call their bluff and organize a group of states that will offer the nuclear fuel they need for peaceful purposes and take back the spent fuel so they can't divert it to build a weapon."

Nonsense, said the Bush gang, which argued such an approach would effectively be "appeasement." Condi Rice dismissed Kerry's approach, telling Fox News, "This regime has to be isolated in its bad behavior, not quote-unquote 'engaged.'" Frank Gaffney Jr., a former Pentagon official and Bush ally, knocked Kerry's plan in an op-ed entitled, "Kerry's Nuclear Nonsense." Gaffney boasted, "Mr. Bush understands the folly of going that route." National Review ran an item calling Kerry's proposal "ignorant" and "dangerously wrong."

[...]

President Bush's endorsement of a plan to end the nuclear standoff with Iran by giving the Islamic republic nuclear fuel for civilian use under close monitoring has left some of his supporters baffled.

One cause for the chagrin is that the proposal, which is backed by Russia, essentially adopts a strategy advocated by Mr. Bush's Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts.

"I have made it clear that I believe that the Iranians should have a civilian nuclear power program under these conditions: that the material used to power the plant would be manufactured in Russia, delivered under IAEA inspectors to Iran to be used in that plant, the waste of which will be picked up by the Russians and returned to Russia," Mr. Bush said at a news conference yesterday. "I think that is a good plan. The Russians came up with the idea and I support it," he added.

Maybe so, but he was against the idea before he was for it.

Just out of curiosity, any chance we'll see National Review blasting Bush's new approach to Iran as "ignorant" and "dangerously wrong"? Or maybe Condi Rice will explain why the idea rewarded Iran for bad behavior when Kerry recommended it, but it's brilliant leadership when Bush recommends it?

jukeboxgrad, Tech Detective

This technophile thinks that jukeboxgrad has a great article (even if it is really long) over at the DailyKos. I was pointed to it by Jane at FireDogLake in an article entitled Don't Fuck With The Tech Guy in which she says:

When Brady first started peddling his story about "hundreds and hundreds" of comments filled with hate speech, I'm sure he never counted on some tech whiz to show up and resurrect archives and run the kind of sophisticated analysis that allowed him to reconstruct what really happened. He's put together an amazing diary over at Kos that recounts exactly what went on, an amazing bit of detective work that is really stunning in its scope.

I love it when competent people work hard to get at the facts. Most people don't like feeling cornered and that's what happens when you lie and someone goes after you relentlessly with facts and logic. As I have said before, it's one thing to be wrong and then apologize when your error is demonstrated, but it's quite another to deny and lie about it. As jukeboxgrad says in the comments: "I'm nice to people who make mistakes. I'm just not nice to people who lie to me, especially when they do it in a way that insults my intelligence."

So he was a "equal money dispenser", eh?

As a proud member of the reality-based community, I delight when someone armed with verifiable evidence enters the debate. The American Prospect commissioned "a new and extensive analysis of campaign donations from all of Jack Abramoff’s tribal clients" by "Dwight L. Morris and Associates, a for-profit firm specializing in campaign finance that has done research for many media outlets". It clearly "shows that a great majority of contributions made by those clients went to Republicans. The analysis undercuts the claim that Abramoff directed sums to Democrats at anywhere near the same rate".

But the Morris and Associates analysis, which was done exclusively for The Prospect, clearly shows that it'’s highly misleading to suggest that the tribes's giving to Dems was in any way comparable to their giving to the GOP. The analysis shows that when Abramoff took on his tribal clients, the majority of them dramatically ratcheted up donations to Republicans. Meanwhile, donations to Democrats from the same clients either dropped, remained largely static or, in two cases, rose by a far smaller percentage than the ones to Republicans did. This pattern suggests that whatever money went to Democrats, rather than having been steered by Abramoff, may have largely been money the tribes would have given anyway.

[...]

The analysis shows:

in total, the donations of Abramoff'’s tribal clients to Democrats dropped by nine percent after they hired him, while their donations to Republicans more than doubled, increasing by 135 percent after they signed him up;

five out of seven of Abramoff'’s tribal clients vastly favored Republican candidates over Democratic ones;

four of the seven began giving substantially more to Republicans than Democrats after he took them on;

Abramoff'’s clients gave well over twice as much to Republicans than Democrats, while tribes not affiliated with Abramoff gave well over twice as much to Democrats than the GOP -- exactly the reverse pattern.

"“It'’s very hard to see the donations of Abramoff'’s clients as a bipartisan greasing of the wheels,"” Morris, the firm'’s founder and a former investigations editor at the Los Angeles Times, told The Prospect.

Compare and contrast this analysis with the following claim:

In the weeks since Abramoff confessed to defrauding tribes and enticing public officials with bribes, the question of whether Abramoff directed donations just to Republicans, or to the GOP and Democrats, has been central to efforts by both parties to distance themselves from the unfolding scandal. President Bush recently addressed the question on Fox News, saying: "It seems to me that he [Abramoff] was an equal money dispenser, that he was giving money to people in both political parties."”

