Warning! contains silliness

http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm

(You can also toss him around with the mouse)

Small Stupid Men

Commenting on this NYTimes article by Don Van Natta Jr, which discusses the memo of a meeting between Bush & Blair wherein they conspired to lie about reasons for their pre-determined war, Digby says:

Here is more proof that the president lied repeatedly to take this nation to war. Undoubtedly this is completely lawful since the Infallible Republican President Doctrine asserts that the president can do anything he chooses. Still, it's unpleasantly discomfiting to see proof that the president and his number one ally casually strategized which lies and provocations they could come up with to justify their decision to invade a country that presented no threat.

[...]

So please let's can the talk once and for all about how the invasion was a good idea that was just badly executed. It was a terrible idea, as all such ideas hatched by small, stupid men with big ambitions must be. If we ever hope to regain our credibility we need to seriously contemplate plans to bring about a reckoning.

Read the whole thing here and the NYTimes article here.

The Founders Never Imagined a Bush Administration

Joyce Appleby, professor emerita of history at UCLA and co-director of the History News Service and Gary Hart , a former U.S. senator and Wirth Chair in the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado have an article up at HNN:

Relying on legal opinions from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Professor John Yoo, then working in the White House, Bush has insisted that there can be no limits to the power of the commander-in-chief in time of war. More recently the president has claimed that laws relating to domestic spying and the torture of detainees do not apply to him. His interpretation has produced a devilish conundrum.

President Bush has given Commander-in-Chief Bush unlimited wartime authority. But the "war on terror" is more a metaphor than a fact. Terrorism is a method, not an ideology; terrorists are criminals, not warriors. No peace treaty can possibly bring an end to the fight against far-flung terrorists. The emergency powers of the president during this "war" can now extend indefinitely, at the pleasure of the president and at great threat to the liberties and rights guaranteed us under the Constitution.

[...]

The presidency possesses no power not granted to it under the Constitution. The powers the current administration seeks in its "war on terror" are not granted under the Constitution. Indeed, they are explicitly prohibited by acts of Congress.

The Founding Fathers, who always come to mind when the Constitution is in danger, anticipated just such a possibility. Writing in the Federalist Papers, James Madison defined tyranny as the concentration of powers in one branch of the government.

Oh, you want the good news...

Well, we'd report it but... it's too damn dangerous to get out there and report on all the good news. Digby shares something...

From Marquer in the comments:

...more violence was reported across Iraq, including a terrifying incident earlier in the week in the western city of Ramadi. On Wednesday, armed insurgents burst into the classroom of Khidhir al-Mihallawi, an English teacher at Sajariyah High School, accused him of being an agent for the CIA and Israeli intelligence and beheaded him in front of his students, according to students, fellow instructors and a physician at a local hospital.

But the school in question had of course been freshly repainted. Let's not lose sight of what's really important here.

And why aren't we hearing stories of all the teachers who have not been beheaded in front of their students? Liberal media bias, of course.

John Amato at Crooks and Liars has some video of Lara Logan on CNN with Howard Kurtz addressing these bogus "biased media only showing the bad news" claims. Check it out here. John says:

The media was assailed all week by the administration trying to pass the meme that the press is too negative. Instantly, the right wing pundits picked up the theme. Howard Kurtz, who told Wolf Blitzer that the coverage on Iraq is too negative also received an earful from Lara Logan.

Transcript from Reliable Sources:

KURTZ: But critics would say, well, no wonder people back home think things are falling apart because we get this steady drumbeat of negativity from the correspondents there.

LOGAN: Well, who says things aren't falling apart in Iraq? I mean, what you didn't see on your screens this week was all the unidentified bodies that have been turning up, all the allegations here of militias that are really controlling the security forces.

What about all the American soldiers that died this week that you didn't see on our screens? I mean, we've reported on reconstruction stories over and over again… I mean, I really resent the fact that people say that we're not reflecting the true picture here. That's totally unfair and it's really unfounded.

...Our own editors back in New York are asking us the same things. They read the same comments. You know, are there positive stories? Can't you find them? You don't think that I haven't been to the U.S. military and the State Department and the embassy and asked them over and over again, let's see the good stories, show us some of the good things that are going on? Oh, sorry, we can't take to you that school project, because if you put that on TV, they're going to be attacked about, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be victims of attack.

"Oh, sorry, we can't show this reconstruction project because then that's going to expose it to sabotage. And the last time we had journalists down here, the plant was attacked. I mean, security dominates every single thing that happens in this country….So how it is that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?

On conservative radio host Laura Ingraham's recent statement that journalists need to do less "reporting from hotel balconies" in Iraq

LOGAN: I think it's outrageous. I mean, Laura Ingraham should come to Iraq and not be talking about what journalists are doing from the comfort of her studio in the United States, the comfort and the safety.

I mean, I don't know any journalist that wants to just sit in a hotel room in Iraq. Does anybody understand that for us we used to be able to drive to Ramadi, we used to drive to Falluja, we used to drive to Najaf. We could travel all over this country without having to fly in military helicopters.

That's the only way we can move around here. So, it's when the military can accommodate us, if the military can accommodate us, then we can go out and see.

I have been out with Iraqi security forces over and over again. And you know what? When Bob Woodruff was out with Iraqi security forces and he was injured, the first thing that people were asking was, oh, was he being responsible by placing himself in this position with Iraqi forces? And they started to question his responsibility and integrity as a journalist.

I mean, we just can't win. I think it's an outrage to point the finger at journalists and say that this is our fault. I really do. And I think it shows an abject lack of respect for any journalist that's prepared to come to this country and risk their lives.


Atrios: "It's ridiculous that anyone in our media is entertaining the notion seriously the charge that they're underreporting all the great stuff that's happening in Iraq. As someone who experienced the civil, Peter Daou understands that while life goes on in the midst of such things the news it not in fact that "life goes on" - it's that 30 people were beheaded....read on"

Illustration via parable

Digby gets it and shares it with a parable:

Joe Liebermann's little eight year old grandkid asked him at the dinner table the other night if he thought the president broke the law, like the kids at school said he did.

"Is he gonna get in trouble?" he asked.

"No, son," Liebermann replied, "we're just going to change the law so what he did isn't illegal anymore. We don't want his friends to get upset."

"Neat," the kid replied, "I took four candy bars from 7-11 after school and the man said he was gonna call the police. Can you change the law for me so I won't get into trouble either?"

Lieberman looked indulgently at the naive little pup and said, "I'm sorry son. You're the grandson of a Democrat. You shall have to pay the price for your misdeeds. Breaking the law and having a private personal life is only OKIYAR. It's time you learned that."

Worst President ever debate

Josh Marshall takes up Matt Yglesias' question: is Bush the worst president ever? In comparing him to Reagan (my personal worst ever... until Gee Dubya), Josh says:

Reagan had the ability, simply, to change his mind. You might say it's the ability to allow the facts to overcome your mind or as our secular saint, President Lincoln, put it, far more eloquently, the ability to 'disenthrall ourselves.'

And that is an ability the current occupant of the White House entirely lacks -- a fact which is on display now as he again crosses the country arguing that black is white and up is down.

President Bush represents something different from the normal sloshing back and forth between liberalism and conservatism. He's a radical. He's set on a destructive course, laced with corruption and fed by extremism. And he mistakenly believes that stubborness and ignorance constitute a virtue he calls 'leadership'.

I don't think there's much question that President Bush is the most conservative president in modern American history. But the issue is not his conservatism; it's his radicalism and destructiveness, his willingness to wreck the state. 'Worst ever' covers a lot of ground. But I think there's a good argument to be made that he is.

