Author: latanawi

   The money sponge, Iraq, having filtered funds to and from various budgets, is hard to squeeze dry fast enough to employ defunding the war as an efficient means to get us out.  Barney Frank, new chair of the House Financial Services Committee, explained more to Keith Olbermann this week:

OLBERMANN: … Are you fearful that if you were to cut the money off, if you were to actually refuse to bankroll it, as a Congress, that … there`d still be money spent to send them there…

FRANK:  Well, that`s the problem.  It could be spent.  The fact is that the Pentagon budget could — other money could be taken from other purposes and spend it.  … We’ve already voted for the defense budget for the year.

He already has hundreds of billions of dollars legally in his possession to spend.  So there is, in fact, no way, I think, to cut off the money, unless we were to pass a law [that said, None of the money that we`re voting can be used for this] and he would veto it.  So we are frustrated in that extent.

    With no line item veto, Congress may still hold open our wallet for one supplemental budget after another.  For the FY 2007 supplemental budget, creative accounting came to the Pentagon. It redefined “emergency.”  The recently submitted $99.7 Billion emergency supplemental budget extends beyond such traditional war costs as replacing what was lost in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the “overall efforts related to the global war on terror.”  Among requests normally funded through the regular budget:

• money for future weaponry such as two Lockheed-Martin Joint Strike Fighter planes
• $2.52 Billion for research and development
• $3.04 billion for new and repaired aircraft for the Navy (likely to be pressed to cut billions of dollars in aircraft purchases in the regular budget, since it wants a $10 billion “next-generation” aircraft carrier)

“It’s a feeding frenzy,” says an army official involved in budget planning. “Using the supplemental budget, we’re now buying the military we wish we had,” he says…

    The Pentagon has made commitments that may be hard to reneg on.  From the Silver Lining Department: DOD’s Business Transformation Agency has good news for the manufacturing sector — the Iraqi manufacturing sector.  It’s restarting Iraqi factories.  The idea is that Iraqis at work won’t be Iraqis making trouble.

 “But if there are Iraqis who make things that we can buy, it just makes lots of good sense to buy it from Iraqis” to “stimulate the economy, build good will.”

   The U.S. military is spending more than $100 billion annually for the war. [Paul Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense] said he hoped to spark the Iraqi economy by funneling some of that funding to newly restarted factories.

   It’s a comfort that at least some blue collar workers will benefit from our money. Maybe not a comfort to the 2.8 Million who lost manufacturing jobs in America, January 2001 through January 2005, but shoot, you can’t please ’em all.

   More moulah is required for other military-related services, e.g., an imperiled infrastructure.  New facilities must be built to house returning service personnel and handle the transfers resulting from last year’s base-closing.  

    The Veterans Administration is heavily burdened by the unprecedented casualty level of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

  So far, more than 200,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have been treated at VA medical facilities … More than one-third of them have been diagnosed with mental health conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder, acute depression and substance abuse. Thousands more have crippling disabilities such as brain or spinal injuries. ….  

   [W]aiting lists to see a doctor at some facilities now run as long as several months. Shortages are particularly acute in mental health care….

    At the same time, wounded veterans trying to obtain disability checks are being tied up in a bureaucratic nightmare. The Veterans Benefits Administration has a backlog of 400,000 pending claims — and rising.

   Defense spending will be a major issue for the 110th Congress (there’s more in the Council on Foreign Relations’ detailed analysis).  The amount of money alone isn’t what makes for controversy.  It isn’t the added trillions to the deficit, alone, nor the deep cuts in veterans benefits, health care, and education programs.  It’s the consequences to the country’s economic health of Republican carelessness with our treasure.  They went to dinner leaving the bank vault open with a neon sign over the door blinking, “here, fool.”

   Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a numbers-whiz recently assigned to the House Appropriations Committee, rages over the U.S. debt, estimated at $8,672,139,821,920.

The Bush Administration’s failure to include details about the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the cost it will take to rebuild the Gulf is unconscionable.

    Incoming House Appropriations Committee chair, Dave Obey, said it will take years to get back on track from the fiscal disaster left by the Republicans.  

  But, when the Republican Congress adjourned without passing a budget and without enacting 9 of the 11 appropriations bills needed to fund government services for the year, they forfeited their right to complain about whatever action we are forced to take next year to clean up their chaotic mess.

    As the President is in la-la land, it’s up to Congress:  
    Get creative.  

Hanukah begins this coming Saturday, so I thought I’d post a poem I learned in the 1970’s, the author unnamed.  I found it posted here here, here and here among other places, words varying a bit, sometimes with more English.  Before reading, know the location of your nearest deli.  

  Twas the night before Chanukah, boychiks and maidels,
Not a sound could be heard, not even the dreidels.
The menorah was set by the chimney alight,
In the kitchen the Bubba hut gechapt a bite.

Salami, pastrami, a gleisaele tay,
And zoyreh pickles mit bagels, oy vay!
Gesundt and geschmacht, the kinderlach felt,
While dreaming of taiglach and Chanukah gelt.

The alarm clock was sittin’, akloppen and tickin’,
And Bubba was carving a shtickeleh chicken.
A tummel arose like a thousand Boruchas,
Santa had fallen and broken his tuchas.