Down the memory hole

Bush would find it really convenient if he could deep-six the notion that he and toxic Jack Abramoff were associates. Well, as any member of the faith-based community * does when he finds that the facts are inconsistent with the desired reality, he just makes up new ones that fit better. Kinda like a four-year old... no that's not fair... to four-year olds.

As good old Josh Marshall says...

Sometimes the symbols of reality obscure reality. Whether there are one or five or a hundred pictures of President Bush and Jack Abramoff is really beside the point. What is the point is this line from President Bush from yesterday's press conference: "You know, I, frankly, don't even remember having my picture taken with the guy. I don't know him."

Even discounting for the inherent squishiness of the language, that's just a lie.

Doesn't know him? Please. Like most successful politicians President Bush has a knack for remembering names and faces. On top of that, well ... let's set aside the fact that Abramoff was apparently a frequent attendee at White House staff planning meetings, seeded the administration with a bunch of his former employees, and so forth.

Let's just focus on a few key facts.

For the first three years of Bush's presidency Abramoff was arguably the most wired Republican lobbyist in Washington.

Bush doesn't know him?

Abramoff was a long time associate of one of the president's top political advisors, Grover Norquist and his chief political guru Karl Rove.

Bush never made his acquaintance?

Every Republican power player in Washington knew Jack Abramoff. Many of them knew him very, very well. But President Bush never knew him? Their paths never crossed?

That is simply ridiculous.

What's more, everyone asking the questions knows it's ridiculous. The problem is that absent a 2+2=5 type statement they fon't feel comfortable calling the president out as a liar.

Pictures in themselves don't mean much. There are pictures of the president with people he knew far less well than Jack Abramoff, people he really never knew at all. But when those pictures of Abramoff and the president slip into public view, the lie will simply become unsustainable. They know that.

And that's why the White House is turning the city upside down doing everything in its power to insure they never see the light of day.

* Who can forget this bit from The Price of Loyalty, Ron Suskind's book about Paul O'Neill:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

A blast from the past

You can make this stuff up! I know that Abramoff was president of the College Republicans in the 80's and that he was in Hollywood making movies before he "came back" to politics as a lobbyist but this report from South Africa's Mail & Guardian sheds a little light on what Jack was doing in his lost years. It reads more like Tom Clancy or Jack's dumb movie.

Sample:

For several years after its launch in 1985, Abramoff (47) was the Washington face of Pacman, code name for the International Freedom Foundation (IFF). In 1995, the New Nation reported former security policeman Paul Erasmus as describing the IFF as a stratcom-military intelligence (MI) project designed to sway world opinion against the anti- apartheid movement.

[...]

The IFF was ostensibly founded as a conservative think-tank, but was in reality part of an elaborate South African military intelligence operation, code-named Operation Babushka. Established to combat sanctions and undermine the African National Congress...

Nice work for a nice guy, eh...?

Rick and Grover

I like the sound of this. Rick "man-on-dog" Santorum and his passionate (but baseless) denial of his connection with (his dog) Grover. "K-Street, I don't know no K-Street...?"

"I had absolutely nothing to do — never met, never talked, never coordinated, never did anything — with Grover Norquist and the — quote — K Street Project," Mr. Santorum said.

Santorum Exposed comments:

Santorum also told the Morning Call that he hadn't seen Grover Norquist "in years." When, in fact, Norquist spoke at a Santorum press conference last June.

Hey Rick, I know you've had a rough time since June and it may have felt like years. But it's only been six months since you and Grover teamed up.

Does anyone believe anything this guy says?

Kerry backs a Filibuster

From Crooks & Liars:

Sen. John Kerry will attempt a filibuster to block the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

The Poor Man gets it and shares it

The Poor Man rocks! He has some "Scattered thoughts on the Deborah Howell dust-up" which is well worth a read (link) but I really like his observations on the subject of a complicit media which I talked about earlier here and here. He finishes up with this:

Here’s the thing, though. Accuracy In Media, the Media Research Center, and the rest of the right-wing noise machine spent decades beating on the media, and they showed that constant, nasty, personal attacks - and only constant, nasty, personal attacks - will get the media to do what you want. If you are persistant enough, you can get the media to join in on any political smear you want, no matter how disgraceful or absurd. Hell, if you really put your mind to it, you might even get the ombudsman of eventheliberal Washington Post swearing up and down that Jack Abramoff doesn’t have a partisan bone in his body. Sounds crazy, I know, but you gotta believe.

Speaking of which: Howell. In the face of people pointing out that what she said was untrue, she stayed firm, and refused to back down. It was only after the Post’ s comment system was overwhelmed by days and days of hundreds and hundreds of angry posts - some apparently very nasty and personal - that Howell deigned to address the issue of her lying, and even to back down, grudgingly, from her orginal statements. Now, of course, it is not nice that people said not nice things to her (which is very bad so don’t do it), but if this is the only sort of treatment that you respond to, expect to see a lot more of it. And you can cry and moan about how nasty the people are who said horrible things to you are - and they are nasty, it’s true - but you have brought it on yourself. Instead of tossing off some facile crap about how now those usually well-behaved moderate liberals have gone all crazying like those nasty right-wingers (who you have learned to tread so carefully around), you might want to think a bit about cause and effect, and why it seems like everyone you listen to is treating you like shit.