(ed.note: For those who are interested the full Lincoln passage is: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." It's from his second annual message to congress -- what we'd call his second State of the Union address -- in December 1862.)

Great Moments in Earmarking

Even Mommy's corrupt! Tax deductible "charitable" contribution which goes directly into her son's pocket. Check this out:

More Feingold

An article in the by Chris Lehmann in the New York Observer looks at Feingold's resolution.

A mild- mannered Midwestern Senator—Russ Feingold—announces on a Sunday-morning chat show that he’s going to introduce a resolution to censure the President. His grounds are straightforward: that the President’s warrantless-wiretapping initiative violates the law and the constitutional separation of powers. His party’s leaders, all universally understood as coastal-elite figures drunk on their hatred of the President and hell-bent on his undoing—well, they flee en masse, literally hiding behind each other as inquiring reporters try to suss out what they make of the proposal.

“Both Democratic politicians and pundits are afraid,” Mr. Feingold said on March 21 by phone. He was between constituent tours during the week’s Congressional recess. “Time and again, they allow themselves to be intimidated from taking a strong stand against the administration.”

[...]

“One simple rule of politics is that the more ferociously you’re pushing your talking points, the less you believe in them. The Republicans jumping so hard on this tells you that they believe they’re in a really vulnerable position—that this issue is not the winner they thought it was.”

But Democratic Congressional leaders are treating the G.O.P.’s ability to dictate the terms of debate as a virtual law of nature. It is arguably the whole point of political leadership to make volatile forces swing in your direction, and harness them to a coherent stand. By contrast, Mr. Michael said, the reigning mentality among Democratic leaders is that “if we take a stand, we risk defeat. That’s a chicken-shit refusal to have a real debate …. The Democratic establishment and the press establishment won’t let that debate happen.”

Senator Feingold seems placidly determined to ignore all that. “Guess what? They’re out of touch,” he said. “That story is finally emerging, now that polls are showing popular support for a censure. It just shows that people in that town are only talking to each other. You can publish that. That’s on the record.”

End Times

James Walcott has an atypical post about Peak Oil and what the future holds that is definitely worth a read. Check it out here.

Feel The Hum

Digby has a post up about "Sean Patrick Maloney, a former senior Clinton White House official and investigative attorney running for the Democratic nomination for New York Attorney General" and his plan to file a complaint in Federal court. Read it here:

The complaint would seek a federal court order requiring the Bush Administration to comply with the law. The plan does not stop, compromise or hamper ongoing operations but instead compels the Bush Administration to appear in federal court, in secret session, to show cause for wiretapping any citizens of New York

[...]

People from all over the country, in different ways and using different approaches are challenging this adminstration's lawlessness and abuse of power. It's not enough to just win at the ballot box. A requirement that our leaders must adhere to the rule of law must be affirmed in no uncertain terms, and the specifics of Bush's power grab must be repudiated.

Members of the Bush adminstration who were around in the 70's and 80's (the "grown-ups") waited for many years to gain power and re-assert these principles of executive authority which we thought were succesfully legally proscribed (with laws such as FISA) after Nixon. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. These radical, undemocratic, unAmerican ideas need to have a final stake driven through them. This is not a monarchy, even at war.

On the Wankosphere

From Atrios we get these two comments regarding the persistent myth of the liberal bias of the mainstream media:

From Greg Sargent:

Either way, the problem is this: Those critics can't be placated. The right wouldn't stop shrieking their "media is liberal" war cry if every single major liberal columnist in America were hauled off in tumbrels and beheaded on the Mall. Right-wing media criticism isn't about achieving the "balance" they supposedly seek; it's about bullying and intimidating mainstream reporters and pundits to fear being labeled as "liberals" if they don't reproduce GOP spin, even when they know it to be false. It's also about enabling right-wing voices that are far out of the mainstream to infiltrate the media.

Take a look at Domenech's maiden voyage. He writes:

[E]ven in a climate where Republicans hold command of every branch of government, and advocate views shared by a majority of voters, the mainstream media continues to treat red state Americans as pachyderms in the mist - an alien and off-kilter group of suburbanite churchgoers about which little is known, and whose natural habitat is a discomforting place for even the most hardened reporter from the New York Times.

Domenech's MSM-bashing, of course, is belied by his own apparent hiring. And the paper's columnists include conservatives Charles Krauthammer and George Will. Indeed, one way to think about the right's "media-is-liberal" campaign is as a kind of crude protection racket. The analogy isn't perfect, but the idea is this: The right-wing criticism effectively says to the MSM, "Look, there are a lot of pretty pissed off people out there who think you're too liberal. You need to hire some of us to protect you against them and the too-liberal charge."

And Chris Bowers:

I still believe this, only now I feel it has developed to such a degree that the right-wing blogosphere itself has been all but annihilated. Most major right-wing bloggers have now been incorporated into the established news media apparatus. Glenn Reynolds is a columnist for MSNBC. Andrew Sullivan is a columnist for Time. Michelle Malkin is a frequently published columnist in a number of offline outlets. And now, RedState co-founder Ben Domenech has a regular column in the Washington Post. Despite being the latest in a long line of conservative bloggers to achieve "mainstream" status with the established news media, his first column was, predictably, an attack on the same institutions that just hired him and gave him space.

a future must read, no doubt

The always readable Glenn Greenwald tells us today that he has a book in the works, the title of which is to be: How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok. Here are some extracts from his post.

The principal reason I am so excited by this book is because, as I have said from the time this scandal first emerged, what will determine the outcome of this law-breaking scandal specifically, and the crisis of lawlessness which we have in our government generally, is whether the public realizes how radical and dangerous this Administration has become and demands that it be held accountable. I have always emphatically believed and have repeatedly said that if Americans are truly informed about how radical and extreme this President has become with regard to the powers he claims he possesses, most Americans will find it intolerable.

At its core, this scandal is not and has never been about the scope of eavesdropping powers which the Government ought to have. It is much more significant than that. We face a genuine and profound crisis as a country because we have a President who has continuously exploited the threat of terrorism and engaged in rank fear-mongering in order to expressly claim the power to act without any checks or limits at all -- including, literally, the power to break the law. And he has been exercising that law-breaking power aggressively and enthusiastically in numerous ways, all of which are radically changing our national political character and the system of government that we have had since our founding.

[...]

The primary value in publishing a book this way is that it enables direct communication with fellow citizens about these issues. It has been clear for some time that our national media -- the entity which has as its function informing citizens about what the Government is doing -- is largely dysfunctional. Due to innumerable factors, it simply does not and cannot perform that critical role any longer. Regardless of one's views of the propriety of the Administration's actions, it is beyond dispute that the theories of executive power which the President has adopted are, to put it mildly, a matter of great controversy and great importance. And yet, it is truly astonishing how little Americans know about any of that because the media has barely discussed any of it.

[...]

After all, the single most significant fact of the last 6 years, in my view, is that we are a country which went to war in 2003 with the overwhelming majority of the country -- 70% -- believing in a complete myth: that the leader of the country which we were invading personally participated in the 9/11 attacks. And they continued to believe it even months after the invasion. The media completely failed to expose the falsity of our government's claims or to even minimally inform the country about what was real and what was not. That fact, by itself, is irrefutable proof that we cannot rely on our national media to inform Americans as to what our Government is doing or to expose the dangers of their actions or even the deceitful nature of their statements.

[...]

Right before everyone's eyes, the President got caught breaking the law - deliberately and continuously. He ordered the Administration to engage in conduct which the law, since 1978, has made it a criminal offense -- a felony -- to engage in.

