Author: danps

The Protect America Act expires next Friday, and what happens between now and then will tell us a lot about who our leaders really are.

For more on pruning back executive power see The Pruning Shears.
The Protect America Act (PAA) expires on February 1st.  To this point there has been silence from the White House on this, which is not a surprise.  Over the summer they waited until the last minute and then raised the roof about how the terrorist killers would slit your children’s throats with hunting knives if Congress didn’t bring us a few steps closer to being a police state immediately.  Congress was evidently surprised by this tactic, having never seen it before except for every single day since September 12th, 2001.  They passed a law with a six month expiration date that gave the executive everything it wanted.

Pause for a moment and think about how strange a thing that is:  A six month expiration?  The most obvious explanation is that some kind of short duration was necessary for some essential support of such an authoritarian, law-nullifying piece of legislation (the telecom amnesty portion seems like a combination of M.C. Escher and the Marx Brothers:  We are passing a law that says the law doesn’t matter.)  How could someone like Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi explain it, though?  “We think it’s a horrible bill so we only want it to become law for six months.”  There are two possibilities there – either it’s a horrible bill in which case it shouldn’t become law for any length of time, or it’s a necessary law in which case why give it such a quick expiration date?  This isn’t like a tax cut with a sunset provision designed for short-term stimulus or something like that.  Either the terrorist killers are about to slaughter us all or they aren’t.  I don’t recall an al-Qaida press release announcing a switch to an all-paper system effective next Friday.  There is no logical reason to do anything except make it permanent or not have it at all.

In any event, this is where we are.  History suggests the President will get his way, but that’s no reason to not fight like hell.  The hero of the moment is Chris Dodd.  He seems fully committed to a filibuster and God bless him for it.  Harry Reid postponed the initial consideration of the PAA to now from December because he considered Dodd’s filibuster threat nothing more than campaign posturing.  Figuring Dodd would be out by now he rescheduled, and wouldn’t it be fun to see a timid and calculating soul like Reid be tormented by an act of bold and principled leadership?  Dodd might still back down and that would be a huge disappointment to me and others who have cheered him these last months, but right now every indication is that he will keep it up.  And on a side note, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D – AT&T) is beneath contempt.

Two players are on the sidelines for this.  One is Ron Paul, and that’s a real shame.  He’s the only candidate left who is committed to fighting the expansion of the executive and the only one who would actively work to that end as President.  Unfortunately he is not a Senator.  Circumstances have placed him in the happy position of being able to take a stand on principle and not be inconvenienced by it.  This isn’t a criticism, just a description of the situation.  I tend to think he’d be shoulder to shoulder with Dodd, though.  The other is John Edwards.  He seems to be tailor made for this fight:  He’s pushed a populist message and what could be more “man of the people” than championing them against well heeled corporations that are trying to buy a pass on their lawless behavior?  That fight seems to be right in his wheelhouse.  What’s stopping him from going to the Capitol steps when this starts, holding a press conference and slamming Obama and Clinton for not showing leadership right now?  Come to think of it, what is preventing Ron Paul from doing the same with John McCain?

Emphatically not on the sidelines:  Clinton, McCain and Obama.  John McCain hasn’t taken a position (that I know of) and it’s unlikely he’ll show any leadership.  As for Clinton and Obama, they are on record supporting Dodd’s filibuster.  Neither of them deserves an ounce of support for the nomination if they do not take the lead on this.  It couldn’t be any simpler or more urgent – both of them have blown lots of hot air about how they are leaders.  Ready from day one?  Guess what – today is day one.  Hopemonger?  Give the rest of us a reason.  Cut the crap.  Talk is cheap.

And you, dear reader – please do your part:

Sign up for the latest:
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/FISAfight

Email Senator Edwards:
john@johnedwards.com

Encourage some Seators to lead…
Senator          Phone          Fax
Obama       (202) 228-4260 (202) 224-2854
Clinton     (202) 228-0282 (202) 224-4451
McCain      (202) 224-2235 (202) 228-2862

…or just register your disappointment:
Reid        (202) 224-3542 (202) 224-7327
Rockefeller (202) 224-6472 (202) 224-7665

We’ve come to approve of torture by a number of different ways, but perhaps the most insidious is our willingness to look at a distorted picture of it.

For more on pruning back executive power see The Pruning Shears.

Maybe I’m just a slow learner (keep your thoughts to yourself please) but for a long time I didn’t know what the phrase “can’t see the forest for the trees” meant.  I attribute it to the archaic use of “for” to mean “because of”, as in “for want of a nail the shoe was lost.”  Even after I figured that out I didn’t see what was so great about it; there was no easy frame of reference for missing the big picture because of focusing on minutia.  Maybe “being penny wise and pound foolish” is a folk wisdom cousin but it didn’t get me any closer.  It took the Rodney King police trial to do make me understand it.

I remember being at a friend’s house when I first saw the tape and I literally couldn’t believe my eyes.  It illustrated what was happening in that area (and maybe to a certain degree in most urban areas) more than any number of dry statistics.  My reaction was “they are mercilessly beating that man, and calling it ‘brutality’ is an understatement.”  I suspect most people – even those largely sympathetic to the officers – would admit in their heart of hearts that yes, that’s a bit over the top.  Going into the trial the defendants’ lawyers must have known the videotape spoke volumes and had to be neutralized.  I wouldn’t have had the first clue how to do that, and the fact that they did is a tribute to their competence.