More lies from those lying liars

Think Progress has another example of the media uncritically peddling RNC spin as fact:

Couric Caught On Tape: ‘Democrats Took Money From Abramoff Too, Mr. Dean’

On this morning’s Today Show, Katie Couric falsely claimed that Democrats took money from Jack Abramoff. Howard Dean tried to set her straight, but she stuck to the right-wing talking points:

Watch it:

COURIC: Hey, wait a second. Democrats took — Democrats took money from Abramoff too, Mr. Dean.

DEAN: That is absolutely false. That did not happen. Not one dime of money from Jack Abramoff went to any Democrat at any time.

Katie then cited a Center for Responsive Politics study as her evidence, but a look at CRP’s website (here and here) show that Democrats accepted no money from Abramoff.

Pictures... what pictures?

Josh Marshall has confirmed that someone is going to great lengths to get rid of photographic evidence that Jack Abramofff & George W. Bush were pretty tight. Move along, move along... nothing to see here, nothing to see... anymore :-)

In his press conference today, President Bush suggested that the existence of photographs of himself and Jack Abramoff are no big deal and generally pooh-poohed the press's focus on the story. But our reporting suggests that the White House is actively involved in covering up and possibly destroying photographic evidence of the two men together.

[...]

So, here we have it that the president of Reflections admits that she removed photos of Abramoff and the president from their online database. If what her employee told me on the 11th is accurate the photos were also deleted from the CDs they keep on file in their own archives. So the scrub seems to have been pretty thorough.

Kevin Drum acknowledges that Bush has pictures taken with lots of people so it's not necessarily a big deal...

But when photo agencies go to the trouble of deleting pictures of Bush and Abramoff from their website, then deleting them permanently from their own CDs, and then claiming that they did it all on their own with no direction from the White House or anyone else — well, that just starts to sound a little suspicious, doesn't it? If the White House isn't guilty of anything, why are they skulking around in shadows so much?

What's a reader to do?

Brad DeLong would have liked to ask a question of WaPo's Jim Brady during the Interactivity Ethics Panel.

I have read David Rosenbaum's big April 2002 front-page New York Times article about Jack Abramoff: "[Abramoff] is, by his own description, a committed ideologue.... tries hard to persuade his fellow Washington lobbyists to give more generously to the Republican Party... expects to raise as much as $5 million this year..." And I have read Susan Schmidt's first article written 22 months later--the one that David Leen says broke the Abramoff scandal--"Under Abramoff's guidance, the four tribes... have loosened their traditional ties to the Democratic Party, giving Republicans two-thirds of the $2.9 million they have donated.... The payday for the GOP is small though, compared with the $15.1 million the tribes have paid Abramoff and his law firm..."

Why in the Holy Name of the Lord would anybody think it is appropriate to characterize this--as Deborah Howell continues to characterize it--as "[Abramoff] directed his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties"? What even semi-rational thought process could lead anyone to think that Howell's is a fair characterization of Schmidt's "loosened... ties to the Democratic Party" and of Rosenbaum's "committed ideologue.... tries hard to persuade... [others] to give more generously to the Republican Party... expects to raise as much as $5 million"?

Thus my question for Mr. Brady: what does he believe is the appropriate role of readers when confronted by someone like Deborah Howell who appears to have taken leave of her senses and abandoned the reality-based community? Should we write letters to the ombudsman?

Smothering The Hearts and Minds

Kevin Drum points us to a Marc Cooper post on the court martial of Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. called Smothering The Hearts and Minds:

Let’s make sure we get this story right. You take the captured, uniformed general of an enemy army — and in blatant violation of all notions of human decency and of the Geneva Conventions — you beat him with rubber hoses, pour water down his nose, then stuff him into a sleeping bag, tie him with electrical cord, and then sit your ass down on his chest until he suffocates and you are convicted of what? “Negligent homicide?”

....Remember that the victim in this case, Iraqi General Abed Hamel Mowhoush was a top, uniformed officer of a recognized state-sponsored enemy army and not some “illegal combatant.” Worse, when Mowhoush was suffocated in November 2003, it was after he had voluntarily turned himself in to U.S. military authorities. At least, sort of voluntarily. Fact is, the General surrendered to American troops because they were holding his sons hostage — yet another stark violation of international law.

And we also learn this from the LA Times account of the trial:

The day after the general’s death, prosecutors said, Welshofer asked for another sleeping bag so he could continue using the technique on others.

Read the whole thing if you have a strong stomach. And then ask yourself: if the jury bought Welshofer's argument that he was just following orders, whose orders was he following?

Executive Privilege Watch

Kevin Drum compares and contrasts...

Yesterday:

The White House was told in the hours before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans that the city would probably soon be inundated with floodwater, forcing the long-term relocation of hundreds of thousands of people, documents to be released Tuesday by Senate investigators show.

A Homeland Security Department report submitted to the White House at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, hours before the storm hit, said, "Any storm rated Category 4 or greater will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching."