And when he got caught, rather than apologize or express remorse, the President defiantly proclaimed that he would continue to break the law because he believes he has the power to act without restraints, including the restraints of the law. And in response, the Congress, controlled by the President's party and long loyal to him, did nothing other than begin to look for ways to protect the President by rendering legal the very behavior which the law makes it a criminal offense to engage in.

Head exploding!

I just saw Ken Mehlman on the Situation Room in what was essentially an all-GOP segment on Feingold's censure resolution. The GOP message is: why stop at censure when what you really want is impeachment? and then asking the public: why would you want to support a party that wants to take away all the legal tools the President needs to win the war on terror?

I thought that my wife's reaction was appropriate: she ran away screaming: my head is going to explode!

First Shinseki, then Zinni... and now Eaton

Paul D. Eaton, a retired Army major general, who was in charge of the training of the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004, writes a scathing op-ed in the NYTimes:

In sum, he has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down.

Josh Marshall points to this flattering article on Defend America, a DOD News web page and wonders how long before it gets scrubbed and gets swift-boated a la Murtha.

Stupid people make us dumber

From the Washington Post, there is a reference to the work...

...of two Cornell scientists who showed that one attribute of extreme incompetence is "that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent." The study, titled "Unskilled and Unaware of It," demonstrated that people who scored, on average, at the 12th percentile in tests of humor, grammar and logic assessed themselves to be, on average, at the 62nd percentile. Incompetence at the extreme is a double-whammy, the authors declare: "Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it." (Which explains Washington, in a nutshell.)

[...]

Scientific conclusion: Stupid people make us dumber.

Thank goodness that we're safer... Not!

From MSNBC we learn that learn that DHS is doing a "heck of a job". Feeling safer...?

Investigators for the Government Accountability Office conducted the tests between October and January, at the request of Congress. The goal was to determine how vulnerable U.S. airlines are to a suicide bomber using cheap, readily available materials.

[...]

In all 21 airports tested, no machine, no swab, no screener anywhere stopped the bomb materials from getting through. Even when investigators deliberately triggered extra screening of bags, no one discovered the materials.

Don't Make Trouble

Digby has a great post up which slams Eleanor Clift, one of those "Democrats" whose only claim to fame is that they bash real Democrats by repeating GOP talking-points like: don't attack the president, it only helps the GOP. Digby's typically understated response is:

Eleanor Clift has penned a column that she clearly wrote while half in the bag after playing spin the Jameson's with Chris Matthews and John McLaughlin at Bob Shrum's St Paddy's Day bash. A bigger puddle of misguided conventional wisdom I have not seen in quite some time:

The Democrats' dilemma is how to satisfy a restive and angry base without losing the rest of the country. "If someone proposed stringing up Bush like they did Mussolini, that would have a lot of support in the base of the party, too," says a Democratic strategist. "But it's not smart." Democrats want the November election to be a plebiscite on Bush's job performance, not a personal vendetta. "Republicans will rally round him if they think it's a personal attack just like we did with Clinton," warns the strategist.

Clinton had an approval rating in the 50's. The country was in the midst of the greatest expansion in history. The entire world looked to us to lead them through the post cold war world. Yet Republicans insisted on impeaching him for lying about a sexual indiscretion That's a personal vendetta.

This president is in the low 30's. Most Americans hardly feel the good news in the economy because most of the benefits have been rigged to go to those who make more that $250,0000 a year. He's made a fetish out of abusing his power with a non-stop assault on the contitution, international law and civilized norms. He has asserted a principle of executive authority that says he does no have to abide by the law. And it's extreme to think this deserves a mild rebuke from the body that writes those laws in the first place?

And I shouldn't have to point out that since the Republicans impeached president Clinton, among other things, they have increased their majority in the congress, won two presidential elections, enacted every wet dream tax cut they ever had, rolled back every regulation they ever hated and installed two right wing ideologues on the court. And that doesn't even begin to cover it.

Yes, the Republicans have certainly paid a steep price for impeachment, haven't they?

[...]

If the Democrats lose in November, I'm sure she'll find plenty of reasons to blame Democrats, but it won't occur to her that the reason people didn't vote for the D's was because the party listened to people like her and campaigned like a herd of neutered animals instead of listening to their hearts, their minds, their constituents and their leaders who were prepared to take a stand for what we believe in. No, they'll blame the "extremists" who want a safety net and a sane terrorism policy --- and leaders who defend the constitution. It couldn't possibly be that their tired, stale reflexive passivity is to blame when half the base fails to turn out because they just. have. no. hope.

Where's the leadership?

My uncle used to deplore Canada's Liberal party because, as he put it, it would find out which way the parade was going and jump in front and claim to be leading it -- cynical but effective. But here, as I have said before, when they have "have the law, the polls, and righteousness on their side" why not jump in?

According to a new Rassmussen poll:

"Initially, 22% of Democrats had a favorable opinion of him while 16% had an unfavorable opinion. However, knowing he advocates censure, Feingold's numbers within his own party jumped to 52% favorable and 14% unfavorable."

The grassroots are roaring! They want leadership and they demand accountability.

ReddHedd has posted one of her delightfully passionate yet articulate rants regarding the NYTimes among others who seem to be advocating a timid, hesitant response to Feingold's resolution. It seems to say: let's hope that some bi-partisan body can look into the matter. Well, hope isn't a plan! This ain't going to happen because, in case you weren't watching, the Senate Intelligence Committee has already voted not to investigate! As ReddHedd says: "This Congress is not going to step up and provide any oversight so long as Republicans control both houses." The senators seem afraid to be seen as weak. Well, I see them as being weak because they're so worried about seeming weak instead of worrying about doing the right thing.

Jane Hamsher posts these quotes and then he observation:

Digby:

Feingold stepped up and spoke for millions of Americans who see this administration's abuse of power as a very serious matter for which this president should be held to account. We are desperate for such leadership and we care nothing about the lack of political politesse with which it was raised. The president and his party are held in very low esteem by two thirds of the country. If not now, when?

Puppethead (from the comments):

The thing that pisses me off is how the Democrats are treating this as a political calculation. I want them to uphold our nation's Constitution and the rule of law. I don't care how many senate seats are lost over this, or whether or not anyone's re-election bid is jeopardized. I want accountability in my government.

I'll repeat -- Feingold's popularity among Democrats has soared from 22% before he introduced the resolution to 52% after the resolution. The nerve he tapped is way beyond political squabbling. This should not be some big mystery.

From E J Dionne:

In an interview, Feingold was unrepentant, arguing that before he made his proposal, "the whole issue of the president violating the laws of this country was being swept under the rug."

"We were going to sit back as Democrats and say, 'This is too hot to handle' -- well that's outrageous." He warned that "the mistakes of 2002 are being repeated," meaning, he said, that Democrats should never again "cower" before Bush on security issues, as so many at the grass roots saw them doing before the 2002 elections.

ReddHedd:

No one in their right mind is saying that surveillance under the law is not an appropriate means of combatting terrorism. No Democrats are saying this that I've heard, and I spend a whole lot of time listening about this issue. Hell, I've helped write up enough wiretapping warrants in my day for undercover investigations to know how useful they are as a tool -- they are essential. But they also must be tempered with the review of a third party with no personal interest in the investigation, to be certain that this awesome power is not being misused.

[...]

There are very good reasons for third party oversight by the judiciary -- the power that the government has to do surveillance is enormous. And it has the potential for misuse, because that temptation is great.

The fundamental question that every citzen in this nation ought to be asking themselves is this: do I trust the government to make appropriate choices each and every time they decide to surveil someone, and to not misuse this power to spy on their political enemies or on people who criticize them or for some other wholly inappropriate purpose?

And then ask yourself this question: would I trust the government not to misuse its power if it were being run by the person on the opposite side of the political chasm that I distrust most? Just think about that for a second, and see if you don't get a huge flinch in your gut at all the possibilities.