They figured out that instead of trying to bury it they could just cut it up into dozens of pieces right before the jury.  The officers were shown a couple seconds of the tape, then it was stopped.  They were asked, what were you thinking then?  Why did you do that?  What was the intent behind that hit?  Roll the tape a couple more seconds.  How about that one?  Why didn’t you just handcuff him right there?  It went on and on and on.  The tape was drawn out and divided into discrete moments, each with its own internal logic.  It also prevented the accumulated violence from being apparent.  At any moment the jury might just see one or two hits, which by itself came across as subduing a grown man resisting arrest.  It was an absolutely brilliant courtroom strategy, and while the post-verdict riots forever cast it as being all about race and class I believe the play/pause/explain strategy was instrumental in the result.

The reason I revisit this is because our country is in the process of accepting a comforting lie presented in the same way.  The stark truth is that we torture.  We engage in behavior that is explicitly against international treaties we signed decades ago and abided by.  It is explicitly illegal.  Those who used the very same practices against us in World War II were successfully prosecuted for war crimes.  It was done during the Inquisition.  It is repudiated by our allies and practiced by those we consider lawless.  How could such a monstrous thing happen?  Play/pause/explain.

When Mike McConnell says “You can do waterboarding lots of different ways…I assume you can get to the point that a person is actually drowning” he is asking us to look at the trees and not the forest.  We know waterboarding is torture and we desperately want to believe that our leaders haven’t directed it.  We approach our leaders predisposed to believe anything that will put the conscience at ease – we want to believe we’re the good guys.  Therefore we are entirely willing to let our leaders play, pause and explain.  (Play) waterboarding is really bad (pause) but it can be done lots of different ways and probably some of them aren’t torture and you can bet your bottom dollar that THOSE are the varieties of it we use.  He invites us to mentally pause the tape over and over again while he explains the non-torturous nature of each drop of water.

Unfortunately the truth is completely at odds with that picture.  We know how the tape looks when we run it uninterrupted from start to finish.  We know it explains itself and its face is that of unvarnished evil.  We know as we are invited to examine a piece of bark in microscopic detail that we are still in the forest.  What will be our excuse?

A former FBI translator is sitting on an extraordinary story, but our major outlets are acting as though telling it will turn them to stone.

For more on pruning back executive power see The Pruning Shears.

The story of Sibel Edmonds is a remarkable example of how the executive branch has succeeded (so far) in stifling voices it doesn’t want heard, and a potentially damning indictment of the media outlets that seem to be cooperating.  If you haven’t heard of her don’t feel too badly – she hasn’t gotten the kind of attention reserved for, say, Michael Bloomberg’s latest inscrutable indication on whether or not he’ll run for President.  Her story was initially publicized by 60 Minutes in August 2004 and a year later in Vanity Fair.  Edmonds was a translator at the FBI’s language division, and the 60 Minutes piece reported on potentially large levels of incompetence, corruption and security breaches there.  The Vanity Fair piece elaborates on it considerably, even expanding the corruption angle to the highest levels of Congress.

Since then no major American media outlets have reported on it, and it created the kind of cognitive dissonance that led me to make the dreaded blogosphere a staple of my news diet.  It also is the kind of situation that compelled me to begin posting and attempt to add my voice (however small) to the marketplace of ideas.  The story as outlined above is extraordinary, right?  After the biggest terrorist attack in our country’s history one of our key intelligence agencies is unable to keep up with its work, possibly compromised by double agents, arrogantly unwilling to examine itself and potentially riddled with corruption.  That’s really big news, right?  In the romanticized model of journalism we’ve heard so much about there should be a pack of intrepid reporters tracking this down, fleshing it out and putting together pieces of the puzzle, right?  Wrong.  It just disappeared.  It dropped off the radar altogether.

At this point Brad Friedman at the Brad Blog picked up the story and stayed on it.  The administration invoked the state secrets privilege (which I’m not too fond of) in an attempt to silence her.  Last October she announced she would defy the Justice Department and speak: “Here’s my promise to the American Public: If anyone of the major networks — ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX — promise to air the entire segment, without editing, I promise to tell them everything that I know.”  The story just gets more bizarre from there.  You now have someone volunteering to do an explosive interview on the most-discussed issue of our time.  No one needs to get sore legs chasing the story, just have her come in, sit her down with one of your stars and let ‘er rip.  Instant journalism!  No takers.

Finally, this week the Sunday Times reported her allegations “about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.”  Surely this will get the American media’s attention, right?  No.  Your best source for information is still the Brad Blog.  This is not an isolated case, either.  Increasingly we will have to rely on a very wide variety of sources for information on relevant topics.  Last week I wrote about Marcy Wheeler’s timelines of executive malfeasance and Josh Marshall’s tracking of the US Attorney firings.  If there’s a big trial we may be lucky enough to have Christy Hardin Smith liveblogging it.  All these folks write about many different topics but have devoted particular attention to certain ones and are producing great investigative journalism that you literally cannot find anywhere else.