....Other documents to be released Tuesday show that the weekend before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Homeland Security Department officials predicted that its impact would be worse than a doomsday-like emergency planning exercise conducted in Louisiana in July 2004.

Today:

The Bush administration, citing the confidentiality of executive branch communications, said Tuesday that it did not plan to turn over certain documents about Hurricane Katrina or make senior White House officials available for sworn testimony before two Congressional committees investigating the storm response.

.... In response to questions later from a reporter, the deputy White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, said the administration had declined requests to provide testimony by Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff; Mr. Card's deputy, Joe Hagin; Frances Fragos Townsend, the homeland security adviser; and her deputy, Ken Rapuano.

Mr. Duffy said the administration had also declined to provide storm-related e-mail correspondence and other communications involving White House staff members.

Why am I not surprised?

Jane takes on Brady and the WaPo

I really liked this image so I'm linking to it at FireDogLake . Read it regularly, I do.




Jane Hamsher did the on-line dance (post.blog chat) with Brady and some background music at his place but now challenges him to a dance on neutral turf.

Since I've shown my willingness to play by Brady's rules, I challenge him to engage in a dialogue in a neutral playing field. One-on-one, back and forth, no "background noise," no place to hide. We can do it in an email exchange, we can do it in a live chat, we do it over at the Huffington Post or any mutually agreeable place where the ground rules are equitable to both parties.

I've done my part. Let's see exactly how brave and committed to "transparency" he really is.

She also follows up on "the larger problems" which remain at the WaPo:

While I'm perfectly willing to believe Deborah Howell is too much of a dingaling to do anything other than mindlessly repeat what she has heard from others, it is impossible to divorce her repetition of an Abramoff GOP talking point from this context. Both Jim Brady's and the Washington Post's decision to characterize the response of their online readers as a problem of "uncivility" is an attempt to slap a cheap coat of whitewash over an insidious, festering problem that continues to plague their management and the reporters who continue to suck it up to earn front-page status for their articles.

[...]

And the larger problem remains. There is a serious institutional bias toward the right that the Post is apparently pursuing at its own peril.

So called leftist incivility

Digby puts the lie to claims of "leftist incivility" (which have become right-wing talking points) in two ways: first, the incivilty cited was relatively minor and not wide-spread and second, he contrasts it with examples of what right-wing headliners regularly engage in. He concludes with:

That's the tip of the ice berg. These are people who are feted by the president of the United States, who appear on the cover of TIME magazine and are profiled as merry jokesters, people who mainstream journalists refer to as "wonderful." The Washington Post and NBC news referred to at least one of these people as "mainstream."

Please, please spare me the crocodile tears about leftist incivility. We are living in a political world formed by rightwing commentators who have made a fetish of harsh eliminationist rhetoric hammered over and over again into the ether until it sounds like normal discourse. And we've been waiting for more than a decade for the mainstream media to notice that rightwing celebrity pundits, who reach millions upon millions of listeners and viewers a day, routinely accuse liberals of treason and celebrate our deaths. It's made us a little bit testy. When important news outlets like the Washington Post see "leftist incivility" as a topic worthy of the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth it makes us wonder if they are even living in the same universe we do.

Famous and wealthy toxic political commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly are routinely lauded as normal mainstream partisans while ordinary readers of the Washington Post are excoriated for incivility when they complain about inaccurate coverage that benefits Republicans. This is bizarro world. It is insane. It is a sign of a very sick political culture.

I know you are but what am I?

From the Daily Muck, we see that Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mon.) is fighting back against those nasty Democrats who are pointing out that he and Abramoff were pretty tight. He has an ad in which he makes some pretty bizarre claims. As Paul Kiel goes on to say:

And here it gets much better, as Burns takes a GOP talking point and spins it into a complete absurdity:

"Plus they're [the Dem attack ads] paid for by the same Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff's clients."

Those Democrats and their Abramoff money! The attack ads he's refuting were paid for by Montana Democratic Party. The Party received one $5K contribution from the Agua Caliente tribe, an Abramoff client. Burns took $5K from Abramoff and his wife and $5K from Abramoff's gambling boat company SunCruz, as part of the nearly $150K that he received from Abramoff and his tribal clients. I don't think it's in Burns' interest to get into a back and forth on who took Abramoff's money.

Canadian Election 2

Update:

Con Lib NDP BQ Other

124 103 29 51 1 (seats)

36% 30% 18% 10% 5%

Canada got what it wanted: it got rid of the Liberals (for a time) but didn't give a real mandate to the Conservatives and to prove that this wasn't a rightward shift, the NDP almost doubled its seats i.e. this was just an "otherward" shift. If Harper shows he can govern as well as he campaigned i.e. say/do what the people want and not what he wants, then he might earn a majority next time. If he confuses what he actually got with a real mandate, then, as soon as the public has the stomach for another election, they will toss him out and restore the Natural Governing Party to power under a new leader. Martin's resignation was a classy act for him, a good move for the country and a strategically clever move for his party.

Reid fires back at Bush

RAW STORY has a speech that Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid is about to deliver to the Center for American Progress, a liberal thinktank. Once again, Harry talks tough and calls it as he see it. Here's a sample, go read the whole thing here.