Our Founding Fathers had a substantial mistrust of unfettered power, which is why our system was set up as one of checks and balances. It was that whole getting out from beneath the boot of the King for them -- and the fact that they had to fight for every inch of liberty that we now blithely toss aside in the name of partisanship.

[...]

This is not a partisan issue. That it may have use for partisan implications is plain, but fundamentally for me, this is an issue that is wrong at its Constitutional core. Our government is failing all of us, because they are no longer interested in governing. It's about maintaining power -- and the status quo -- and every citizen in this nation ought to be sick at how things are currently being run in Washington.

I do not trust the Bush Administration to do anything that is not in their own personal or crony interests, and the nation be damned. And a whole hell of a lot of Americans out there are feeling the same way -- I get e-mails about this daily, and not just from our usual progressive readers, it's been libertarians and fiscal conservatives as well.

The system of checks and balances is currently skewed, because Republicans control both Congress and the White House -- and the Republicans in Congress have abdicated their oversight and balancing responsibilities in favor of being a rubber stamp for the Bush Administration.

The New York Times is high on something if they think that simply setting up a "bi-partisan commission" to study the potential problems with the current system is going to do any good. What part of the President admitting publicly on multiple occasions that he was breaking the FISA laws -- and that he would continue to do so -- are they not understanding?

What part of this country being a nation of laws that the President -- who is after all only a man elected to office for a short period of time -- has to follow just like every other citizen in this nation do they not understand?

It's the accountability, stupid. For me it comes down to this: are you an accountability patriot -- or are you just another appeasement rubber stamp?

Give me liberty. Give me accountability. Give me my Constitution back.

Happy Anniversary - hmmm?

I just got in from a protest march marking the third anniversary of Bush's invasion of Iraq. It's a small town and it was a small group but it felt good knowing that there were others who agreed and were willing to speak up, to do something. The weekend started out well when, in a packed house, we got to hear Tariq Ali speak on "Empire, Religion and Democracy". What a treat to hear such an articulate presentation of the "big picture". What a compelling speaker -- very impressive, and he did it without notes.

Anyway... on this infamous anniversary, keeping trying to do the right thing!

More "do the right thing"

I regularly use this little test to determine if I'm doing the right thing. I imagine myself on my death-bed, reflecting back on my life and I ask myself: would I feel proud of what I did back then i.e. now? How many times have we admonished ourselves thusly? Oh, I wish I had(n't) said/done that. In other words, is this what I will wish I had done?

Surely, those Democrats who are dithering about the censure issue must remember how they felt during the campaign in 2004 when they wished that they hadn't, in their moment of weakness, fear and uncertainty, voted for the war in Iraq. Don't these people learn? More than likely, when the final chapter of George W. Bush is written, he will be considered the way Nixon is: a pathetic villain, as surely it must as the truth about what he has done and has happened on his watch continues to intrude into the public awareness. Can't they imagine their grandkids asking: and what did you do then Grandad? and having to answer: I was falling over myself trying not to take a stand and hoping that no one would notice me lest they think less of me.

Well, I think less of them... now. Come on people, do yourselves proud!

I guess not all censures are created equally

I have a habit of asking people, who present me with something in which they want me to share their righteous indignation: "what principle has been violated?" What I'm getting at is: is this just a matter of you not liking something? or is there actually a principle at stake here? If it is a matter of principle, then we should be prepared to be critical of whomever commits the misdeed, even if it's committed by us or another member of our tribe.

I have a requirement that there be a certain amount of logical consistency in matters of principle and I have written about the idea that principles, like laws, should be applied blindly. It is a common occurrence in Canada for the opposition to call for a minister to resign in light of some alleged act of wrong-doing. My immediate response is to ask: would you be saying the same thing if your party were in power and the minister in question was a member of your party? Because, if not, you're a hypocrite.

In this current debate surrounding Sen. Russ Feingold's motion to censure Bush, a number of Democratic senators are demurring, indicating that waiting and seeing are the appropriate responses or even saying that it's not appropriate to vote to censure Bush. I find it outrageous that there are fewer than a handful of Democratic senators who are on the record as supporting this motion, in light of the fact that in February 1999, 19 of these same Democrats co-sponsored Dianne Feinstein's resolution to censure Bill Clinton after his impeachment had ended in an acquittal! That's right... censure for lying about the blowjob but not for the on-going illegal spying! How do they rationalize that?

Glenn says:

Making matters much more inexplicable, and infuriating, is this list, compiled by Liberal Oasis, of the 24 Senators (19 Democrats, 4 Republicans and Jeffords) who are still in the Senate and who co-sponsored Dianne Feinstein's resolution to censure Bill Clinton (not just for lying but expressly for having an "inappropriate relationship" with an adult woman). Included on the list are many Senators who are afraid thus far to support Feingold's resolution -- including Schumer, Reid, Landrieu, Feinstein and Kennedy. Most political positions are subject to reasonable debate. Favoring a censure of Bill Clinton while opposing a censure of George Bush isn't one of them.

And he adds:

Thus, the Senators who supported Feinstein's censure resolution (which includes 19 Democrats who are still in the Senate) were urging that Clinton be censured on the merits of that issue, not as a tactical alternative to impeachment. It is simply indefensible for Senators who favored censuring Clinton not to support censure of Bush, whose law-breaking is repeated, ongoing, and relating to much more serious matters than what Feinstein's resolution called Clinton's "inappropriate relationship."

33%

From Jamie at Intoxination:

Bush has done it again. He has set a new low. PEW has released their latest approval rating for Bush and he is now at 33%, down by 7% from February.

[...]

Now for the fun part. One word descriptions of Bush have turned negative. Last year, the top one word description was "Honest" with a 38% response. This month it is "incompetent", pulling the top spot in with 29% response. "Idiot" is in third at 21%. That means 50% of the people think Bush is either an Idiot or Incompetent.

You can read PEW’s full results here.

Do the Right Thing 2

[Update: check out the video link at the very end of this post]

One of my favourite themes concerns "trying to do the right thing" rather than the selfish, easy or safe thing. While recognizing that it's not always easy and that we don't always succeed and that sometimes we are wrong, we can always try to do the right thing. And often it's pretty obvious what the right thing is, I mean, who can possibly be arguing for torture?

Glenn Greenwald has a great post on this theme today chiding Kevin Drum for his "stirring defense of indecision and inaction". I love Glenn's articulate, reasoned indignation. What is it with these Democrats? For crying out loud, stand up for something! Isn't the reason that it's the right thing to do, enough justification to compel action? This time it's easy, safe and in their own interests or as Anonymous Liberal says, they "have the law, the polls, and righteousness on their side".

Read all of Glenn's post, it's a good one, even by his high standards.

Sample:

If the public became convinced as part of the debate that is finally happening that the President broke the law and that such law-breaking is intolerable, does Kevin actually think that it's impossible to find 6 Republican Senators to vote for the Resolution? Congressional Republicans defied Bush on the port deal for only one reason: because public opinion demanded it.

If public opinion begins to move even more than it already has to the view that Bush broke the law, it is far from certain that the Censure Resolution will fail. As I've noted many times, polls showed for two consecutive years that the public thought Watergate was a meaningless scandal and Nixon's popularity remained sky high throughout those years. The arc of that scandal ended up changing only because tenacious politicians and journalists continued to pursue the story and the public finally became educated and angry about it. If Democrats had followed Kevin's advice in 1972, Richard Nixon would have retired as a popular two-term President.