Not too long ago an anonymous rival said of an aging football player, “he’s retired but he doesn’t know it.”  That fate has befallen the current generation of high-profile news media stars.  Their analysis has been consistently wrong and constrained by their own exotic insider mentality.  Their colleagues on the front page haven’t suffered that fate, but their importance could radically diminish over time.  The more issues they abandon, the more other outlets gain when they pick up the slack.  The news gathering and reporting infrastructure at large outlets means they can continue to be significant actors for now at least, but that isn’t preordained.  If they focus on polls, horse races, transcription, gossip, sensation and “news you can use” they will abandon one of the most important roles the media can play in a democracy:  A voice of skepticism and a check on power.  Would the administration have gotten away with politicizing intelligence if there had been aggressive follow up to Sibel Edmonds’ allegations?  Would the politicization of the Justice Department have even gotten off the ground?  How about warrantless wiretapping, torture or obstruction of justice?  There are any number of executive power abuses that may have been prevented by a more vigilant press.  Some have stepped in to compensate but it is no substitute for the largest outlets playing this vital role.  We are worse off for it.

Challenging the executive’s abuses of the last few years will require some new approaches and some help from largely unheralded actors.

For more on pruning back executive power see The Pruning Shears.

Last year was a disappointing one for those of us who hoped a Democrat-controlled Congress would begin to restore some of the balance that has been lost in the unchallenged expansion of executive power.  If 2008 is to be better we will need new leaders and a new approach.

First of all let’s look at who the leaders WON’T be.  The odds are against either major party’s nominee.  Most are not speaking out on the issue at all and it is easy to see why.  They are running to be the head of the executive branch and after all they are only human.  They are looking at an office with a much freer hand, much less oversight and many more unchallenged claims than just a few years ago.  I’m sure all of that would make the job of President much more enjoyable.  They won’t volunteer to give any of it up.  Among those still vigorously campaigning only Ron Paul and Chris Dodd are on record as intending to take an active role in rolling back the abuses UPDATE: When I originally posted this at Pruning Shears Dodd was still in the race. For about 3 more hours.  The rest are not even if they might occasionally say nice things on the subject.

There probably won’t be leadership from anyone in the traditional media, either.  With primaries now and an election in November they will focus primarily, at times exclusively, on the horse race.  Theorizing about potential members of the next government is much more exciting (and less work) than covering the actual members of the current one.  That isn’t the only dynamic at work, either.  The romantic image of Woodward and Bernstein running down the story for the Washington Post in the face of open hostility from a contemptuous administration is, shall we say, dated.  The days of low-level reporters for a major media outlet cultivating high-level sources that leak (against their own interests) incriminating details of a corrupt administration has been turned on its head.  Instead we now have analyst/stars competing for morsels of self-serving propaganda from presumptively anonymous insiders, which they then pass along without scrutiny.  There are some noble exceptions like Charlie Savage and Seymour Hersh, but their work struggles to be heard since they don’t get published in the most widely read outlets.  In fact, the Woodward and Bernstein of this generation are bloggers – people like Josh Marshall collecting reports of attorney firings in local newspapers and synthesizing it into a coherent picture of a conspiracy, or Marcy Wheeler doing the painstaking work to put together coherent timelines of executive abuses.  Leadership in journalism is now shared with a widely scorned new medium.

Finally, leadership won’t come from the existing leaders in Congress.  In the Senate Judiciary Committee Pat Leahy and Arlen Specter are so comically inept that close observers don’t even bother writing sincere headlines for each latest blast of bluster.  Harry Reid is a Bush ally in executive power expansion and it has been truly astonishing to see him cooperate in his own job’s emasculation.  I have given up trying to understand why he does so; my best guess is that he is entirely cowed by the bullies in the White House, but the real reason is irrelevant.  All that matters is results, and in that respect he is objectively pro-Bush.  The same goes for Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel in the House.  They may have an eye on politics and the election still almost a year away, but their electoral calculations and center-left strategizing has only served to legitimize the actions of the executive.  It is nothing less than pure cynicism.

Leadership, then, will have to come from an assortment of places.  We’ll have to find leaders wherever we can, work around the “usual” centers of power and hope these alternatives can produce some fruit (or at least momentum).  It won’t help to call the Speaker’s office, so how can we bypass the Speaker?  We can support someone like Dodd in his effort to prevent telelcom amnesty or Robert Wexler’s effort to begin impeachment hearings.  We could start poking around a bit too.  What exactly does it take to have a Speaker removed?  How does a challenge get mounted?  What are the different ways to do so and under what circumstances?  It may not be practical in the end but it’s at least worth looking in to.  And in any event the presidential election most likely won’t end with a mandate for a restoration of checks and balances.  That will probably require a sustained effort in the legislative branch.  In short, we will have to find leaders and support strategies where we can.  Each issue will be different and will probably require a different approach.  It is hardly ideal, but it seems to be the most viable option in the face of unified opposition at the top.

My quixotic attempt to make a positive association between 2007 and toe tapping.
Introduction

These songs will be hosted until Thursday on Pruning Shears so you can try before you buy.

This is a CD’s worth of the best new music I heard this year.  God bless the Internet – I doubt I’d have heard any of them without it.  I deliberately forced myself to stay under 80 minutes so they all could fit on a single CD.  In a way it’s an arbitrary limit but if you’re going to share a “best of” list you shouldn’t overwhelm your listeners.  I know from experience that restraint in these matters is greatly appreciated.  There are some songs I loved that didn’t make it as a result; I’ve listed some of them in the comments.  If you like my picks I recommend tracking them down as well.

Stragglers

I heard these for the first time this year but they were released earlier.  I’d have probably made room for each if they’d have qualified.