I put on my slippers — ein, zwei, drei,
While Bubba was now on the herring and rye.
I grabbed for my robe and buttoned my gotkes,
Now Bubba had almost devoured the latkes.

To the window I ran and to my surprise,
A little red yamulke greeted my eyes.
When he got to the door and saw the menorah,
“Yiddishe kinder,” he said, “Kinehora.
“I thought I was in a hamishe hoise,
“As long as I’m here, I’ll leave you some toys.”

“Come into the kitchen,” I said. “Here’s a dish,
A guppell, a leffel, a shtickele fish.”

With smacks of delight, he started his fressen,
Chopped liver, knaidlech and kreplach ge-essen.
Along with his meal, he had a few schnapps;
When it came to eating, this boy was tops!

He asked for some knishes with pepper and salt,
But they were so hot, he yelled, “Oy gevalt!”
He buttoned his haysen and ran from the tish.
“Your kosherer essen is simply delish.”

As he went through the door, he said “See you all later.
“I’ll be back next Pesach, in time for the seder.”

More rapid than eagles his prancers they came,
As he whistled and shouted and called them by name:
“Now Izzy, now Morris, now Louie and Sammy?
“On Irving, on Maxie and Hymie! and Manny?”
He gave a geshray as he drove out of sight,
“A Gutt Yontiff to all, and to all a good night.”

     The Navy just broke off its engagement of several months to the delightful San Francisco, dumping it for San Diego for the commission of its newest and most powerful warship, the Makin Island, now under construction in Mississippi.  Navy Secretary Donald Winter nixed the plan.

   A fancy commissioning ceremony committee, co-chaired by Schultz, Perry, Bechtel, and Feinstein, had been organizing an elaborate program for the summer of 2008 when the officers and crew formally take charge of the vessel.  The Navy’s b.s. reason conveyed to the Chair, Retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. J. Michael Myatt, was an impression that San Francisco is “anti-military.”  Its factual support is too shallow to float a bar of soap:  (1) the city’s refusal to provide a homeport for the Iowa to become a museum, (2) the school board’s cutting Junior ROTC training, and (3) a politician’s remarks.

    Myatt reacted diplomatically.

There are lots of veterans living here…One in every nine members of the military now serving come from California. These people in Washington don’t understand.

    The Navy has a following in the San Francisco area.  Every year, the Blue Angels draw crowds in Fleet Week.  A local company recently won a $2.5 Million contract from the Navy for software to train Surface Warfare Officers in simulators. Naval Station Treasure Island, a major facility since World War II, was closed in 1997.  Moffett Field was closed as a base in 1994 and turned over to NASA.

    Activity continues, though, northeast of San Francisco.  At Suisun Bay floats the Mothball Fleet, about 78 cargo ships, tankers, victory ships, missile cruisers, barges, and tugboats, most of them  maintained for possible future use in another career. The Coast Guard and the Marines use them for practice, e.g., firefighting.  

    We know what people in Washington do understand:   San Francisco is overwhelmingly Democratic and San Diego is Republican. That’s it. Oh.  And San Diego is home for a huge chunk of the Navy Secretary’s former company.

    Navy Secretary Donald Winter is no mustang captain.  Sworn into office in January 2006,  Winter, who has a doctorate in physics, came from the executive offices of Northrop Grumman’s Mission Systems sector. Northrop Grumman is one of San Diego‘s largest defense contractors, with over 4,000 employees in seven corporate sectors located there.  

    In November Northrop Grumman received a contract from the Navy to supply lightweight, laser target designators (which determine the distance to a target and place precision guided munitions on an exact position).   This week, the Navy announced the award of a $40.3 Million contract modification to Northrop Grumman, for continued work by the Electronic Systems-Marine Systems unit on the Navy’s fleet ballistic missile program. “If all options are exercised, the contract could be worth up to $139.2 million.”  Good news for some:  shares of Northrop went up sixteen cents.

    Isn’t Northrop Grumman getting enough?  The Navy doesn’t deserve such micromanagement with divisive politics.  Send the guy to Suisun Bay and park him alongside a Liberty Ship.  

   The audit is only a beginning.  A second round of testing on five of Sarasota’s machines produced similar results — using the same protocol — so, the official okay was not unexpected.  

    It failed to explain the 18,000 undervotes. Christine Jennings’ campaign is undeterred. They will pursue the lawsuit to overturn the election results, calling for a thorough and independent audit of the machines.

   Bloggers have donated $48,000 — more than the candidate raised in her own online fundraising pleas, reported the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.  

[Buchanan’s campaign spokeswoman] said the bloggers supporting Jennings are just another example of “liberal outside interest groups” taking over her campaign.

    The undervoting was not evenly spread, but occurred in certain precincts, as I read the Complaint of local voters filed November 21, 2006 in Leon County, Florida.

The congressional undervote rate in Precinct 153 was 38%, meaning that no vote was recorded for more than one in every three voters who cast votes in the U.S. Senate and Governor’s races that appeared on the ballot immediately before and after the congressional race.