But even if the Censure Resolution ultimately fails, the rationale for pursuing it is self-evident. Kevin frequently frets about (among other things) the fact that Democrats are perceived as being weak. The reason for that is because Democrats often are weak, precisely when they do things like abandon their own Senators and refuse to take a principled stand against a President who got caught breaking the law.

People like Kevin -- who believe that Democrats must "prove" to the country that they can be strong -- should most understand the value in having Democrats take a stand regardless of whether they ultimately prevail. Strong and resolute people fight. Weak and spineless people run away from fights -- or fight only when their victory is guaranteed in advance. The Democrats have been running away from fights for five years now based on the Kevin Drum theory that fights are only worth fighting if you know in advance that you will win. It is beyond irrational to think that the Democrats are going to look strong by simply crawling away meekly and allowing George Bush to break the law.

Digby supports the argument in a point-by-point refutation of "an insider's" five reasons why Dems don't/won't support Feingold's censure motion. Read it here.

I just read a transcript of the original Murrow broadcast (famous now from Good Night and Good Luck) and I found it inspiring. Here's a sample:

Earlier, the Senator asked, "Upon what meat does this, our Caesar, feed?" Had he looked three lines earlier in Shakespeare's Caesar, he would have found this line, which is not altogether inappropriate: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it -- and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

Good night, and good luck.

Update:

Often, works of fiction can be inspiring too. I love A Man For All Seasons and To Kill a Mockingbird and here is a much more recent and timely one. Take a peek here.

Admit it, you were wrong

I have written before about how difficult it is to admit when one is wrong, but, also, how important it is to do so when one is. One of the problems with our current state of affairs is the way that the unscrupulous take advantage of the short attention span and poor memory of the voting public and the way that the media compounds rather than mitigates it. Surely, part of establishing one's credibility must be based on the quality of one's analysis and predictions. People whose analyses and predictions are borne out should be given greater respect in the future and those who are consistently and profoundly wrong should be, at least, discounted or ignored, if not ridiculed.

FAIR has a media advisory up entitled: "The Final Word Is Hooray! Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits" which shares some things from the public record. It would be interesting to hear their reflections on these comments today.

It begins:

Weeks after the invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.

"The majority of the American media who were in a position to comment upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that, got it wrong," Hume complained in the April 2003 speech (Richmond Times Dispatch, 4/25/04). "They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely wrong."

Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the opposite sense. Days or weeks into the war, commentators and reporters made premature declarations of victory, offered predictions about lasting political effects and called on the critics of the war to apologize. Three years later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Around the same time as Hume's speech, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas declared (4/16/03): "All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their credibility will be lacking."

Gathered here are some of the most notable media comments from the early days of the Iraq War.

Check out the dozens of quotes here

Sample:

"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, "The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated." Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong tail, again.

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)

Separation of church and state

Bill says:

Separation means they don't over-lap or interfere with each other. The state has no right to meddle with religion and churches have no right to meddle in the affairs of state. The state should remain free of religious interference and people should be able to practice their religions with without the interference of the state. It does not mean that people should be prevented from practicing religion. In fact, historically, the notion was introduced to guarantee the freedom of religion. Wise, religious people recognized that this was the only way it would work.

Digby says:

If there is hostility to religion, it's hostility to conservative religion --- and not because it's religion but because its conservative.

Atrios says:

Advocates for the separation of church and state are not advocating secularism, aside from government secularism, they're simply trying to defend freedom of religion

Seems to me I've heard that song before

Digby's got a great post up about the history of illegal government spying and parallels to the current debate surrounding Feingold's censure resolution.

As Robert Parry pointed out the other day:

Bush's latest success came as part of a supposed "concession" to Congress that would grant two new Republican-controlled seven-member subcommittees narrow oversight of Bush's warrantless wiretapping of Americans.

While "moderate" Republican senators -- Mike DeWine of Ohio, Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska -- hailed the plan as a retreat by the White House, the deal actually blesses Bush's authority to bypass the courts in spying on Americans and imposes on him only a toothless congressional review process.

Indeed, the congressional plan may make matters worse, broadening the permissible scope of Bush's wiretaps to include Americans deemed to be "working in support of a terrorist group or organization."

Given Bush's record of stretching words to his advantage -- and his claim that anyone who isn't "with us" is with the terrorists -- the vague concept of "working in support" could open almost any political critic of the Bush administration to surveillance.

Now we have Republican senators saying explicitly that Russ Feingold is helping the terrorists. You do the math. Everyone is supposed to simply "trust" a president and his rubber stamp bedwetters to not use such sweeping laws against political opponents.

Very recent history shows that we are very wise to be suspicious of such things. It is not only not unimaginable, it was definitely done, within my adult lifetime, by a former GOP president and many of that president's staff and acolytes who are now in the Bush administration. Congressional oversight was what nailed them before and they are determined not to be tripped up by that pesky constitutional requirement again.

For a full primer on this issue, read this fascinating article about conservative southern Democrat Senator Sam Ervin, whose devotion to civil liberties led him to pursue inquiries that led all the way to the White House...

"Opposition Party" In Name Only

Greg at The Talent Show says:

Yesterday on CNN, Ed Henry gave the following update on the Feingold censure resolution :

What just happened a few minutes ago is that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the reason why there was an objection, is Frist declared he wants to bring this up for an immediate vote tonight, so it will not be a free pass. He wants to get Democrats on record here, make them decide whether they want to take what could be seen as an extreme stand and vote for a censure of President Bush.

Frist is gambling that in fact this will go down something like 85-to-15 or 90-10 because a lot of Democrats are probably saying they will not support this.

Assuming only ten Democrats end up supporting the censure resolution, where does that leave us? Well, take a look at these internals from the latest CBS poll (via Atrios)



If only 10 of 44 Democrats are willing to stand against the President, that gives Bush a greater approval rating among Democratic Senators (77%) than among his own base (74%). Cowards.

Cowards, indeed. Gregg Greenwald weighs in too...

It should go without saying that they [Democratic Senators] have all the facts they need to conclude definitively that the President broke the law. Bush himself admits that he ordered eavesdropping on Americans without the judicial oversight and approval required by the law the Congress passed in 1978. There are no factual disputes about that. Even the Administration doesn't deny any of the facts necessary to establish that they broke the law.

A factual investigation into the NSA program would certainly be nice -- in order, for instance, to find out if there are other illegal eavesdropping progams which we do not yet know about, and/or to find out how the eavesdropping power was used (something we don't know because the eavesdropping was done in secret, exactly what the law criminalizes). But no investigation is necessary to conclude that the law was broken because the law makes it a criminal offense to eavesdrop on Americans without judicial approval and that - by the Administration's own (proud) admission - is exactly what they did.

And beyond all of that, there isn't going to be an investigation, so it borders on the surreal for these Senators to say that they want to wait until the investigation is complete. The reason there isn't going to be an investigation is because the President's allies voted against it. That just happened last week, and yet Democratic Senators literally seem either not to have heard about that event or to have forgotten that it happened, because they keep saying that they want to wait for the investigation to be complete -- the same investigation that is not going to occur. [emphasis mine -bill]

For crying out loud, stand up for something!

I've long been amazed by how politicians resist doing the right thing for the strangest reasons. It's almost understandable when there is political risk in doing so but when, as Anonymous Liberal says, they "have the law, the polls, and righteousness on their side" it boggles the mind. The case in point is Sen. Russ Feingold's censure resolution currently before the Senate. Apparently fewer than half of the Democrats in the Senate are prepared to support it! As Jane points out:

If it's true this is absurd, there is a President with a 36% approval rating and it hurts none of them one bit to support Feingold.