Republicans today control the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House. They have absolute power, and it has corrupted their Party and led to the culture of corruption that we see now in Washington.

We have the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, admonished three times for ethics violations and under indictment now for money laundering.

We have the White House, where an employee has been indicted for the first time in 135 years.

There’s Karl Rove, who is under investigation… and David Safavian, the man appointed by President Bush to be charge in charge of hundreds of billions of dollars in government contracts who was led away in handcuffs because of his dealings with Jack Abramoff and others.

And then, we have the Republican “K-Street Project, which has invited lobbyists inside our nation’s Capitol….as long as they are willing to pay the right price.

The Republican abuse of power comes at great cost to our country, and we can see it in the present state of our union. Special interests and the well-connected have grown stronger, while our national security… our economy… our health care… and our government have grown weaker.

What is the state of our union in 2006?

We have a national security policy that protects Halliburton’s bottom-line with no-bid contracts but sends our troops to Iraq without body armor.

We have Vice President Cheney’s energy policy that helped Big Oil make a hundred billion dollars in profit in 2005 | but this same policy has America paying 70 dollars for a barrel of oil and families paying twice as much for heat and gasoline as did in late 2001.

We have students priced out of college by skyrocketing tuition - and Republicans in Congress who want to cut student loans in order to pay for special interest tax breaks.

We have 46 million Americans without health insurance and poverty numbers on the rise – but a President whose economic policies benefit the wealthy and well-connected.

This is what happens to the state of our union when leaders put special interests ahead of the America’s interest.

These are the costs of Republican corruption.

The Administration's new FISA defense is factually false

Forgive the extensive excerpts but I want to encourage you to go read Glenn Greenwald's whole post here.

In light of Gen. Hayden's new claim yesterday that the reason the Bush Administration decided to eavesdrop outside of FISA is because the "probable cause" standard for obtaining a FISA warrant was too onerous (and prevented them from obtaining warrants they needed to eavesdrop), there is a fact which I have not seen discussed anywhere but which now appears extremely significant, at least to me.

In June, 2002, Republican Sen. Michael DeWine of Ohio introduced legislation (S. 2659) which would have eliminated the exact barrier to FISA which Gen. Hayden yesterday said is what necessitated the Administration bypassing FISA.

[...]

So, in June, 2002, the Administration refused to support elimination of the very barrier ("probable cause") which Gen. Hayden claimed yesterday necessitated the circumvention of FISA. In doing so, the Administration identified two independent reasons for opposing this amendment. One reason was that the Justice Department was not aware of any problems which the Administration was having in getting the warrants it needed under FISA...

[...]

... as of June, 2002 -- many months after the FISA bypass program was ordered -- the DoJ official who was responsible for overseeing the FISA warrant program was not aware (at least when he submitted this Statement) of any difficulties in obtaining warrants under the FISA "probable cause" standard, and for that reason, the Administration would not even support DeWine's amendment. If - as the Administration is now claiming - they had such significant difficulties obtaining the warrants they wanted for eavesdropping that they had to go outside of FISA, surely Baker - who was in charge of obtaining those warrants - would have been aware of them. And, if the Administration was really having the problems under FISA, they would have supported DeWine's Amendment. But they didn't.

[...]


Two other points to note about this failed DeWine Amendment that are extremely important:

(1) Congress refused to enact the DeWine Amendment and thus refused to lower the FISA standard from "probable cause" to "reasonable suspicion." It is the height of absurdity for the Administration to now suggest that Congress actually approved of this change and gave it authorization to do just that -- when Congress obviously had no idea it was being done and refused to pass that change into law when it had the chance.

(2) DeWine's amendment would have lowered the standard for obtaining a FISA warrant only for non-U.S. persons -- whereas for "U.S. persons," the standard would have continued to be "probable cause." And, DeWine's amendment would not have eliminated judicial oversight, since the Administration still would have needed approval of the FISA court for these warrants.

That means that, in 2 different respects, DeWine's FISA amendment was much, much less draconian than what the Administration was already secretly doing (i.e., lowering the evidentiary standard but (i) eliminating judicial oversight, and (ii) applying these changes not just to non-U.S. persons but also to U.S. persons). Thus, Congress refused to approve -- and the DoJ even refused to endorse -- a program much less extreme and draconian than the Administration's secret FISA bypass program.

This has extremely significant implications for the Administration's claims made yesterday through Gen. Hayden as to why it was necessary to bypass FISA. The Administration's claim that the "probable cause" component of FISA was preventing it from engaging in the eavesdropping it needed is the opposite of what it told Congress when refusing to support the DeWine Amendment. And its claim that Congress knew of and approved of its FISA-bypassing eavesdrop program is plainly negated by the fact that the same Congress was debating whether such changes should be effectuated and then refused to approve much less extreme changes to FISA than what the Administration secretly implemented on its own (and which it now claims Congress authorized).

