Edgewise

Kingly prerogratives

Perhaps I’m humorless or old-fashioned but I’m still not over the cavalier way the President and all of his men are defending their decision to spy domestically without seeking warrants.

Last week Christopher Brauchli put it thusly in a post to Spot-On called Presidential Prerogatives:

When asked by Jim Lehrer of “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer””about the eavesdropping he said: “We do not discuss ongoing intelligence operations to protect the country. And the reason why is that there’s an enemy that lurks, that would like to know exactly what we’re trying to do to stop them.” He went on to say it was being done to fulfill his obligation to “protect the civil liberties of the American people.” By spying on thousand of citizens he is making those on whom he is not spying safer. Leaders of many third world countries would find that a compelling argument.

The following morning Mr. Bush had a new answer to the question asked by Mr. Lehrer the preceding day. He said the practice was a “vital tool in our war against terrorists” and said he had authorized the spying more than 30 times since the events of 9/11. He did not mention that by acknowledging the existence of the program he was contradicting the previous day’s statements when President Bush said he did not want to help lurking terrorists by responding to questions about N.S.A surveillance. Why? When protecting his image competed with protecting the country, George Bush’s image won out. Self interest also manifested itself in an interview with Fox News.

On Friday David Brooks had another spin on George’s changing tune. He suggested that when Lehrer sprung the question on Bush, the story had just broken that morning and he did not yet know what his response should be. In other words, without a Rove-crafted spin, without talking points, Bush hid behind his national-security boogeyman redoubt.

I suppose the press and public have behaved like children and the administration has become used to treating us like children.

Basic Facts as a Wondrous Surprise

There are so many basic facts about the world that we, as grownups, take for granted, yet to a child are matters of wondrous surprise. Living here with my eight-year-old grandson Seaney has really brought that home to me. The process of opening up the wider world to him has been an inspiration and a privilege. Here is a small sample of the knowledge I have been able to pass on to him just in the past year:

-- When it is daytime in the Northern Hemisphere, it is nighttime in the Southern Hemisphere.
-- When birds hibernate South for the Winter, they just close their eyes, and the next thing they know, they wake up in a warmer climate hundreds of miles away.
-- Most automobile accidents occur within the home.
--Three-fifths of the Earth's population is under water.

It all makes me feel like a regular Mr. Science.

The madness of kinging George

The capacity for Bush defenders (I can't call them conservatives -- not even sure they're really Republicans anymore) to argue that up is down and black is white and violating the law is not violating the law has reached a crescendo. Glenn Greenwald explains cogently just how far out of line the defenses of warrantless wiretaps have drifted (Unclaimed Territory: The Bush justifications for law-breaking).

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. David Brooks argues it's smart politics to violate separation of powers and Charles Krauthammer argues it's not against the law for the president to break the law (just poor politics). Is this how It Can't Happen Here finally happens here?

Maybe I'll just retreat into cognitive absurdity with the rest of the nation. Maybe Fafblog has the right idea.

An overdue realignment?

A diarist at Daily Kos asks Will Real Conservatives Become Democrats? and provides some interesting links that suggest that a possibly unexpected realignment may be in the offing.

• Will Real Conservatives Become Democrats?
• Open Letter to Libertarians and Conservatives
• Thoughts from a Libertarian Democrat

Osama's satellite phone

With so many lies flying around about Bush’s warrantless wiretaps — even the lies have lies — one caught my ear the other day during Bush’s press conference and repeated by 9/11 commissioner Lee Hamilton in an article in today’s Times.

The anecdote (much like Reagan’s false - but - still - believed - to - this - day tales of welfare queens and other colorful folk) asserts that “in the late ’90s” we were tracking Osama bin Laden by his satellite phone but that reports “in the media” or “in the Washington Times” tipped him off and he stopped using it.

Strangely, though, I have a clear memory of being in an airport a year or so into the Afghan war and watching CNN in the lounge when a Republican legislator (a senator, as I recall) bragged that we were tracking bin Laden through the use of his satellite phone. I remember thinking that it was ridiculous to mention this to the media for the exact reason that it would tip off al Qaeda. “Great,” I thought to myself, “now that won’t work anymore.”