“Uh Huh” – Method Man (Buy). Method Man has forgotten more about good beats than I will ever know.

“The Ride” – Joan As Police Woman (Buy).  A beautiful song beautifully performed.  You can keep your divas, chanteuses and drama queens.  I’ll take Joan As Police Woman.

“Drama” – H.I.T. (No artist info).  This song has a gigantic, colossal Godzilla of a beat, stomping through your city and knocking over buildings.  Run for your lives!

“Through The Backyards” – Au Revoir Simone (Buy).  Mesmerizing.

“Hardcore Days And Softcore Nights” – Aqueduct (Buy album).  I don’t write this lightly: A worthy successor “Louie, Louie”.  Like the prototypical garage rock anthem, this one has a happy little keyboard riff dancing on top of a drum kit getting worked over like a loanshark deadbeat.  Retroactively awarded 2005 Best Xylophone.

Honorable Mention

“White Like Heaven” – Gowns (Label’s homepage).  Shows what’s possible when a talented and ambitious group creates something cool and then just opens it up and lets it breathe for a while.  It definitely isn’t for everyone though.  As much as I like it I have mixed feelings about it because I’m pretty sure it will end up inspiring a landfill’s worth of pretentious tripe.  My advice: Get into it now before the imitators ruin it.

Late breaking news:  I just started listening to “Shame” by Shannon Hurley in the last week and I suspect I just found my first Straggler for 2008.

Best music of 2007

And yes as proof of concept I burned them on to a CD using Winamp.

22. “See And Be Scene” – The Hard Lessons (Band info).  Synthesizers can sound great when featured in a song..  You can hear them in dance, electronica and hip hop but in the pop/rock world it’s as though the first Cars album never happened.  Here’s hoping The Hard Lessons start a reversal of that trend.

21. “Swallowed A Pill” – Salt And Samovar (Band info).  This one builds and builds and just when it seems ready to take off into an extended Who-like whirlwind…it ends.  Happily the abruptness doesn’t come across as contrived like it did for another cultural event this year that I will only elliptically refer to and certainly won’t hyperlink to because I’ve already heard more about it than I need to for three lifetimes and if you don’t know what I’m talking about please forget you even read this sentence.  Here it just sounds like that’s where they wanted it to end.  Fair enough.

20. “There’s A Reason” – AA Bondy (Buy).  This was actually released November 30th 2006 but I allowed a grace period; the songs I find don’t exactly come storming out of the gate in a blaze of publicity.  Sometimes it takes a while to come across them.  Anyway, some slow songs are compelling and some are catatonic.  I don’t know what causes them to be one or the other but this one just forced me to tune in.

19. “Paper Planes” – M.I.A. (Buy).  This one cleaned up at the awards show: Best Mess With The Audience’s Head, Most Contemporary, Best Living Up To The Hype and Best Shotgun.  Don’t strain your back hauling all that hardware home!

18. (2007 Best Gibberish) “320” – Project Jenny, Project Jan (Buy).  “320” really crept up on me.  The first few times I thought it was OK, then suddenly it clicked and I was bouncing all over the car.  You weren’t using that mailbox were you?

17. “Enabler” – Japancakes (Buy).  Simply gorgeous.  They fade it out too early though.  I’ll be first in line when they release the twenty minute EP version.

16.(2007 Best Hand Claps) “B.O.O.T.A.Y” – Bangers And Cash (Buy (Clean version (though really why bother?))).  A less refined Sir Mix-A-Lot.

15. “Shake Ya Boogie” – Mocean Worker (Buy album).  I know cowbell has become all ironic and meta but when it’s done well it still sounds just fine to me.  This is Exhibit A from 2007.

14. (2007 Runner Up – Best Hand Claps) “Solta O Frango” – Bonde Do Role (Buy).  This is a loopy song, but the good kind not the bad kind.  It isn’t “I’m so embarassed this guy is my President I could just die” loopy but “a bunch of wacky kids got together, grabbed an instrument and discovered they could play them” loopy.  We’ve been gorged on the former and are starved for the latter.  Help make up the deficit, won’t you?  Check out this song.

13. “Sunset” – Benji Cossa (Buy album).  This song produced the following image for me:  Tiny Tim on the early 70’s Carson show with a Hawaiian set and a couple of hula dancers behind him.  Whatever that does for you, give it a listen.  It was my unofficial “driving home from work on a nice summer Friday afternoon” song.  Now that winter has arrived I can listen and still catch some residual warmth.

12. “Wonderlust King” – Gogol Bordello (Buy).  Frankie Yankovic meets Sid Vicious meets a gypsy caravan.  I understand why they aren’t more popular but I still wish they were.

11. “Lil’King Kong” – Simple Kid (Buy).  Banjo on top of a hip hop beat?  (Cue clichéd cop buddy movie vibe:)  “YOU CAN’T DO THAT!”  Oh yes he can.  Straight into my heart and onto the list.

10. “The Opposite Of Hallelujah” – Jens Lekman (Buy).  If melodies were animals this song’s would be a basket full of puppies.  It’s hard to overstate how insanely catchy this song is.

9. “Die Die Die” – The Avett Brothers (Buy).  If loving harmonies is a crime then lock me up and throw away the key!

8. (2007 Vocal of the Year) “Small Town Crew” – The Brunettes (Buy).  I believe I’d enjoy listening to this girl sing the phone book.