Canadian Election

No time for blogging tonight. I've got an election to put to bed. Preliminary results are the Conservative party winning a plurality of the 308 seats. All four leaders appear to have won their own seats. The Liberals are down in both number of votes and seats and the NDP and Conservatives made significant gains. There is less than 5% separating the Conservatives and the Liberals (~36% vs ~31%) with the NDP at 18%

Seats:

Con Lib NDP BQ IND
124 102 30 50 1

122 103 31 50 1

122 102 32 50 1

121 103 32 50 1

122 103 31 50 1

122 102 32 50 1

122 103 31 50 1

122 104 30 50 1

122 103 31 50 1

124 102 31 50 1

123 105 29 50 1

122 106 29 50 1

122 105 30 50 1

123 104 30 50 1

124 104 29 50 1

125 102 29 51 1

124 103 29 51 1

125 104 28 50 1

124 103 29 51 1 seats

36%30%18%10%5% percent

Dirty Pictures

It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. According to TIME Magazine someone is sitting on at least 5000 words that could prove pretty embarassing to King George who's trying to spin the story that he hardly knew Jackoff.

TIME has seen five photographs of Abramoff and the President that suggest a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed. While TIME's source refused to provide the pictures for publication, they are likely to see the light of day eventually because celebrity tabloids are on the prowl for them. And that has been a fear of the Bush team's for the past several months: that a picture of the President with the admitted felon could become the iconic image of direct presidential involvement in a burgeoning corruption scandal...

There have been so many of these things in the past, things that might have brought down the House of George, that I can't get my expectations too high but maybe it's like lead-poisoning, maybe it's start to add up. Hmmmm...

More Howell howling

Kevin Drum adds his two cents worth on the Deborah Howell mess (see: this, this, and this) but adds an interesting postscript too. When you're wrong, apologizing is the first step, then comes correcting the record. It seems that they're a little light on the first step and it would appear that they haven't taken the second one yet...

[...]

In fact, if Howell had posted a simple correction to her column on Monday saying that she had made a mistake and Jack Abramoff donated money only to Republicans --— and left it at that instead of straining to justify her original error -- none of this would have happened. The messenger may have been rude and crude in this case, but the messenger was also right.

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, why is it that Howell's original column still doesn't a correction appended? Nobody reading it either at the Post site or via Nexis would have any idea that she had made a mistake.

Brad DeLong weighs in again saying:

"I can't resist one more snapshot from the Washington Post clown show."

[...]

But Brady's and Howell's conclusion is not the conclusion that anyone but a right-wing loony would get from Susan Schmidt's article, is it? Susan Schmidt thinks Abramoff was directing his clients to give less money to Democrats than they had in the past--"loosen their traditional ties to the Democratic Party"--and more to Republicans, doesn't she?

Remember: As even right-wing ex-Pioneer Press editor and current Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell [finally -bill] admits: the Abramoff scandal is not a bipartisan scandal, but a Republican scandal.

Real Answer to Hypothetical Question

Thanks to commenter Geoff, a "bona fide political scientist", we get an answer to my question(s) regarding what would happen "if the Conservatives win a plurality but can't form a government".

This is a very good question (or series of questions), as it addresses the grey area of the Canadian Constitution, that is the "reserve powers of the Crown," exercised federally by the Governor-General.

To make a long story short, Paul Martin asked for the dissolution of Parliament in November, but he did not resign as Prime Minister. He and his cabinet are still in office, in a caretaker role. In theory, even if Paul Martin got FEWER seats than Stephen Harper, he could decide not to resign as PM and suggest to the Governor-General (probably after talking to Layton and Duceppe) that he would like to try to continue in office, as the leader of a minority government. (He has the right to make the first move.) She would then canvass the leaders of the other opposition parties, including Mr. Harper, and ask them for their views. Her job in this situation is to allow the leader with the best chance of enjoying the "confidence of the house" to form a government. She would also respect any formal coalitions. Therefore, if the BQ and NDP said they would prefer Martin over Harper (and let's assume it's a four-party House of Commons), then she would presumably agree to allow him to continue. If however Harper looked like he had more support, in the form of a seat count, then by convention she should "dismiss" Paul Martin, whether he wants to go or not, and ask Mr. Harper to form a government. As you can imagine this could take days or even weeks, as sometimes happens in European countries. Whoever forms the government, with a minority of seats, then has the same job that Martin had for the last eighteen months--that is, piecing together majority support to pass a budget this spring and any other viable legislation.

This reinforces the idea that the House of Commons is not THE government, but rather the link between the people and the government. The government is "responsible" to the House of Commons, and it is the House of Commons that is directly accountable to the people, through elections.

Like the U.S. Electoral College, it is possible that the party that gets the most votes, or even the party that gets the most seats, may not form the government.

This situation would make for some interesting deal cutting.

One final interesting point. Suppose that either Harper or Martin forms a minority government this coming week. Then suppose this April-May he is defeated on a budget vote, a la Joe Clark in 1980 (and the country must have a budget). Does she dissolve Parliament, after only 3-4 months, or does she ask the other major leader to give it a try, without an election? She would probably be guided in part by the comments of all three opposition parties, but it MAY be within her power to keep the Parliament going.

Either way, the G-G's legal advisors could be busy...

by Geoff, a bona fide political scientist

Molly Ivins has some tough love for Dems

Molly Ivins wants the Democrats to re-learn a lesson about leadership. Here's a sample of her advice:

It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times.