A.L. says:

Senator Feingold's call for Congressional censure is an eminently reasonable response to the NSA scandal by any objective measure. Just eight years ago, Congressional Republicans impeached a president for lying about a private consensual affair in the context of a frivolous civil suit which was financed and litigated by the president's enemies. We are now faced with a president who is engaged in ongoing violations of a criminal statute intended to protect the constitutional rights of the American people. There is agreement that extends well beyond party lines that the President does not have the constitutional or statutory authority to do what he is doing. This administration has repeatedly ignored, misled, and marginalized Congress. If such facts do not warrant censure, it's hard to know what does.

Glenn Greenwald adds:

One of the problems which A.L. is referencing here is quite vividly illustrated by this article from The New York Times, which reports that Sen. Carl Levin, when asked about Feingold's resolution on CNN's Late Edition yesterday, said this:

"I think what the president did was wrong," Mr. Levin said. "But even though I think he was wrong, I would rather wait until the investigation is completed, which has now been started by the Intelligence Committee, before I go beyond that."

In fairness to Levin, it seems that Feingold told nobody about his Censure Resolution until he announced it with George Stephanopolous, and so Levin wasn't prepared to address it yesterday when he was asked about it. Still, Levin's response, which was both frightened and incoherent, illustrates a serious instinct problem which so many Democrats have (and, just incidentally, someone really ought to tell Sen. Levin that waiting "until the investigation [of the Senate Intelligence Committee] is completed" before deciding what to do is going to be a very long wait, since that Committee voted last week not to investigate).

Rather than use the opportunity he had to aggressively condemn the Bush Administration's law-breaking, Sen. Levin did the opposite: he mentioned just in passing -- in the most cursory, reluctant and obligatory manner possible -- that "what the president did was wrong," but then he devoted the bulk of his answer to fearfully warning that we shouldn't do anything about it, that we should wait, that we should think more about it, that we should just impotently and quietly stand by and remain cautious, stagnant, non-committal and unsure.

How is it even possible for a Democratic Senator to conclude that the President broke the law but then -- three full months after the law-breaking is revealed -- counsel that nothing should be done about it?

Digby advises:

It is past time for elected Democrats to begin laying out the case that the leader of the Republican party, the man to whom the congress has blindly followed at every turn for the past five years, is dishonorable. They must begin to create a low hum that reverberates throughout the body politic that says "the Republican party is unethical, untrustworthy, inept and dishonorable." Make people hear it in their heads before they go to sleep each night.

Russ Feingold has just taken the first step to doing this. His censure motion will not pass, of course. But he's started the hum. The press is listening. They are shocked, it can't be, how can he say that? But Feingold is saying outloud, for the whole nation to hear, that the president defied the law and broke his oath to defend the constition.

As the magnificent helmeted Cokie Roberts once said, "it doesn't matter if it's true or not, it's out there." In this case, it's true. And now it's out there.

Advocacy v. lying and a complicit media

Deploring the unwillingness of the media do its job is a regular theme of mine and today two of my favourite bloggers address this topic. As Glenn says, the media's job regarding government is not to be a "megaphone for its propaganda" and ReddHedd wants more than "steno-reporters".

ReddHedd: I don't know about all of you, but it is getting exhausting pointing out how all we want is for the media to do their jobs -- and then having them, repeatedly, show that they aren't really interested in doing their jobs. All of the exceptional journalists out there who work hard, dig in, and do their jobs have to cringe every time they see a story like this with no follow-up and no explanations.

Steno journalism is not acceptable -- and we'll take the time to point this out -- REPEATEDLY -- until lazy steno-reporters get the message. Repeating Republican talking points makes you a political shill. Asking the real, honest, follow-up questions and digging into the story fully...well, that can get you a Pulitzer.

Glenn Greenwald: Like anyone else, the White House has every right to engage in aggressive advocacy when defending itself as part of the NSA scandal or any other issue, and it is not the role of the media to take sides in political debates. But when the White House simply lies, it is the responsibility -- the core purpose -- of journalists to point that out.

Here, according to an article from Reuters, is what Scott McClellan said today in response to Sen. Feingold's censure resolution:

"I think it does raise the question, how do you fight and win the war on terrorism?" McClellan said. "And if Democrats want to argue that we shouldn't be listening to al Qaeda communications, it's their right and we welcome the debate. We are a nation at war."

This is not advocacy. This is just lying. No Democrats are advocating that we not listen to Al Qaeda communications, and Scott McClellan knows that. And no journalist ought to pass along this falsehood without pointing out that it is factually false.

The debate is not and has never been over whether we should eavesdrop on Al Qaeda. Everyone wants eavesdropping on Al Qaeda. The issue is whether the Bush Administration should eavesdrop in accordance with the law (with judicial oversight and approval), or in violation of the law (in secret and with no oversight, something that has been a criminal offense in this country since 1978). That is NSA Scandal 101, something that has been clearly established and beyond dispute from for months.

It is a potent reflection of how little the White House can say in response to the accusation that the President broke the law that they can respond only by: (a) flagrantly and dishonestly distorting the argument against it (by pretending that this is about whether we should eavesdrop on Al Qaeda), or (b) accusing those who protest the President's law-breaking of committing treason.

The reason that we invaded Iraq with an astounding (and truly embarrassing) 70% of the country believing (falsely) that Saddam personally participated in the planning of the 9/11 attacks is because the media failed in its responsibility to correct factually false Government statements. They just blithely passed them along without comment, as though their function is to give the government a megaphone for its propaganda rather than serve as an adversarial watchdog which cynically scrutinizes the government's claims.

It is completely unacceptable, and a total abdication of their responsibility, for the media to pass along the White House's factually false claim that Democrats oppose eavesdropping on Al Qaeda. The media does not need to, and should not, take sides in the NSA debate, but it ought to inform American citizens about what the arguments actually are and what the debate is about. If it doesn't do that, what does it do?

Censure

Crooks & Liars has the video of Sen. Russ Feingold's guest appearance with George Stephanopolous today wherein he indicates that he plans to introduce a resolution to censure George W. Bush. Transcript here.

"Resolved: that the United States Senate does hereby censure George W. Bush, President of the United States, and does condemn his unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans."

Seems reasonable to me. Here's the chronology: for a long time, the state has only had the right to spy on its citizens if it obtains a court order (warrant) first. Then Nixon abused this ability so the Congress passed the FISA law in 1978 to more explicitly forbid the administration from spying without a warrant even in cases of national security. More recently, the Patriot Act granted further latitude to the administration and within the last month that act was renewed. However, each time, it was praised by Bush as giving law enforcement officials the tools they needed to allow them to do their jobs. Yes, in spite of this, Bush got the NSA to spy on Americans without getting warrants.

The law is clear. Bush praised the law. Then Bush broke the law. Bush now claims that he has the right to break that law and, in fact, he can break any law, in prosecuting his endless war-on-terror. As Feingold says in the interview, the reasons they give for breaking the law keep changing, but, as I have said before, the claim that he has the inherent right to break any law is, not only ridiculous, but recent. They sure weren't claiming to have the right to do this stuff when they were asking Congress to give them the authority to do it legally a short while ago.

One could ask: what can't he do with this claim? Where does this end? As Feingold asked, could he order the assassination of American citizens? And one other thing, just a pet peeve on mine, stop referring to Bush as the Commander-in-Chief when the topic is domestic affairs. He is the C-i-C of the military only. Otherwise, he is a public servant and, as such, he has sworn an oath to uphold the laws that Congress makes and, like any citizen, he lives and works under the law. Congress makes the laws and the administration's job is to enforce them. He doesn't get to make them and he certainly doesn't get to break them.