 
   The ES & S iVotronic machines also produced high undervoting results outside the congressional 13th (Jennings v. Buchanan) district.  For the State Attorney General race, Sumter and Lee counties had undervote rates of 21% and 22%.

   The plaintiffs’ experiences varied.  Some saw their “x” register when they marked it, but the box in the summary screen was unmarked, with no text warning. Others did not see the congressional ballot until they reached the summary screen, and they voted at the summary screen — something which should not have been possible if the iVotronic worked properly.
   

In a November 2, 2006 e-mail response to several complainants… who had offered detailed descriptions of the voting machine irregularities they had encountered in early voting [defendant Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent] was dismissive of the reports.  Her concluding words were:
   With election Day almost upon us, I hope we can stop looking for ways to disrupt the process and disenfranchise voters…. The political strategy of attacking the process has become so vicious that it is destroying the very process that makes it possible to have confidence in the electoral process.

    One Sarasota columnist, Tom Lyons, still criticizes the Division of Elections for its confidence that voters, and not the machines, were to blame.    

  They know the severe limitations of their attempts to uncover malfunctions on touch-screen voting machines after an election. …
    The state’s experts know that even if there was a glitch on Election Day, it was darned unlikely that their tests had revealed it, and totally likely that the test team had just messed up again.

    Read case files, video links, and more in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s webpage on the disputed election.  

    The link to the map showing how precincts in the district voted is especially interesting. In fewer than ten precincts the undervote was over 25%.  I sense a correlation between old age or neighborhood and suspect precinct machines.  

    Precinct 153, described in the Complaint, is near a community center precinct, also site of more substantial undervoting.  In ten precincts with undervoting of at least 20%, seven were located in mobile home parks or retirement communities — including the place where my mother lives along with a couple of hundred of other octogenarians. Four of these were in the same neighborhood just north of Northport.
    If you are computer-comfortable, you could find the county’s explanation of its touch-screen voting machine.  Plenty of old people know computers.  Plenty more, such as my mother, become confused and frustrated with touch-screen voting.  She still can’t operate her telephone answering machine.  Her cell phone remains, uncharged, in the pocket of a purse stowed away in a closet. No? Maybe that trunk.  Behind the umbrella?  Well, somewhere.  Good thing she no longer cooks or drives.

    In once solid Bush country, Florida’s Gulf Coast elderly population has changed, I gathered from talking to my mother’s acquaintances this summer.  The most disgusted re-registered as Democrats, though they’re still friends with the die-hard Republican who displays a Chippendale calendar, and I’m not talking furniture.  

    They may not be joining impeachment rallies, but in private, the old girls grouse about Iraq and laugh at — not with — President Numbnuts, as a national embarassment.  They’ve slowed down a lot, and they don’t say so (it’s imperative to cling to independence) but they expect the younger generation to pick up the ball and run with it.  

    Will do.

     January can’t come fast enough for the legislative wish list.  Forget inaugural affairs, I’m reserving a victory ballroom for the reversal of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.  Dance jigs or fake it. Welcome, celebration.  I hope.

    The pressure continues.  The usually conservative ABA just placed another seasoned log on the fire.  Detention issues bound to be explored when the Military Commissions Act is challenged were highlighted in yesterday’s panel discussion broadcast on C-SPAN at the ABA’s National Security Law Conference, co-sponsored by UVA’s Center for National Security Law.  

    Half on the panel were good guys Neal Katyal  (Georgetown Law professor and lead counsel in Hamdan), and Deborah Pearlstein (Human Rights First, director of the U.S. Law and Security program).  The other half were Jack Goldsmith (Harvard Law professor), and Brad Berenson (Associate Counsel for President Bush 2001-2003), who conceded the Military Commissions Act will be attacked by the best constitutional minds in the country.

  It was a casual sharpening of spears for oral argument.  Among the issues:

      The Sham of Combatant Status Review Tribunals

   Prof. Katyal suggests the CSRT’s be replaced by a scheme of national security courts, with a long-term set of players as judges and as advocates — the equivalent of detention prosecutors and detention defense counsel, given security clearances.

   He mentioned Wednesday’s Washington Post “GITMO Justice is a Joke”, critical of the system of shallow and pre-ordained tribunals — which lack federal court oversight.  Then he told the story of Hamdan’s CSRT, which I’ll summarize:  

 Co-counsel Lt. CMDR Swift was suddenly barred from Guantanamo just as he was about to see their client.  A couple of days later, he received a call from the “Personal Representative” — a military advocate assigned to the detainee.  The Personal Rep said the CSRT was coming up, and no attorney was allowed — notwithstanding the ABA rule on attorney-client contact.

   Although they had some “amazing exculpatory evidence,” in a videotape, they were told that only the detainee could present it, and furthermore, that he would be cross-examined on it and his testimony could be used against him in a criminal trial down the road.

   Of course, the lawyers wrote Hamdan, counseling him not to talk about exculpatory evidence.  Despite assurance their correspondence was protected by attorney-client privilege, Hamdan’s Personal Representative read the letter to the tribunal.