7. “Rud Fins” – Robert Pollard (Buy).  In just over two minutes this song provides a full week’s supply of the FDA’s recommended allowance of rock and roll goodness.

6. “Adrenaline” – Emma Pollock (Buy). Immature artists imitate, mature artists steal.  Emma shows her maturity by stealing the piano from “Clocks” and dropping it into her own wonderfully crafted pop song.  Well played, Lady Pollock! (Cue country club applause.)

5. “It Just Takes One” – The Hudsons (Buy (registration required)).  Simple, clean, lovely.

4. “What You Need” – Galactic (Buy).  Oh my dear sweet Jesus does this song rock.

3. “Bone” – Map Of Africa (Band info).  If this song doesn’t go to your nether regions from the very beginning please see your doctor immediately.

2. “Bushels” – Frog Eyes (Buy).  Usually when artists take a big chance it’s a train wreck.  Here is a teriffic exception.  Frog Eyes goes way out on a limb and to my ears succeeds wildly.  If you just hear a train wreck fair enough.

1. (2007 Song of the Year) “New Shoes” – Blitzen Trapper (Buy).  A smile set to music.

And finally….

Happy New Year everyone.  Peace.

George Bush has an unmistakable propensity to drain everything around him, and we are all poorer for it.

For more on pruning back executive power see The Pruning Shears.

Prodigal:

1.    wastefully or recklessly extravagant: prodigal expenditure.
2.    giving or yielding profusely; lavish (usually fol. by of or with): prodigal of smiles; prodigal with money.
3.    lavishly abundant; profuse: nature’s prodigal resources.
4.    (noun) a person who spends, or has spent, his or her money or substance with wasteful extravagance; spendthrift.

Maybe the end of the year has me feeling reflective but I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the general shape of the Bush presidency instead of current events (except: Thank God for Dodd).  The magnitude of his failure will probably become more generally accepted over time but even now there is enough evidence to get a clear view of just how bad he’s been.  One way to look at it is though the prism of profligacy:  In many different ways he inherited abundance and used it completely up.

The easiest to measure and most obvious is the federal budget.  In 2000 the U.S. had a budget surplus of 236 billion dollars.  It turned in to a 157 billion dollar deficit by 2002 and 412 billion by 2004.  In other words, over a half trillion dollar reversal in four years.  Or let’s look at it another way.  If you were given a million dollars every day it would take over 1775 years to hit the 648 billion mark.  That’s how big it’s been.  Granted President Santa Claus had lots of willing elves in Congress working to wrap up all those presents, the bottom line is he never vetoed a spending bill and never made any attempt to be a responsible steward of the nation’s finances.  (By the way, deficits are nothing more than deferred taxes for our children.  His mania for not raising them now to pay for his reckless spending will be dimly regarded by those who end up having to cover it.)  As the only nationally elected official he could have stood above the wrestling match over who would benefit from all this largesse and enforced a general principle of discipline.  Instead he began with wealth and spent it into debt.

After 9/11 the U.S. enjoyed a tremendous outpouring of support.  There was an effort shortly after to suggest it was all ephemeral and question its sincerity but I hope by this point most people can agree that we had a spike in good feelings toward us and failed to do anything with it.  No, it wasn’t going to remain that high any more than Bush’s approval rating was going to stay at 90%.  But there was a chance to translate that good feeling into a long lasting improvement in our image abroad, and such general affection amounts to more than being the global homecoming queen.  It makes other nations more willing to work with us on issues of global importance, more willing to believe our stated intentions and makes it easier for us to isolate rogues.  Imagine if, after the Taliban fell, Bush announced an Afghanistan Marshall Plan that would focus NATO time, energy and money on rebuilding a country that for a generation had known only war and oppression.  What if small-scale investments were seeded throughout the country to start creating a broad base of development, improvement and prosperity?  If we had chosen that instead of marching into Iraq the good feelings the neocons sneer at would not have dissipated as they have.  He was given good will and turned it into animosity.

Bush has done no favors to his party.  For all the talk not too long ago about a permanent Republican majority there has been a remarkably swift fall.  Starting with 221 GOP members in the House in 2000, it went to 229 in 2002 and 232 in 2004 before the 2006 defeat brought it down to 202.  We’ll see how it goes next November but at the moment the Democrats are in much better shape and stand to gain even more.  Going from 221 to 202 is roughly a 10% drop.  They could drop another 10% in 2008 and I’d say a loss of 5-10 seats is a pretty safe bet.  Under this president the party is no longer identified with fiscal responsibility, rectitude, limited government, prudence or any other traditional conservative values.  Instead they are now identified with militarism, authoritarianism, torture, cronyism and incompetence.  Barring a surprise from Ron Paul this will be the image of the party (with the 2008 nominee adding intolerance for good measure).  In short, Bush will leave office on the heels of a rout largely of his own creation.  He inherited a majority and is leading it to the brink of ruin.  (Perhaps these realizations are what’s really behind this era of lachrymose pachyderms.)

These are just a few examples.  It seems that George W. Bush is wasteful by nature.  Whether looking at the economy, the government, Americans’ native optimism, his party or anything else the pattern seems to be the same – what he gets control of, he taxes to exhaustion.  His political epitaph deserves to read: Here lies a prodigal man.

Promoted by Steven D.