Don't turn your backs on these people

Have you ever noticed how people will defend their intentions when criticized about the results of their behaviour? e.g. but I didn't mean to do that. As a young man, I learned that if you hurt someone unintentionally, that person was still hurt, whether you intended to or not. I'm hearing that same tone in comments about a bill being proposed by that spineless group of Senators who refused to investigate the President who admitted to breaking the law with the warrantless NSA eavesdropping.

But an aide to the bill's chief author, Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, said that is not the intention of the legislation.

There is a good article in Editor & Publisher based on a copy of the draft of the legislation.

"The bill would make it a crime to tell the American people that the president is breaking the law, and the bill could make it a crime for the newspapers to publish that fact," said Martin, a civil liberties advocate.

So here we have the Republicans defending the breaking the law (the Plame outing & the NSA scandal, to name two) and, on top of that, now they want to make it a crime to expose and report on the wrong-doing! What balls! But what do you expect from a group that gets the victim of a shooting to apologize the the shooter.

Why Data Mining Won't Stop Terror

I read an interesting article on Wired News about why the NSA data-mining project is a bad idea. Bruce Schneier's point is that the number of false positives, even in an unrealistically accurate system, would make (and has made) it useless. These technical difficulties, combined with the threat to our civil liberties, should amke this a non-starter.

This isn't anything new. In statistics, it's called the "base rate fallacy," and it applies in other domains as well. For example, even highly accurate medical tests are useless as diagnostic tools if the incidence of the disease is rare in the general population. Terrorist attacks are also rare, any "test" is going to result in an endless stream of false alarms.

This is exactly the sort of thing we saw with the NSA's eavesdropping program: the New York Times reported that the computers spat out thousands of tips per month. Every one of them turned out to be a false alarm.

And the cost was enormous -- not just for the FBI agents running around chasing dead-end leads instead of doing things that might actually make us safer, but also the cost in civil liberties. The fundamental freedoms that make our country the envy of the world are valuable, and not something that we should throw away lightly.

Data mining can work. It helps Visa keep the costs of fraud down, just as it helps Amazon alert me to books I might want to buy and Google show me advertising I'm more likely to be interested in. But these are all instances where the cost of false positives is low (a phone call from a Visa operator or an uninteresting ad) in systems that have value even if there is a high number of false negatives.

Finding terrorism plots is not a problem that lends itself to data mining. It's a needle-in-a-haystack problem, and throwing more hay on the pile doesn't make that problem any easier. We'd be far better off putting people in charge of investigating potential plots and letting them direct the computers, instead of putting the computers in charge and letting them decide who should be investigated.

Hypocrisy thy name is legion

Glenn Greenwald has another article calling those people formerly-known-as conservatives on their hypocrisy. It's a good one, go read it. Here's a sample:

Self-identified conservatives spent the 1990s relentlessly claiming to believe in principles of limited federal government power, and insisting that our very democracy and basic protections of individual liberty were gravely endangered by the existence of law enforcement and surveillance powers which are a small fraction of those which have been seized and are now exercised by the Bush Administration. And conservatives then demanded all sorts of sweeping Congressional investigations into every allegation of law-breaking by Administration officials, and depicted any resistance or insufficiently vigorous investigation to constitute a "cover-up" that was simply inconsistent with the rule of law and intolerable in our democracy.

It is the case, of course, that hypocrisy is common and our political discourse is not exactly characterized by great intellectual consistency. But when the contradictions spewed by political figures and pundits are this glaring and complete on matters of such central contemporary importance -- when our country's dominant political movement articulates positions which fundamentally contradict virtually every principle it previously claimed to believe in -- shouldn't they at least be asked about these things and compelled to provide some explanation?

Illustrating the utter corruption and dishonesty of Bush followers, both in the Congress and in the pundit class, is accomplished simply by comparing what they said then to what they say now. Isn't this something which the media ought to be doing much, much more of as Bush followers seek to suppress investigations into every allegation of wrongdoing on the part of our highest government officials?

Digby on Allen

Digby reminds us of an oddity from the past then makes some observations on current events:

From Josh Marshall, back in September 2005

(September 12, 2005 -- 02:10 AM EDT)

Not sure what to make of this small tidbit. But while I was confirming some new entries in our Katrina timeline tonight, I noticed something I hadn't heard before. According to Scott McClellan's August 31st gaggle, in the early days of Katrina, the White House Katrina task force was being run by Claude Allen.

Allen's title at the White House is Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy. But he's basically the social policy czar, big into abstinence only education, stem-cell restrictions, stuff like that.

This may simply have been a matter of convening meetings -- I have no idea. But still it seemed an odd choice.

Very odd. In the worst natural disaster in American history the Bush administration's response was assigned to a shoplifting religious extremist and a crony from the arabian horseshow association while the head of homeland security flew off to give a speech. The president and John McCain laughed and ate cake. This is Republican governance.

The administration has known about this for over a month. They lied reflexively and said he had resigned to spend more time with his family. Did they think this wouldn't come out?

[...]

First male prostitutes in the white house press room and now shoplifters in the president's inner circle. The vice president shoots an old man in the face. To say nothing of the indicted and soon to be indicted perjurers and corrupt GOP congressmen and Senators.

These are the people who are asking the nation to trust them with unfettered executive power because they are protecting the country. OK.

About That Rebellion ...

An editorial in today's New York Times has this to say about the so-called rebellion of Congressional Republicans...

We keep hearing that the Republicans in Congress are in revolt against the president.

Some rebellion.

Yes, the Republicans defied President Bush on the United Arab Emirates ports deal. But it wasn't over a major principle, like the collapse of Congressional supervision of the executive branch or the incredibly lax security in the nation's ports, or even the security issues posed by this particular deal.

The Republicans dumped the ports deal into the harbor because of xenophobia and electoral tactics. Republican pollsters have been saying the president could be a liability in the fall elections, so lawmakers posed as rebels for voters who, they think, want rebels. They know those voters are unhappy about globalization, and specifically hostile toward Arabs.

The idea that a happy few are charging the White House ramparts is ridiculous. Republican lawmakers don't just turn a blind eye when they learn that the president is making profoundly bad choices, like cutting constitutional corners, abrogating treaties and even breaking the law. They actually legalize the president's misdeeds.

Take domestic spying, held up as another area of Republican revolt. The program violates the law. Congress knows it. The public knows it. Even President Bush knows it. (He just says the law doesn't apply to him.) In response, the Capitol Hill rebels are boldly refusing to investigate the program — or any other warrantless spying that is going on. They are trying to rewrite the law to legalize warrantless spying. And meanwhile, they've created new subcommittees to help the president go on defying the law.

Over the last couple of years, Republican lawmakers have been given proof that American soldiers and intelligence agents abused, tortured and even killed prisoners, or sent them to other countries to be tortured. Without hesitation, the Republicans did nothing — no serious investigation, no accountability.

Congressional and White House negotiators then watered down the new anti-torture law, which Mr. Bush said did not really apply to him anyway. And they passed another law actually encouraging the abuse of prisoners by allowing the use of coerced evidence at hearings on the prisoners' status.

After 9/11, Mr. Bush created a network of prisons outside the American legal system so he could hold people indefinitely without any hearings. When the Supreme Court said twice that he was reaching beyond his powers, the Republicans in Congress were determined not to let this assault on the rule of law continue. So they rose as one, and legalized the president's actions. In case there was any confusion about its resolve, Congress told the courts that they could no longer rule on these matters. Mr. Bush got the message, loud and clear. He sent his lawyers right out to inform the judges, including the Supreme Court, that they had to drop all the cases that were already before them.

And all this does not even include the act of open rebellion by which the Senate is helping the White House cover up the hyping of intelligence on Iraq.

With rebels like these, who needs loyalists?