    No one on the panel had the temerity to suggest in an ABA conference that these tribunals satisfy any real sense of justice.  Three guesses what the Supreme Court will find, the first two don’t count.  

     Courts Martial Suffice

   The good guys were on a roll.  They stressed that we now can — and should — try war crimes with the UCMJ.  Courts martial do a good job of handling classified information. Participants can all have security clearances.  They use existing rules of discovery.  The number of federal terrorist-related criminal laws is vast, covering, e.g., training in any foreign country for the purpose of engaging in any potential terrorist act.

    We have no practical need for a new system started from scratch that would be litigated until we’re plucking harps on clouds. For more on Prof. Katyal’s views of the benefits of the military justice system, read his July 2006 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

  Ex Post Facto

   The Military Commissions Act runs up against the structural limits on what Congress can do, the Constitution’s Ex Post Facto clause, Katyal said.  “You can’t re-jigger the rules now and create a new scheme.”  

    If Mr. Berenson had any careful analysis, he hid it.  “Would the Nuremberg trials, themselves, be construed as ex post facto?” he asked.  The Nuremberg trials, of course, were authorized by the Constitution of the International Court drafted by the Soviets, English, French, and Americans.  I imagine Mr. Berenson declined to compare detainees’ trials to Nuremberg because there have been none.  Besides,  Nuremberg defendants were entitled to a fair trial with counsel, translators, and basic procedural protections — much, much more than detainees find in their b.s. combat status review tribunals.  
 A Separate System of Justice for Aliens is Unconstitutional

   Giving non-citizens a second-rate system is deeply offensive to the Equal Protection Clause. The author of the Fourteenth Amendment wanted to overrule the statement in Dred Scott that only citizens have constitutional protections, Prof. Katyal explained.  Hence,

nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws

.
    Why should a soldier who might bomb the world trade center be treated differently from an alien who does the same thing? he asked. They both committed the same act  — and if anything, the soldier was also a traitor.  

   Mr. Berenson dropped back ten. He switched focus from the act to the actor’s civil status, as if that would make us all safer.  It isn’t deeply offensive [to the Constitution] to shoot people in Iraq, he said, or to limit immigration.  

To talk about the rights of a foreign enemy requires recognition that if the nation is to succeed in protecting itself, it needs to treat them differently than its own citizens and soldiers.

   You can’t hope to whistle down the wind with that.  

  Does Locale Matter for Constitutional Protections?

   According to Mr. Berenson, enemy aliens held on foreign soil lack habeas corpus rights “of a constitutional magnitude” in the first place. Therefore, the Military Commissions Act did not suspend them.  

   Not so.  Where the United States has control for all practical purposes, detainees have fundamental constitutional rights.  

   Guantanamo Bay is not a battlefield, it’s a permanent American outpost (the lease with Cuba, for $4,000 a year, cannot be changed except by mutual consent). In Prof. Katyal’s experience, it feels like the United States in every possible way except for iguanas running around on the ground.

    Ms. Pearlstein added that even on foreign soil, detainees are entitled to at least some rights. Why?
  1.  The government has only the power granted by law.  
  2.  Otherwise, when a country’s representative steps outside the border, the basic idea of limited power is out the window — an absurd result.
  3.  The Supreme Court has said if the connection to the United States is close enough, the Constitution  affords at least basic protections.
   Does this mean the United States is barred from torturing its detainees anywhere?  It must.

   Someone should tell the Pentagon that the good guys are coming to town.  Some clown there is proposing to spend $125 Million to build courtrooms for trials at Guantanamo Bay.  That’s like Vern Buchanan making a full-blown move to Washington, disregarding the likelihood Christine Jennings will replace him soon or sooner.  

   If “military justice is to justice as military music is to music” the Military Commissions Act of 2006 sounds like blackboard screeching to imitate Sousa, excruciating even to the most tone-deaf among us.  The work to can that piece of garbage will be hard, but the legal combatants are impressive.  They’ll prevail.  I hope, I hope, I hope.    

   Martha, my daughter-in-law, is taking the oath next month to become a U.S. citizen.  As a surprise present, I invited her mother from Peru, la sra. Julia, to stay with us a month, our treat. I sent her a round-trip ticket.  Then the embassy denied Julia a visa, basically calling her a liar for saying she merely wanted to visit her almost-American daughter.

    Julia was born 75 years ago in an Andean village noted in the past for an Incan uprising against the Spaniards in 1720, and now mostly forgotten by the Peruvian government.  It’s poverty in the extreme.  Their adobe houses have no electricity or modern plumbing. A toothbrush is a novelty.  Although la sra. Julia is bilingual in Quechua and Spanish, she can’t read and write:  girls in her generation were not sent to school, but were expected at 16 to “marry” (not that there was a church within burro-riding distance) and become a mother.  And that, she did.  

   She no longer can work, and never learned to drive (no one in the family drives, much less owns a car).  A tiny widow’s pension is her only income, but she manages with help from her several children, three of whom are cops, one a secretary for the police, and one of whom worked for a U.S. contractor to guard the Baghdad American embassy.  Her life is in Peru: her children and grandchildren, her brothers, her husband’s grave, the home she owns, built by her late husband and sons to replace the adobe house they had built originally.  She pays her taxes and utility bills.  She saves castoffs to bring to the poor people in her native village in the Andes Mountains.