So when Bush claims a similar incident happened in “the ’90s” (meaning, I suppose, “not under my watch”), it struck me as strange. If we tipped off bin Laden about tracking his satellite phone back before 9/11, then how was it that we were still tracking him that way in 2003?

Did I remember it all wrong? To be sure I did a little Googling and turned up, among other things, this story from CBS News: Osama’s Satellite Phone Switcheroo | January 21, 2003.

So, we were still tracking bin Laden by his satellite phone as late as 2003. In fact, if anything, we were overrelying on that method, if the CBS story is correct.

OK, that’s one little lie among many big ones but I thought it was worth noting, as a small gesture against the overwhelming wave of outrage fatigue I’ve been feeling lately.

UPDATE: Looks like I was right — the story is an urban myth.

Malevolent Design

Proponents of Intelligent Design argue that it is just an alternative theory that open minds will agree should be taught as a possibility alongside Darwinian evolution.

Another alternative theory that merits such treatment is Malevolent Design. Though still in its infancy, Malevolent Design has a strong scientific advantage, because it is a testable hypothesis that predicts species change can be significantly affected by Devil Worship.

Thus one subspecies of fruit flies could be subjected to a documented quantity of Devil worship aimed at a particular outcome, while another subspecies, not subjected to Devil worship, can serve as an experimental control. Does the predicted outcome show up as a statistically significant difference under the two experimental conditions?

American high school students would benefit from being exposed to all three possibilities Darwinism, Intelligent Design, and Devil Worship. And Devil Worship easily lends itself to becoming a really fun class science project--the kind of openness that Intelligent Design advocates would heartily welcome.

Well, what's he waiting for?

In Address, Bush Says He Ordered Domestic Spying NYT [Boldface added]

As a result of the [NYT's] report, he said, "our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk."

He said the Senate's action "endangers the lives of our citizens..."

---------------------------
DKo: The New York Times and the Senate. Fortunately, we now have places for people like that.

Sue, are you? Sue sue, sue, sue

Tort reform for thee but not for me: Sirotablog: NOW & THEN: Trent Lott on suing & lawsuits

Death in a Bad Year

"In 2004, the USA executed more people than any country except China, Iran and Vietnam. But last year's 59 executions were down 40% from a peak in 1999."

USA Today

There is twice the chance of death in a bad year. This kind of giddy predilection used to be compared to hem-lines, Power Ties, and Casual Fridays. But now Americans are less frivolous about life-style than we are about death.

Bumblers

Let me just say: if there's indeed a so-called "War on Christmas"...

...based on the number of lilting Christmas tunes I've been hearing in public places all around the liberal paradise that is my beloved Bay Area, the folks who are fighting in this particular conflagration -- the anti-Christmas bridade -- are a pack of bumblers the likes of which we haven't seen since Tully Bascombe and the Grand Fenwick Irregulars.

Why do we buy that Bush Administration torture is intended to extract the truth?

We read now about an Al Qaeda prisoner whom we sent to Egypt to be tortured. He eventually came up with a fabricated story that Saddam Hussein had trained Al Qaeda members in chemical and germ warfare. This testimony became a favorite piece of smoking-gun evidence, cited repeatedly by top officials in favor of their war. He has since recanted.

It is gross naivete to say "You have defeated your own purposes. You wanted to get the truth, but testimony under torture is notoriously unreliable, so you ended up getting falsehoods instead."

But what about when it was falsehoods you were seeking in the first place? Torture is routinely used to extract confessions from the innocent, force them to implicate innocent associates, and to substantiate insidious Big-Lie policies.

We know the falsehood that got this man out of Egypt. And we know that the truth led only to continued torture.

Stalin's infamous "Purge Trials" showed the world a series of pitiful, torture-broken defendants incriminating themselves and others, and detailing elaborate fantasies of conspiracy against the state. Do we say that Stalin's inquisitors had defeated their own purpose, because they didn't get the truth?