Claude Allen

More bad news for the Bush White House. Last month's strange departure of senior White House advisor Claude Allen "to spend more time with his family" turns out to be something entirely different. Allen was arrested yesterday and charged in a “retail theft scheme.” Here's the police report. Check out Atrios to see what a piece of work this Christian Right extremist is.

Now, of course, Allen is being characterized as a lowly functionary that no one really knew. However, from ThinkProgress we have:

Allen had the highest salary of any employee in the White House, tied with Karl Rove, Andrew Card, and Stephen Hadley, among others. He was earning $161,000 a year.

Atrios debunks one early right-wing talking point that Allen was some unknown staffer. In fact, he was the top domestic policy adviser and a former Bush Federal Circuit Court nominee. The Washington Post labeled him the embodiment of “conservative values.”

Digby has a good post on Allen here:

He was Schiavo before Schiavo was cool.

Claude Allen is a Rove republican through and through --- a cheap, opportunistic phony preying on people's prejudices. He rose to the very top of the GOP heap by insulting the intelligence of all around him and daring them to call him on it. Very few people did.

The saga continues as the White House adds its all-criminal team status.

McCain watch

Updated.

When I first started thinking about John McCain, he had been the victim of some of Karl Rove's dirty tricks on behalf of George W. Bush in 2000 Republican primary. He was a sympathetic character for me then, a victim of the Rovians and a victim of torture as a prisoner in Vietnam. He is a media darling and has a reputation as a straight-talker. He is also seems to be the front-running GOP candidate for President in 2008.

However, the more I learn about him, the worse he seems. My biggest problem with him is his disingenuous and the fact that lots of so-called Bush-haters think that McCain differs significantly from Bush. Different package maybe, but same gunk inside. Distressingly, he seems to get a free ride from the press. This will become a really big problem if he becomes the GOP candidate. The last thing we need is another candidate who is popular with voters simply because they don't know what he's really like. What I would give for a real straight-talker, someone who told people what he really believed it and didn't pander to different audiences.

With McCain, what you see is not what you get. The so-called Maverick pretty consistently toes the party line and is just off-the-wall enough (but not on matters of substance) to maintain the rep as a maverick. But he has a record for being less than straight about lots of issues. Jane Hamsher, back at FDL, agrees that we need to watch out for him. In fact, she suggests that someone start a specialty blog devoted to "following McCain, digging into his history and covering what he does in depth on a day-to-day basis."

Witness this latest business at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. Even Drudge was not impressed:

Instead of stopping the momentum of Majority Leader Bill Frist - widely anticipated to win the straw poll - the move seemed to expose the McCain camp's insincerity about its position with the base.

MyDD:

What's so interesting to me about these stories is the fact that the only two people openly trying to wreck the straw poll are McCain and one of his supporters. In urging attendees not to vote for him and instead write in Bush, McCain set himself up in a position where he can't lose. It's a total cop out in that, if he performs poorly, he can point to the fact that he wasn't trying to win anyway, going so far as to endorse someone else. And Lott calling the whole process "rigged" by Frist is the icing on that cake, stripping what remained of the poll's credibility. This is nothing but scorched earth. McCain obviously didn't feel he was strong enough to win the poll, so he had to tear it apart instead.

I'm sure that I'll have more on McCain later...

Update: The New York Times has an article about the Leadership Conference in which they report:

The extent of Mr. McCain's embrace of Mr. Bush was striking...

[...]

Mr. McCain went so far as to condemn the collapse of the port deal, saying that Congress had served Mr. Bush poorly by not permitting a 45-day review of security concerns, though he did not mention that the deal was sunk by fellow Republicans.

"The president deserved better," Mr. McCain said.

Mr. McCain praised the president for his failed effort to rewrite the Social Security system, said he supported the decision to go into Iraq and blistered at critics who suggested the White House had fabricated evidence of unconventional weapons in Iraq to justify the invasion.

"Anybody who says the president of the United States is lying about weapons of mass destruction is lying," Mr. McCain said.

What planet is this guy on? Praising Bush's attempt to destroy Social Security and defending the WMD lies? I tell you, under that charming good old boy facade is a real wing-nut!

I told you so

Paul Krugman writes an "I told you so" column in the New York Times and well he should for, unlike the now disgraced Judy Miller, who famously said this (ironically in a matter wherein she was wrong), Krugman can accurately say: "I was proved fucking right".

I find it insufferable that people who were so wrong about so much seem to think that finally starting to "get it" now makes them somehow more credible, balanced, reasonable than those of us who had it right from the start. It's not the same as a case where someone resisted the "rush to judgment" and slowly warmed to a position after much reasoned consideration of the emerging evidence. This is a case of people who jumped on a bandwagon and who actively resisted evidence to the contrary. They were wrong in spite of the evidence.

Then, when they have finally had the facts rubbed in their faces long enough that even they start to get it, they think that they deserve more credit those they had ridiculed earlier. I think they need to apologize and give credit where credit is due. I work in a technical field where bullshit doesn't carry the day, but rather, people who evaluate and analyze better, who aren't wrong as much, who consistently get it right are considered worthy of respect. I think that we should hold pundits to the same standards. As Krugman says:

Never mind; better late than never. We should welcome the recent epiphanies by conservative commentators who have finally realized that the Bush administration isn't trustworthy. But we should guard against a conventional wisdom that seems to be taking hold in some quarters, which says there's something praiseworthy about having initially been taken in by Mr. Bush's deceptions, even though the administration's mendacity was obvious from the beginning.

According to this view, if you're a former Bush supporter who now says, as Mr. Bartlett did at the Cato event, that "the administration lies about budget numbers," you're a brave truth-teller. But if you've been saying that since the early days of the Bush administration, you were unpleasantly shrill.

Similarly, if you're a former worshipful admirer of George W. Bush who now says, as Mr. Sullivan did at Cato, that "the people in this administration have no principles," you're taking a courageous stand. If you said the same thing back when Mr. Bush had an 80 percent approval rating, you were blinded by Bush-hatred.

And if you're a former hawk who now concedes that the administration exaggerated the threat from Iraq, you're to be applauded for your open-mindedness. But if you warned three years ago that the administration was hyping the case for war, you were a conspiracy theorist.

The truth is that everything the new wave of Bush critics has to say was obvious long ago to any commentator who was willing to look at the facts

As Digby says:

People who endorsed this folly, over the objections of others with cooler analytical heads, have been discredited. It's that simple. They cannot be trusted the same way again, particularly if they fail to acknowledge that others were right and they refused to listen to them. It's very unpleasant to be wrong but mature people try to figure out where their reasoning failed and admit their mistakes. Simply "discovering" after all this time that Bush does not fit their fantasy image of him is not good enough.

Cracks in the coalition?

Digby provides some analysis of the internecine warfare breaking out on the right. No, it's not civil war (yet :-) but there do appear to be cracks forming in the walls of unholy alliance of the GOP and the Christian right. Here's a sample...

This is the real modern Republican party in all its glory. It raised these guys from pups, nurturing their selfishness, their immaturity and their greed. They wanted to win by any means necessary and when you believe that you allow people like Reed and Abramoff to do what they need to do to make it happen. If you can skim some cream off the top, so much the better.

It's great that they are all being exposed, but let's not kid ourselves. They may be decadent and corrupt, but they do know how to win. I wouldn't count on them just folding up their tent and going home. Winning is, after all, the only thing they know how to do.

Still, there is good reason to hope that they are going to start turning part of their firepower on each other, which is the best way to beat people like this. The Dubai port deal shows a huge divide between the rank and file who believed that crap about "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists" and the big money boys who have already progressed past this old fashioned notion of the nation state to embrace the new borderless corporation paradigm. That crack in the coalition is becoming a fissure. There are a bunch of them...