   They don’t think Julia’s a terrorist or scofflaw.  No one sees her aiming to find work in America. Why, then, did the embassy deny her a tourist visa?
Prejudice.
Ignorance.  
Very unAmerican, very arrogant. Curt Struble‘s long foreign service career apparently didn’t prepare him for the human side of being an ambassador to Peru.

    They used the catchall Section 214(b) of the INA, under which the presumption is the applicant will refuse to leave the U.S.  Human Rights Watch observed the applicant must prove strong enough ties to the home country to give a “strong inducement to return,” such as a permanent job there, business interests, or close family members who remain at home; AND enough funds to afford the visit.  

  Women have a harder time coming to the country.  To get a tourist visa, you have to prove that you have ties back home.  Women are less likely to have bank accounts or own property, so it is harder for them to qualify.  Third World status makes it far more difficult as well–which is about race and also is about economics: so in immigration policy, you clearly see the intersection of race, gender and class at work.

    In an interview of a few minutes, embassy personnel form very subjective conclusions on your intent.  You’re going for a short visit, you bring documents to prove you have a home and offspring in Peru, and your American host is paying for everything.  If you’re single (no spouse not to abandon), too old to work (no job not to abandon) too poor (no business or farm or substantial residence not to abandon) you are SOL.  You’re an old widow from the sierras.  You’re illiterate. You’re worthless. The ambassador in Lima will decide you’re a liar.

    I suspect the prejudice is widespread.  In Brazil, when a woman was strangled by her husband in Massachusetts, the consulate approved visas for the murderer’s family.  They owned a farm.  The victim’s 68-year old poor seamstress mother wanted to see her grandson and visit the grave. The consulate staff humiliated her, asking why she wanted to go if her daughter was already dead. They concluded she was lying.  Then they denied her a visa. SOL.

   In signing the Border Security Act, President Bush spoke reassuringly.  

America is not a fortress; no, we never want to be a fortress. We’re a free country; we’re an open society. And we must always protect the rights of our law — of law-abiding citizens from around the world who come here to conduct business or to study or to spend time with their family. That’s what we’re known for. We’re known for respect.

   Liar.  
   Liar.
   We know who’s the real liar.    

    Congressional Democrats put on their spectacles for a review of free trade initiatives. Well, lookee here.  The Bush Administration’s trade agenda for the Americas is failing again.  Democrats want to inject some fairness, improvements for workers and the environment.

    The Andean Trade Preference Act (preferences for Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru) expires at the close of 2006.  Hence, the Bush administration has been negotiating individual free trade agreements such as the pact signed by the U.S. and Colombia this week.  Both the Colombian deal and the U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement, signed months ago, must pass muster in the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. It looks as if they both will be voted on next year, when the Democrats are in control.

  Private-sector sources are reported to have said that getting Congress to approve the Colombia [free trade agreement] would be more difficult than securing approval of a US-Peru trade agreement because Colombia has a history of blocking union organizers.

    Colombia’s president Uribe, fearing the Democrats will shoot the deal to pieces next year failed this month to convince legislators in Washington to pass the new agreement forthwith.  Rep. Gregory Meeks told the AP that he doubted it would be approved in its present form.  

  Meeks, one of only 15 House Democrats to vote in favor last year of the CAFTA trade agreement with six Central American nations and the Dominican Republic, said approval hinged on “additional assurances” from the Uribe government that it would improve a “troublesome” labor, human rights and environmental record.

   The International Labor Organization has called Colombia the world’s deadliest country for labor organizers and have denounced more than 1,200 cases of murder in recent years.

    Peru had sent noted economist Hernando de Soto to lobby for passage of the Peruvian agreement.  He announced yesterday that the the vote on Congressional ratification has been delayed a year.

   Currently the deal allows for preferences for Peruvian-made products, with rules following NAFTA, CAFTA, and other bilateral treaties in granting private investor protections.  The see-saw:  corporate profits increase as governments are restricted from ensuring the investment benefits the general public, according to a think tank report — Sarah Anderson and Sara Grusky, “Republicans Plan Lame-Duck Peru Trade Vote,” (Silver City, NM & Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, November 3, 2006).

 As a result, countries that sign on can expect more pressure on workers to accept poorer working conditions, more damaging natural resource exploitation, more small farmers displaced by competition with agribusiness giants, and more power for pharmaceutical companies to limit access to generic drugs.

    Democrats led by Rep. Charles Rangel, expected to chair the House Ways and Means Committee, sent a letter to the U. S. Trade Representative Schwab.  They urge renegotiating the deals to strengthen labor standards.

    The Republican response is a thin-smiled pretense at all-inclusiveness.  “My hand is outstretched to any and all members of Congress,” USTR Schwab told Chamber of Commerce invitees.  She whisked past last year’s hostilities over Central American free trade (CAFTA) faster than I inhale platanos topped with sour cream and brown sugar.  Instead, she stressed bipartisan cooperation on trade during periods of divided government.  It’s what her audience wanted to hear.