Pinter writes for Bush

My friend EB sent me a note quoting Pinter, sure to enrage the jingoes:

On the chance that you haven’t seen it already, here’s an excerpt from Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers, but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man’s man.

God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden’s God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam’s God was bad, except he didn’t have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don’t chop people’s heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don’t you forget it.

Could anyone have foreseen this? --Just about.

Washington Post

Without ever using the words "mistake" or "error," Bush said the administration miscalculated by clearing insurgents out of a city and then moving onto another assignment, only to allow enemy forces to retake control.

DKo:
Could anyone have foreseen this? Just about anyone. However, it is never fair to criticize Mr. Bush for mistakes not made within the last 24 hours.
Article

I was saying "Boo-urns"

Abramoff scandal spreads to the Senate: Now A Republican Senator Tied Up In Abramoff Scandal... | The Huffington Post

The President Who Could Not Violate the Law

From today's Washington Post:

The [previous] Post article reported that CIA interrogators in the overseas sites have been permitted to use interrogation techniques prohibited by the U.N. convention or by U.S. military law. Asked about this apparent contradiction, Rice told reporters: "Our people, wherever they are, are operating under U.S. law and U.S. obligations."

DKo: "Apparent contradiction"? Not at all. Since they hold that American law does not apply to prisoners held abroad, nothing we do to those prisoners could possibly violate American law.

It is not even clear how Mr. Bush could go about not "operating under U.S. law and U.S. obligations."

He is allegedly empowered to declare any detainee an "enemy combatant," nullifying the applicability of American laws and treaties. So how could anything he did violate them?

He is also empowered to suspend these laws and treaties. A suspended treaty cannot be violated.

I seriously believe that Rice et al have this fingers-crossed-behind-the-back, juvenile mendacity in mind. It is consistent with previous wiggles, and it has their signature.

The only way the President could violate the law would be this:
--I order this man tortured, as I define torture.
--I do not declare him an enemy combatant.
--I do not suspend any laws or treaties.
--I determine this order to be a violation of United States' laws and treaties.
--As soon as it is carried out, I will turn myself in to the proper authorities.

Today’s Post Article

"Pin the Tail on the" ...Argh!

Mr. Kolodney's transmission was inexplicably cut off in mid-sentence. He has not been heard from since.

The complete transcript of his report begins with these excerpts from an article in today’s Washington Post. (Boldface, italics, and brackets are Mr. Kolodney’s.)

Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake
German Citizen Released After Months in "Rendition"

Masri was held for five months largely because the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's [CTC] al Qaeda unit "believed he was someone else," one former CIA official said. "She didn't really know. She just had a hunch." [The Dark Side of The Force.]

….Khaled Masri came to the attention of Macedonian authorities on New Year's Eve 2003. …. He was taken off a bus at the Tabanovce border crossing by police because his name was similar to that of an associate of a 9/11 hijacker.

….Others were doubtful. They wanted to wait to see whether the passport was proved fraudulent. The unit's director won the argument. She ordered Masri captured and flown to a CIA prison in Afghanistan.

….Back at the CTC, Masri's passport was given to the Office of Technical Services to analyze. By March, OTS had concluded the passport was genuine. The CIA had imprisoned the wrong man.

….On the day of his release, the prison's director, who Masri believed was an American, told Masri that he had been held because he "had a suspicious name," Masri said in an interview.

DKo: One of the crucial reasons for strict secrecy in these matters is to protect the United States' exclusive, ultra-advanced intelligence methods. If other countries were able to copy these techniques, it would give an immensely dangerous boost to their own intelligence-gathering capabilities. Fortunately, as things stand, they are not yet even familiar with "Pin the Tail on the" ….Argh!

Note: Mr. Kolodney insisted on anonymity, because of the extremely sensitive nature of this information.

Jack and the Greenstalk

It’s funny how shit keeps a bubblin’ up. The Bush administration is like a plumbing disaster these days. And all those leaky pipes are connected to each other. Which brings me to indicted former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Back before his name was coffee break conversation, in the beginning of Senator McCain’s not-yet-newsworthy Indian Affairs Committee investigation, I was doing a little investigating of my own—of Indian gaming casinos then being proposed around San Francisco Bay. I happened on McCain’s committee web site and the reams of emails between Abramoff and his associate Mike Scanlon that were posted there. Definitely eyebrow-raising stuff for anyone not acquainted with the down and dirty of Washington Lobbyland and insider politics in general.