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people think the war in Iraq is a mistake and we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) favor raising the minimum wage. The majority (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) want to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) think we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) think big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools.

Whom are you afraid of?

I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway ("First, you have to win elections"). Can't you even read the damn polls?

Here's a prize example by someone named Barry Casselman, who writes, "There is an invisible civil war in the Democratic Party, and it is between those who are attempting to satisfy the defeatist and pacifist left base of the party and those who are attempting to prepare the party for successful elections in 2006 and 2008."

Oh come on, people — get a grip on the concept of leadership. Look at this war — from the lies that led us into it, to the lies they continue to dump on us daily.

You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine you have no idea what people are thinking. I'm telling you right now, Tom DeLay is going to lose in his district. If Democrats in Washington haven't got enough sense to own the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.

Dean on Rove

Earlier, I mentioned that Rove was back but Howard Dean is of the opinion that Rove lacks the necessary credibility. I think he makes a pretty good case.

Governor Dean:

"Karl Rove only has a White House job and a security clearance because President Bush has refused to keep his promise to fire anyone involved in revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative," said Dean. "Rove's political standing gets him an invitation to address Republicans in Washington, DC today, but it doesn't give him the credibility to question Democrats' commitment to national security. The truth is, Karl Rove breached our national security for partisan gain and that is both unpatriotic and wrong."

The advantage of a noisy crowd

In my earlier post on a complicit media, I rather generously ascribed most of the blame on the fact that the media is not trying to do what I think that they should be doing. However, Josh Marshall, who probably knows more about this subject than I do, thinks that there is more to the theory of media bias. However, he thinks the media's rightward leaning results from their fear of being labeled left-leaning.

So much of the imbalance and shallowness of press coverage today stems from a simple fact: reporters know they'll catch hell from the right if they say or write anything that can even remotely be construed as representing 'liberal bias'. (Often even that's not required.) Indeed, when you actually watch -- from the inside -- how mainstream newsrooms work, it is really not too much to say that they operate on two guiding principles: reporting the facts and avoiding impressions of 'liberal bias'.

On the left or center-left, until very recently, there's simply never been an organized chorus of people ready to take the Howells of the press biz to task and mau-mau them when they get a key fact wrong. Without that, the world of political news was like an NBA game where one side played the refs hard and had roaring seats of fans while the other never made a peep. With that sort of structural imbalance, shoddy scorekeeping and cowed, and eventually compliant, refs are inevitable.

This is evening the balance, creating a better press.

A hypothetical Canadian election question...

What happens if the Conservatives win a plurality but can't form a government? i.e. Harper can't get enough seats from Liberal, Bloc, NDP or other members? It's my understanding that, when no party wins a majority, the Governor-General first asks the leader of the last government if he can form the government. When that party hasn't won a plurality, would the leader not just say: "No" and the G-G would then ask the leader of party with the most seats if he can form the government? So I get back to my first question... what would happen if Harper had no friends?

What happens if some combination of Liberals, NDP, Bloc, others agree to form a coalition having more than half of the 308 seats?

Any political scientists out there...?

Update: a very interesting answer from a real politcal scientist in the Comments.

Iraqi election results

From Juan Cole:

The Shiite fundamentalist coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, won 128 of 275 seats in parliament. It needs 138 for a simple majority. The Risaliyun or Message Party won 2 seats; it represents the Sadr movement of young Shiite clerical nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr, and has announced that it will vote with the UIA. So for all practical purposes, the UIA has 130 seats, 8 short of a simple majority.

[Revised]: The Kurdistan Alliance has 53 seats. I am informed by Peter Galbraith that the Kurdish Islamists, who gained 5 seats, will vote with the Kurdistan Alliance. Together the religious Shiites and the Kurds therefore have 188. A 2/3s majority of 275 would be 184. By that calculation, the two have the votes to choose a president, who will certainly ask the UIA to form a government and provide the prime minister.

Shades of what we have to expect in Canada...?

Li'l Debbie Still Doesn't Get It

Jane at FDL "got an invitation this morning from the Washingtonpost.com to go to DC on Tuesday to discuss "a live online roundtable conversation on the issue of what the rules are/should be for major media in accepting free form comments, or indeed whether there should be rules at all." so perhaps WaPo is starting to "get it" (i.e. to learn from its mistakes) but Ms. Howell, alas, sure doesn't appear see the light yet. Look at these two examples. First she clings to the old falsehood:

I wrote that he gave campaign money to both parties and their members of Congress. He didn't. I should have said he directed his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.

To which Jane responds:

No. What you should have said was that although Abramoff's victims, the Indian tribes, gave money to Democrats it was much less than they did before Abramoff appeared on the scene and there is no indication that there was anything quid-pro-quo about it. Unlike the Republicans, who are up to their eyeballs in shit over this. To say anything else provides improper context and implies that legitimate contributions and illegal influence peddling are one, which they most certainly are not.

But Ms. Howell doesn't quit there, having learned nothing from my advice, she appears to try a bit of in-your-face but instead she falls flat on hers and calls even more attention to herself when she goes on to say:

To all of those who wanted me fired, I'm afraid you're out of luck. I have a contract. For the next two years, I will continue to speak my mind.