   Referring to China’s unfair employment practices which translate into bigger profits for China, and a bigger trade deficit for us, Rep. Rangel warned against rubber-stamping free trade agreements.

 We have to enforce international law, and we have to make certain that America has some minimum standards on how we expect foreigners to treat their workers and how we expect them to protect our exports.

     Realistically, our agreements can’t be economic balancing miracles.  Still, it’s nice to see the changes coming.

  After cheering the heroes for abused and neglected creatures, the animal cops, the humane societies, the adoptions, we demand justice.  That’s the American way. The story usually ends, though, and if convicted for animal cruelty, s/he could face prison and a fine.

   The big IF sent me searching for that justice.  It’s almost a joke.  

   Here’s an sampling of cases around the country in 2006.  (Circus animals, roadside zoos, agricultural animals raised for food, and illegal wildlife trade deserve separate diaries).

   First off, animal cruelty is a misdemeanor, not a felony at all in eight states:  Alaska, Arkansas, Hawaii, Idaho, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Utah.  Recent high-profile cases may spur changes.

•   In Utah, a man who blinded the family chihuahua with a leaf blower, and burned him by putting him in a 200 degree oven for five minutes, was sentenced to six months jail, a mental health evaluation, forbidden for two years to have contact wtih any animal, a $500 fine and $986 restitution.  The judge did the best he could under the law.
•  In Hawaii,  a poacher faces felony charges of lifestock theft.  With hunting dogs, the poachers had chased the 300 lb. pig into the family’s garage.  The helpless owners pleaded for them to stop, that Porky was their pet, but the criminals repeatedly stabbed him to death.    
     Lots of t.v. coverage may help change the law.

•  In Idaho, in the largest cat seizure in the state’s history, 177 of the 323 rescued animals had to be euthanized.  This kitten mill had a “dead room” containing decomposing cat carcasses and sick cats. The owner pleaded guilty to 51 misdemeanor counts, each carrying a sentence of six months in jail.  The prosecutor asked for the maximum.  The judge sentenced her to only six months.  
     Idaho’s off our vacation list.

•  In Mississippi, two Dobermans were found, one dead and the other emaciated, chained up with no water or food.  Their owner, a high school special education instructor, received a 10-day suspended sentence, a $1,000 fine, a year of probation and a permanent ban from owning another pet.  
      Mississippi justice has that certain rep…

    Even in states where animal cruelty is a felony, though, convictions are hard to find.  Often they result from guilty pleas rather than trials.  Too often, punishment is minimal.

    Hoarding

    Because hoarders have mental health issues, imprisonment is surprising.  A 51-year old woman in Virginia pled down to eight months in jail, restitution, and three years not to own animals.  Following a house fire,  investigators had found scores of rabbits, many of them kept in filthy metal cages stacked on the attic floor and hanging from rafters. Some were dead, in cages that had no food or water.  Rabbit feces measured a foot-and-a-half deep in some places.  In 2003 she had been convicted of animal neglect (ferrets), and ordered to counseling.  What counseling???

    Neglect
   The Tazewell County, Virginia animal shelter, takes in 2800 dogs a year, a quarter of them neglected and starved.  Long-term neglect becomes abuse.  When witnesses are reluctant to become involved, the animal suffers even more, unnecessarily.
   Recently, an owner was convicted following the massive and fatal starvation of his bull dog.  He was fined $500 and sentenced to 90 days in jail, with 88 days suspended.

 … what added to the cruelty of this case was that neighbors were within 300 yards of where the animal was kept and would easily be able to see his condition and no one reported it.

   In Illinois, a dog whose initial owner pleaded guilty to animal cruelty was adopted out by the humane society to a 19-year old man. The new owner left the pitbull to die, muzzled and tied up on an apartment balcony in 90-degree heat.  Faced with a charge of aggravated animal cruelty, he pled down to two misdemeanors, and was sentenced to two years of not owning a pet, in addition to a course on humane treatment and drug-and-alcohol evaluation.

Deliberate Cruelty
   Given the links between animal abuse and family violence or other criminal activity (e.g., illegal gambling at cock-fights) the good news is an increase in convictions. The bad news is that sentences are too often suspended, made the equivalent of time served.  

• In Indiana a man threw someone else’s six-month old Jack Russell terrier off a bridge.  He went to jail for nine months.
•   In Maryland, a man threw his girlfriend’s four kittens into the fire, to die being burned alive. He was sentenced to 1-1/2 years in jail for aggravated animal cruelty.  Then the judge suspended the sentence except for the 134 days already served since the arrest.  
•  In Los Angeles a man was sentenced to the maximum, NINE years in prison for stabbing his niece’s German shepherd between the eyes for barking.  His rap sheet included numerous thefts and weapons violations. (The dog survived, by the way).
•  Elsewhere in California a young man confessed to stealing, mutilating, and strangling ten Nigerian dwarf goats on his ex-girlfriend’s family farm. He was sentenced to NINE years in prison.

“It’s probably a good thing that you caught me now,” said 22-year-old Ryan Troyer, according to the report. “I might have started killing people. I’m not saying that I wanted to or had any plans to. I’m just saying.”