I wanted to know who was behind the billion-dollar casino schemes in California and, besides noting the staggering amount of money involved in these deals, didn’t have much use for the Abramoff angle. But I saved my notes. A Sept. 28, 2004 Washington Post article by R. Jeffrey Smith was most helpful. Smith looked at tax and spending records of an Abramoff “charity”, the Capital Athletic Foundation

Not unlike the Mafia in its heyday, Abramoff was obviously having some difficulty finding enough places to launder all the money that was rolling in from Indian tribes. One washing machine was the Capital Athletic Foundation, a bogus charity dedicated to supporting youth sports. Another laundry chute was a private school that Abramoff started and which his own sons attended. The school offered excellence in academics and sports, emphasis on the latter. According to the Post article, the school, which received close to $2 million from the Capital Athletic Foundation, bought—hang onto your eyebrows—TWO Zamboni ice-cleaning machines, even though it did not have a hockey rink. (We’re talking maybe $20k each?? Somebody into ice hockey help me out here).

Abramoff had a gift for creative fundraising too. One, reported by Lou Dubose in the Texas Observer was a proposal by Abramoff to a tribal council in Texas to pay the premiums of “term life” insurance policies for all the tribe’s elderly members. Upon their death, however, the payout would go to Abramoff’s private school. The school would then pay Abramoff’s fees at then-employer, Greenberg Traurig, a Washington lobbying firm. This is how he proposed that the tribe, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Tribe of El Paso, pay for his services helping them snare a lucrative casino deal.

The long arm of Washington lobbying reached California too. A Dec. 26, 2004 Post article by Susan Schmidt and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum noted that the Agua Caliente tribe (big casino, southern California), paid Greenberg Traurig as much as $20,000 a month in lobbyists’ expenses, much of it for meals at Signatures, the restaurant that, until recently, was owned by Abramoff and served as yet another laundry drop for his fees as well as a schmooze spot for Washington politicos and benefactors whose meals were often free, quid pro quo understood. Ultimately, the tribes paid the bills.

Even more interesting was Abramoff’s connection to Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform. According to Thomas B. Edsall, in a Nov. 8, 2004 Washington Postarticle, one tribe,

…began contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to Americans for Tax Reform and similar groups. Norquist won’t disclose how much, but Abramoff told the Wall Street Journal in 2000 that the Choctaw have given “several million dollars” to outside groups, and that Americans for Tax Reform was a leading recipient.

It makes sense if you know that Abramoff was president of the College Republican national committee during the time Norquist was its executive director. Writes Edsall in the Post article,

While at the College Republicans, Abramoff, Norquist and Reed [Ralph Reed was a CR intern] quickly earned reputations as zealots. Abramoff wrote in the 1983 annual report: “It is not our job to seek peaceful coexistence with the Left. Our job is to remove them from power permanently. The group’s recruits were required to memorize a speech that included the lines: “Democrats are the enemy. Wade into them! Spill their blood!”

But, back to food and fundraising… An amusing note in E.J. Kessler’s June 27, 2003 column in The Forward, described how Abramoff’s culinary enterprises aided one Republican, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia. According to Kessler, “The $500-a-plate fundraiser, a ‘sandwich naming party’ at which Cantor was honored with an eponymous roast-beef-on-challah sandwich, was held at Stacks Deli…” which was then owned by Abramoff. Mr. Roast Beef Sandwich failed to disclose the fundraiser as an “in kind” campaign contribution until five months later (law requires disclosure within 60 days). The quid pro quo? Cantor’s signature on a letter to Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton, that argued for a ruling that would benefit the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, an Abramoff client. Other signers of the letter? Tom Delay, Dennis Hastert, and Roy Blunt.

And just so this makes a little more sense, the goose laying the golden eggs in this Republican fairy tale is Indian gaming revenues in excess of $16 billion yearly.