Recent events leave no doubt as to the nature of the 110th Congress, and what an ugly nature it is.

For more on pruning back executive power see The Pruning Shears.

A little over two months ago I wrote that we may have been at “the moment newly-emboldened actors began a decisive push against an overreaching executive” (hat tip me) and a couple weeks after that “[o]ne way or another by the end of the year things will look very different” (ibid).  I’m glad I hedged my bets on the first one, and my unfavorable scenario for the second seems the likeliest to come to pass.  Congress looks like it will continue to be timid on war policy and oversight, and now appears to be complicit in torture.

On war policy, here was David Obey on October 1st:

Obey said more war funding would not be approved unless it is linked to a plan to bring home U.S. combat troops by January 2009.”As chairman of the appropriations committee, I have no intention of reporting out of committee any time in this session of Congress any such (war funding) request that simply serves to continue the status quo,” he said.

Now, however, war funding without timelines is fine as long as some additional spending is included.  So we’ve gone from no war funding without timelines to some war funding without timelines provided a bargain could be struck.  Based on past experience it seems safe to say this is the midpoint to the final destination of war funding without timelines, no bargains.  When he first came out with his timelines requirement I was hopeful he’d stick to it even though I wasn’t that familiar with him.  Now I am: He is unwilling to stand behind what he says and is an all-too-typical profile in cowardice.

The abdication of responsibility on war policy, as big as it is, is only a part of this Congress’ disgrace.  I think if we could only have one statement to sum up this session it would be (hat tip Prairie Weather): “I took no notes; it was five years ago; and this feeble grandma just ain’t that good!”  Jane Harman sums up all that is contemptible in the body with that little epigram.  Consider the enormity of the betrayal conveyed in those few words.  First, she took no notes.  Why is that?  She was told she couldn’t.  She was in that meeting as a member of the Intelligence Subcommittee.  Its whole purpose is oversight of intelligence activities.  It’s unclear on whose authority note taking was prevented but it’s entirely clear that Harman went along with it.  Couldn’t she have whipped out a legal pad and simply asserted that she required notes in order to perform her oversight role?  Couldn’t she have made some noise to that effect?  Gone public with it if she was refused?  What prompted her to be so meek and submissive on such an important issue?  What is the point of oversight if those you are charged with overseeing are dictating the terms?

“It was five years ago.”  This appears to be part of the emerging attempt to get us to ignore what we’ve done (as in, “second-guessing of 2002 decisions is unfair”).  Crimes are crimes and those who commit them should be liable for punishment as long as the statute of limitations has not expired.  Her intent seems to be to excuse her not remembering and to discourage us from wanting to look at it because it was so long ago.  That is offensive.  We are talking about crimes committed in our name, or to put it more plainly, crimes we committed.  That’s you and me, pal.  We elected them and they authorized those crimes in our name, so we committed them as much as if we were holding the prisoners down ourselves.  If we as a country hope to make any claims of moral or ethical probity we are obligated to confront our crimes no matter how painful and shameful it may be.

“[T]his feeble grandma just ain’t that good.”  Nauseating.  If she really is nothing more than a weak little old lady she needs to leave Congress immediately.  Our representatives MUST be that good, Ms Harman.  We depend on you to be that good precisely so we don’t end up in situations like this.  We are in the midst of a crisis that you helped midwife.  You ran for Congress, got elected and made it on to an influential committee.  After all that careful, deliberate, thoughtful action you now claim to be an imbecile.  It’s hard to imagine a more insulting statement.

Keep in mind I haven’t covered the impotent Senate Judiciary Committee, the toothless press releases (hat tip Raw Story) that now have a “protest too much” subtext or any other of a number of other failures.  Not too long ago I thought the problem was an authoritarian executive.  It’s much bigger than that.  It’s time for us to mentally write off an entire generation of leadership.

We have more to lose from our representatives frightening us into letting them obscure their activities than from legally requiring them to disclose those activities as a matter of course.

For more on pruning back executive power see The Pruning Shears.

According to Wikipedia the State Secrets Privilege (SSP) is “an evidentiary rule – e.g., doctor-patient, lawyer-client or priest-penitent privilege – created by United States legal precedent. The court is asked to exclude evidence from a legal case based solely on an affidavit submitted by the government stating court proceedings might disclose sensitive information which might endanger national security.”  It also says its origin is based in English common law.  In theory it sounds like a great idea.  In practice it hasn’t worked out so well.   Kevin Poulsen put it best when he wrote that cases where it’s been invoked seem “a pantheon of injustice”.  There are lots of scattered cases of it through the last thirty years or so but under George W Bush we’ve had a quick succession of them to give us the chance to focus on it.

The first argument against it is that it isn’t even a law.  In an example of judicial activism the usual suspects don’t get too excited about the Supreme Court decreed it into existence in U.S. v Reynolds.  It’s a judicial precedent based on custom and if you really want to be a strict constructionist you should consider the ruling an outrageous infringement on the legislature’s prerogatives.  If state secrets are so urgent and precious let the House and the Senate pass a law concerning them and have the President sign it.  What is so provocative about that?  As it stands I think the courts have latitude to interpret the law and respect traditions and precedents (though not be bound by them).  There are, however, a lot of people who start hyperventilating when the court does something interpreted as legislating from the bench.  Those folks should be expected to oppose the SSP on fundamental belief.