    A Rocky Mountain of credit is due to the perseverance of animal rights groups.  In Canada, where the most punishment is six months in jail and a two thousand dollar fine, petitions are flying to the government to increase the penalties, driven by the case of the torture of Daisy Duke, a lab-border collie cross.  Two teenagers, including the owner’s son, had bound her legs, pulled a bag over her head, placed duct tape across her snout and a rope around her neck and then dragged her behind a vehicle before leaving her to suffer (and eventually to be euthanized).

   The big question mark, still, is the deterrent effect of punishment.  A fat lot of good it does to know that Dahmer, Bundy, Berkowitz, and teenaged school shooters started out abusing animals, if a few months in jail for animal cruelty wouldn’t have changed the developing monstrous mindset.  

   Consider.  Had the following criminals (1) known what jail and fines followed their actions (2) would that would have stopped them?

•  The 43-year old Illinois man who was making a tuna sandwich when his roommate’s cat jumped on the table.  He chased it and cut off 4 inches of its tail with a butcher knife.  Sentenced to a year in prison, where he can have his own tail cut viciously.
•  The East Palo Alto, CA man who sent his pitbull to attack a neighbor’s old cat. Both animals euthanized. Sent to jail nine months. Not likely to emerge a model citizen.
• The man who, during a family argument, poured gasoline over his uncle’s collie and set her on fire.  He pled guilty to arson and animal cruelty.  Sentence is pending psychological examinations.  Would the judge defer sentencing if the helpless creature set on fire had been human?
• The founder and manager of a Texas chimpanzee sanctuary a squalid hoarder’s camp where residents suffered more from the elements and poor hygiene than they had at the biomedical laboratories from which they came.  It had a ratio of one caretaker for 114 animals, no medical clinic, and massive indebtedness before the court-ordered takeover.

 
   In the swirl of violence down the block, on the tube, and imbedded in national policy, it’s hard for prosecutors on a budget to prioritize.  Families of all victims grieve, whether the victim is human or animal.
   Counseling is a cop-out. No proof it works.  Restitution is as good as the criminal’s bank account.  Ban animal ownership?  Fine. Try enforcing that one.

   Who is more likely to become a serial strangler, a cat burglar or a cat strangler?  What impacts the economy worse, a puppy mill or a diploma mill?  It’s a toss-up.  That’s why the criminal’s actions, and not the nature of the victim should drive prosecutions.  And that’s why judges should look beyond their career plans and quit discouraging prosecutors with chintzy penalties.

    Justice is ever elusive.    

    The transcripts and audio tapes of Guantanamo Bay detainee Combatant Status Review Tribunals from today’s story on NPR are damning.  Even our worst serial killers are guaranteed more than those detained under suspicion.  There is no speedy trial, no lawyer, no true opportunity to present witnesses.  The law was twisted to support twisted policy.  

    Briefly:  the detainees are present only for the unclassified portion of the tribunal, so they don’t know what, if any, evidence is being used against them (and so, cannot counter it).  The unclassified evidence is paltry, consisting basically of a list of the allegations and habeas corpus petitions.

    Some 430 men are currently imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.  But look beyond the numbers.  Look at the people.  

  One detainee asked that his supervisor at the Red Crescent Society in Bosnia testify at the proceeding. He is told that a request was made twice to the U.S. State Department, which handles the matter; each time, the date of the tribunal was emphasized. The tribunal president says there was no response from the State Department to either request.

   In some cases, the detainees’ representatives don’t know what efforts have or are being made to locate requested evidence. The only witnesses available to Ait Idir and Boudella are the other men they were arrested with.

     Lawyers for six Algerians got the tapes thanks to the FOIA. Their clients had been acquitted by a Bosnian court of plotting to bomb embassies in Bosnia.  They walked out of the court free men, only to be immediately nabbed and jettisoned into Guantanamo Bay. That was in 2001.  Their tribunals took place in 2004. They have been imprisoned nearly five years without being charged with a crime.
  From three of the tribunal transcript excerpts published by Mother Jones:

Detainee 024, a 24-year-old British citizen named Feroz Ali Abbasi, was released and sent back to England in January 2005.
abbasi: So, you are telling me I am an enemy combatant. I am telling you by special Geneva Conventions, I am a non-combatant….
tribunal president:Once again, international law does not matter here. Geneva Convention does not matter here. What matters here and I am concerned about and what I really want to get to is your status as enemy combatant based upon the evidence that has been provided and your actions while you were in Afghanistan. If you deviate from that one more time you will be removed from this tribunal and we will continue to hear evidence without you being present….
abbasi: I know, but I have the right to speak….
tribunal president:No, you don’t.
abbasi: And the personal representative [assigned by the military, not his attorney] told me I can say whatever I like.
tribunal president:He was mistaken if he told you that….
… I don’t care about international law. … We are not concerned with international law.