Poor woman, she seems to forget that she's not writing opinion pieces. She's not being paid to speak her mind. She the ombudsman! She's supposed to be looking out for the readers -- she's supposed to be our champion when dealing with the paper, not spouting RNC talking points and then plugging her ears when her readers complain to the ombudsman. Egad!

It's not the doing, it's the lying

It's almost funny how many times people who have something to hide make the mistake of calling attention to themselves. Most of the time what they're trying to hide is that they were wrong on a matter of fact. Most of us have been wrong in this way, even your loyal scribbler has been know to get it wrong sometimes. But the honourable (and tactically best) way to behave when this happens is: set the record straight, come clean, tell the truth, then go and try to sin no more.

It's not always easy and it's usually embarrassing but that helps to reinforce the lesson: if you don't like this feeling, then don't do stuff that makes you feel this way. My experience is that most people are more forgiving of people who are wrong and then admit it than they are of people who have to be exposed as liars or cover-up artists.

Deborah Howell was probably spun. She probably got her talkingpoints and just parroted them uncritically; sadly this is not an uncommon occurrence. But when people pointed out her error in the comments section of the WaPo blog, she and the WaPo tried to weasel out, cover-up (suspend and remove comments) and explain/complain. But at each step they attracted more attention, experienced more pressure and as a result are finding it increasingly difficult to avoid additional scrutiny or to finally admit their errors. And the karma wheel keeps turning...

Meanwhile the pressure continues. Here are three from Brad DeLong: one, two, three and one from T. Slothrop.

He's ba-a-a-ck!

The object of worship among members the Rovian cult currently infecting the White House, Karl Rove himself addressed the Republican National Committee. Though this was a rare appearance for Rove, when he stepped out from under his dark cloud of suspicion, it was still the same-old-same-old:

"The United States faces a ruthless enemy, and we need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of the moment America finds itself in," Mr. Rove said. "President Bush and the Republican Party do. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Democrats."

"Let me be as clear as I can be: President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," Mr. Rove said, referring to the program in which the National Security Agency eavesdropped on conversations without getting a warrant from a judge. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

Yup, be afraid, be very afraid... only Republicans can save you... blah-blah-blah... No mention of how incompetently they have gone after the Al Qaeda, no mention of fact that Mr. Rove, one of the best-known public officials in this White House, "is under investigation for his role in leaking the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer to reporters" and "no mention of an issue that accounts for much of the Republican concern about the coming midterm elections: The influence-peddling investigation of Congress that has focused on some senior Republican leaders, including Tom DeLay, who is stepping down as majority leader". Fear, corruption, incompetence and bamboozlement, all the Rovian trademarks -- sadly nothing has changed.

Steve Gilliard says: Jay, you're wrong

Jay Rosen at PressThink posted an e-mail exchange with Jim Brady of WaPo in which I think he hoped that he would come off sounding like a reasonable, moderate sort of guy -- worthwhile goals -- but Steve Gilliard respectfully disagrees non-the-less.


Steve writes:

Jay,

You're wrong.

The Post doesn't want transparency. They didn't like the fact that they were challenged on a major issue of credibility and factual error. Deborah Howell refused to conceed this major error and when challenged, they mischaracterized the response and then shut down comments.

The New York Times has never had this problem, despite having open forums.

And then, there was no question that the comments, the fast majority of comments were not uncivil or needed moderation. Frankly, I got nastier comments for insulting Chicago-style hot dogs and had a raging debate over mac and cheese which would have curled Brady's hair. I won't even mention what happens when I discuss Manchester United.

Jim Brady says he wants an open dialogue with the public, but editors want it to be conducted on their terms. And it won't be. What I think the Beltway crowd doesn't get is this: people take politics very seriously.

They feel that Bush and the GOP is stealing their country and the Washington Media is not only standing by, but cheering them on. A cheap comment attacking Michael Moore on MSNBC gets a flood of e-mails directed to them.

The people who post on our sites are extremely passionate and concerned for this country, even if they don't live here. Brady's action did no credit to himself or his newspaper. It reads as just another sign of the media not listening to the public to people who feel the media is against them.

And you are completely wrong about moderation: Slashdot were pioneers in it and that is one wild place to post and always has been, Daily Kos is community moderated and troll free.

The Post clearly has the staff to both design forum software which could flag offensive words and monitor postings. It doesn't need volunteers to work for a multinational company for free. The problem is that they wanted to do it on the cheap.

If you check the posts, available from Democratic Underground, few crossed any lines of civil comment, but most were quite angry.

It would also do your argument some good to admit what we both know: journalists have very thin skins and hate criticism. It would be easy to see that Howell was unsettled by the vehemence of the comments directed her way and unnerved by them. Because criticism in journalism has been restricted to the occasional letter, not daily parusing of stories and constant e-mail contact. In short, the public is holding journalists accountable in real time, and that is a shock for many reporters and editors.

Friends of transparency would have never shut down their comments in the first place. People who want to create the illusion of transparency would.