I believe there’s a much more compelling argument against it, and that is the importance of transparency.  We ought to believe that government is obligated to disclose what it is up to.  In fact, we ought to be substantially biased in favor of it.  Looking at Poulsen’s examples gives you all the idea you need about what happens when government is allowed to claim national security in order to prevent disclosure:  It uses the claim to cover up embarrassing or incriminating details.  In none of the examples is there an actual national interest at stake.  We should proceed on the assumption that that is always the case and dispose of the whole thing.  In the extremely rare cases where national security is at stake there will probably be other, more compelling issues that would allow the protection of the secrets.  And in the positively microscopic percentage of cases where even that wasn’t true let me give you an analogy.

I’m in the jury box and Jack Bauer is in the dock.  He Ramboed his way into Pakistan and caught Osama.  Took him alive not dead because he’s a professional and wouldn’t even take bin Laden’s life needlessly.  On the way back to the plane his captive let slip that he knew about a nuclear bomb somewhere in Manhattan that would explode shortly.  Jack tortures the answer out of him, notifies the government, experts are rushed to the scene, the bomb is defused and the day is saved.  But torture is illegal because of those darn civil liberties types and now he has to stand trial.  Know what?  I vote him not guilty.  I suspect every jury you could convene in this country would do so as well.

The SSP is the same in that the reasons given for it are as exceedingly rare as the “ticking time bomb” scenario used to justify torture.  The problem is that as with torture the SSP will inevitably be abused once it is legal, and as with torture we should consider that price unacceptably high.  It is a privilege that prevents us from knowing what our government is doing, and that veil of secrecy is a very appealing tool for cover-ups in the best of circumstances.  In a time where the President has an authoritarian streak it will (big hat tip Marcy Wheeler) be invoked with alarming frequency.

The point is this:  You state the principle and you live by it.  And when the nearly unique exceptions pop up you trust that a well-informed citizenry will understand and make allowances as needed.  We have almost no secrets that require an SSP.  Overturn it.  We’ll be sensible about it if someone asserts it in a true national security emergency.

Time’s columnist is not a neutral observer of a partisan fray but an active supporter of a viewpoint that is deeply hostile to our civil liberties and traditions.

Joe Klein’s meltdown over the past ten days or so has rightly been focused on his uncritically passing along partisan lies.  By itself it’s a huge ethical breach.  Corrections have been tumbling out like clowns from a car.  For as important as that issue alone is, there are two more issues raised by this episode: What media outlets regard as of primary importance and what their employees consider to be mainstream.

Klein repeatedly uses dismissive language when writing on the substance of the bill.  He writes not on its merits but its prospects for passage.  Having it obtain a veto-proof majority is a virtue in his estimation and outweighs the actual content.  For the record, a veto has been overridden precisely once so far and it was for a pork-stuffed appropriation bill.  On issues of policy Republicans are happily following Bush off the cliff, so it is profoundly unserious to suggest a veto-proof majority is possible here.  Our President is in Imperial Executive mode and will not negotiate or compromise.  In this case, though, he needs an existing law expanded and made permanent before it expires in February.  Democrats could just let the law go off the books.  In short, they don’t need a veto-proof anything.  Klein got it wrong even on his ostensible main point.

What is going on that makes him regard the back room vote counting to be more important?  What is of more consequence to Time’s four million subscribers – the impact in their lives if RESTORE passes or how well the leaders are keeping their members in line?  Isn’t it more important for Time to inform its readers on the bill itself so they can make an intelligent decision on whether or not they support it?  I’m guessing there are two factors driving this kind of substance-free play by play nonreporting that belongs only in a sports announcing booth:  Timidity and laziness.

The timidity comes from major media outlets becoming lines on a multimedia corporation’s balance sheet.  I’m sure the home office never dictates coverage or interferes, but that’s only because their employees are smart enough to censor themselves.  They understand not to rock the boat.  On the Time home page Wednesday there was a big old ad above the fold for the purple pill, and smaller ads for airlines, phone companies, cars, hotels and cell phones/PDAs below.  Do you think we’ll see a hard hitting exposé on the corrosive effects of pharmaceutical industry lobbing on the nation’s health care?  How about a full throated argument against amnesty for telecom companies that have been engaged in massive lawbreaking for the last seven years?  They know which side their bread is buttered on, so they serve up lots of news you can use and tons of poll reading and speculation.  They know they won’t be explicitly censored, but plum assignments, promotions, annual reviews and the like are another matter.

The laziness goes nicely with the timidity.  A properly done exposé involves a lot of work, much of it drudge work.  Tracking down primary sources and going through them with a fine toothed comb is not anyone’s idea of a good time, so the fact that their employers are ambivalent at best about that sort of thing gets them off the hook.  It’s much easier to get poll numbers, talk to a spokesman, talk to an anonymous source, scribble it all down and publish it.  You never have to even leave your seat.  Once your Rolodex is filled up you can cruise for decades.  

Finally, what do these folks think about this stuff?  Basket warrants are antithetical to our country’s tradition of search and seizure.  Why does Klein appear to regard banning it as a nice bargaining move by the Republicans?  We have a couple centuries’ precedent on this; why isn’t the appropriate response “no patriotic American would ever even suggest such a thing”?  Why is retroactive immunity not regarded with similar abhorrence for the same reason?  We are not radicals.  We are trying to preserve the way we’ve always done things.  The radicals are the ones who want to change how justice and the law have been understood since the founding of the republic.  Joe Klein may have personal connections with these folks and I’m sure they are lovely company at cocktail parties, but doesn’t he realize this at any level?  He seems eager to present them as nothing more than one side of a valid argument.  He may think such “he said/she said” stenography is objective and puts him above the fray, but he is wrong.  It dignifies the radicals and makes him one as well.