  Detainee 369, Adel Fattough Ali Algazzar, an Egyptian arrested in Pakistan.
tribunal member: … These are all the accusations. What we will get in the classified session is in theory evidence to support these accusations, but there are no other accusations against you besides what is listed here.
algazzar:I understand that but what I mean is if you say I am an enemy combatant and you say you have evidence, I don’t get to see it. Then I will stay here….
tribunal member: Do you have any theories about why the government and the Pakistani intel folks would sell you out and turn you over to the Americans?
algazzar:Come on, man, you know what happened. In Pakistan you can buy people for $10. So what about $5,000?
tribunal member: So they sold you?
algazzar:Yes.

  Detainee 581 was accused of being Abdur Zahid Rahman, the Taliban’s former deputy foreign minister. He explained to the tribunal that he was, in fact, Abdur Sayed Rahman.
rahman: The entire time I have been here, I have not seen anything proving that I did anything wrong…. I have been here for three years and the past three years, whatever I say, nobody believes me…. I never even hit my own child at home. Why would I go and torture and murder someone?… The only time I have ever been in Afghanistan was for two days to attend a funeral…. I was only a chicken farmer in Pakistan.

    An attorney for detainee Al-Ghizzawi, H. Candace Gorman, wrote an excellent blog of outrage about her client’s treatment.  Al-Ghizzawi has never been charged with a crime.  

    When a court finally ordered the government to give her a transcript of his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, she discovered there had been two tribunals.  He was three years in detention when the first tribunal found him NOT an enemy combatant.  Instead of freeing him, the military held a second hearing five weeks later, in Washington, and never told him about it. This tribunal reversed his fate, deciding he was, indeed, an enemy combatant. The basis? Secret new evidence.  

   Gorman went to Washington to review this “secret” evidence. There was none. The evidence was not only not secret, it wasn’t even new. It included the originals of innocuous letters from her client to her, all translated by the government from the Arabic before copies were faxed to her.  They should have been privileged as attorney-client communication.

Mr. Al-Ghizzawi, an innocent man, has been and continues to be held at Guantánamo for almost five years now. He is suffering from liver disease and not being treated. He is dying because the criminals running our country cannot admit the awful truth that Mr. Al-Ghizzawi (and countless others) were captured and are being held by mistake.

    Released this week is the Report on Guantanamo Detainees by Seton Hall law professor Mark Denbeaux and his son, Joshua Denbeaux, lawyers for two Guantanamo detainees, after analysis of 393 tribunal transcripts with the assistance of two dozen law students.  Among the detainees determined not to be enemy combatants are some two dozen Uighurs, a Turkic people who fled persecution in China. Initially, the Uighers were found to be enemy combatants, because they were

• Muslim
• in Afghanistan
• associated with unidentified individuals or groups
• possessed Kalishnikovs
• stayed in guest houses
• were captured in Pakistan
• by bounty hunters.

   Many released detainees (not enemy combatants after all) are now men without countries. Nobody wants them.  China was willing to accept five Uighers, but would try them on terrorist charges.  Eventually the Pentagon transferred five Uighurs, an Uzbek, an Egyptian, and an Algerian to  Albania.  
   Someone at the Pentagon who consumes too many strange mushrooms wrote:

 Our key objective has been to resettle these detainees in an environment that will permit them to rebuild their lives. Albania will provide this opportunity.

    It’s only a rumor that Bush is planning to retire to Albania. What the Pentagon sees as a land of opportunity for former detainees makes USAID shudder.

  Impeding Albania’s democratic and economic development is the legacy of communism, crushing poverty, failed institutions, a weak rule of law, poor social conditions, and a large out-migration of people seeking jobs.

   Since 2002, about 345 detainees have been released. Meanwhile, other not-combatants-after-all, including 17 Uighurs, remain at Guantanamo, still in limbo. The Defense Department calls them “No Longer Enemy Combatants.” Mushrooms, mushrooms…

   To criticism that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals are sham proceedings, Pentagon spokesman Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon responded with a disingenuous defense.  “…it is an administrative process … to confirm the status of enemy combatants detained at Guantanamo…”

    Grab your socks, Reville, Reville, hear the boatswain’s whistle, Commander.  This shabby “administrative process” is the nearest the detainees may come to any trial. As Amnesty International describes it, the government interpretation of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 allows it to hold indefinitely, without trial, a detainee who has been declared an enemy combatant.    
 

  Thousands of detainees remain in indefinite detention without charge or trial in US custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. In passing the Military Commissions Act, Congress has failed these detainees and their families.

Those defending human rights should be prepared for a long struggle.

   Innocent until proven guilty. Kiss it goodbye.

    See the video or read the entire transcript of tonight’s Special Comment from Keith Olbermann here. “Lessons from the Vietnam War,” rivaled in excellence the recent postings of Jeff Huber and Larry Johnson about what Bush claims we learned from Vietnam (“We’ll succeed unless we quit.”).  The overarching lesson, of course, is that we DID quit, albeit many years too late.

We stopped endlessly squandering lives and treasure and the focus of a nation on an impossible and irrelevant dream, but you are still doing exactly that, tonight, in Iraq….

We will succeed against terrorism, for our country’s needs, toward binding up the nation’s wounds when you quit, quit the monumental lie that is our presence in Iraq.

And in the interim, Mr. Bush, an American kid will be killed there, probably tonight or — if we’re lucky — tomorrow.