Here are some thoughts from Congressman Lamar Smith about the RESTORE Act:

“Democrats today failed to protect the American people by ignoring urgent requests from the intelligence community to update tools and modernize laws governing intelligence gathering,” stated Ranking Member Smith. “The RESTORE Act undermines our national security and increases the risk of a future attack on our country. Democrats are playing politics by claiming that this bill ‘restores’ checks and balances,” continued Smith. “But politics should never come before national security. This bill restores nothing but a legal loophole for terrorists and spies. Today’s vote comes at the expense of our national security. Contrary to Congress’s intent when FISA was originally enacted, this bill requires the government obtain a court order to conduct surveillance of overseas targets,” said Smith. “The implications of this requirement alone could be catastrophic. The RESTORE Act requires intelligence officials to obtain a court order to conduct surveillance on Osama Bin Laden, but does not require one to conduct surveillance on an illegal immigrant,” Smith added. “The bill gives terrorists overseas more rights under the law, than individuals inside the U.S. That is simply absurd. This bill does nothing to protect America, nothing to preserve civil liberties and nothing to promote national security,” concluded Smith. “So what does this bill do? It ignores 30 years of precedent in intelligence gathering and panders to special interests groups. Americans would be better served if lawmakers listened to their requests, rather than playing politics with the safety and security of our nation.”

I included the extended quote because I don’t want to be accused of cutting out some allegedly crucial point, so there it is in all its glory.  Rep. Smith is a perfect example of mainstream Republican thinking these days.  He shows why the party is in dire need of a philosophical makeover, extremely unpopular and seemingly prepared to go down the drain with their leader.  Here are a few responses to the Congressman.

First of all, what special interest groups are being pandered to?  The telecommunication companies quietly lobbying for amnesty are certainly being pandered to by Senator Jay Rockefeller and heaven knows who else.  Has Congressman Smith received money from them, and if so wouldn’t his position be considered pandering to a special interest?  I don’t want to get into the man’s psychology but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s projecting his own compromised character onto those opposing him.  Moreover, what special interest is pushing against amnesty?  Is someone going to profit from telecom amnesty?  Those with pending lawsuits may ultimately profit, so I guess the Electronic Frontier Foundation may be in for a big payday.  Of course a self-described “donor-funded nonprofit” probably isn’t salivating over the huge sum this class action lawsuit could bring in.  It would be a lot more probable if some large company like Google stood to profit from their distress.  And actual evidence of special interest activism would be most persuasive of all.  From all appearances the anti-amnesty people are motivated by Constitutional principle and a belief in the rule of law – they will see no personal profit from succeeding, which obviously can’t be said on the other side.

As for the urgent requests from the intelligence community, there is precisely one loophole in the FISA law that needs to be closed: Foreign-to-foreign communications that go through U.S. infrastructure.  The temporary lifting of that requirement expires in February and it needs to be made permanent.  There are no other tools that need updating or laws that need modernizing.  Under FISA the President can begin wiretapping any old time he likes.  He doesn’t need to get clearance from anyone first, he doesn’t need to wait for anything to get approved, he can just jump right in with both feet.  Of course, he also has to get a retroactive warrant within 72 hours from the famously compliant (and secret) FISA court.  In President Bush’s view any form of executive accountability is intolerable, so even setting the bar that low for him is unacceptable.  But the fact is, the intelligence community is not in any way hamstrung by the legal requirements of FISA and it is dishonest to say otherwise.

The real mind bender from the Congressman is that officials would need a court order to surveil Osama bin Laden.  Let’s assume Joe Spook at the NSA picks up a phone call from someone he thinks is the guy.  Joe can start tapping immediately and get the warrant later.  If the foreign-to-foreign loophole is closed he doesn’t even need to do that.  Either way we’re listening.  So what kind of scenario does this refer to?  I suppose if John Lindh was in Pakistan talking to his parents in America then there would be a warrant required.  If Mohammed Atta in Miami was calling Mullah Omar in Afghanistan then there may not be any warrant needed.  That might satisfy the foreign-terrorists-but-not-individuals-here scenario.  In no event is anyone forced to wait before acting and in any event his reasoning is extremely convoluted.  That probably is not an accident – actual logic doesn’t make the case too well.

Rep. Smith’s dark warnings about undermining national security and increasing the risk of attack is simply the basest form of fearmongering.  We don’t seem to be responding as viscerally to that line of propaganda these days but it still has a crude effectiveness.  Sooner or later the haze of fear will lift, and when it does we will have a sober assessment of the risks we face.  We will look at how to reduce or thwart them without compromising essential liberties and what to do to prepare for the worst case.  We will look back at this period as some kind of national fugue state and wonder at our panicked state of mind.  We will also take a hard look at the contemporary leadership, and the judgment against those who enabled the President to act with such impunity will be harsh.  Rep. Smith and his colleagues are declaring with their actions that they consider themselves Republican before American.  Each day they continue to do so the verdict of history will weigh heavier against them.

For more on pruning back executive power see The Pruning Shears.