November 2005 Archives

Read this story from the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun of New Orleans writes about his experiences rescuing storm victims, and about his arrest and ordeal on suspicion of terrorism and looting.

Believe it or not, this is the United States of America. Really.

Matt Yglesias and Atrios, make important points: copyright was not created to help the Disneys of the world make huge profits forever. It was created to promote the general welfare.

Or, as Atrios reminds us by reprinting the clause from the United States Constitution:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The Constitution's framers did not write "to promote the increase in certain corporate revenues forever."

I cannot imagine why a political party that spouts much rhetoric about needing to follow the original intent of the framers seems unable to understand this point.

Kevin Drum points to this important article by Slate's Dahlia Lithwick about the Jose Padilla indictment. She writes:

Had Padilla been charged and tried back in the summer of 2002, rather than touted as some Bond villain—the Prince of Radiological Dispersion—his case would have stood for a simple legal proposition: that if you are a terrorist, a supporter of terrorism, or a would-be terrorist, the government will hunt you down and punish you. Had the government waited, tested its facts, kept expectations low, then delivered a series of convictions of even small-time al-Qaida foot soldiers, we in this country would feel safer and we would doubtless be safer. Instead Padilla, like Hamdi, was used as fodder for big speeches. They became the justification for Bush's position that some people are so evil that the law does not deter them, that new legal systems must be invented—new systems that bear a striking resemblance to those discredited around the time of Torquemada.

This might be news to some of those working in the White House today, but not everything is just a political opportunity. Some things are more serious.

Worse, as Drum explains, "[s]ooner or later, we're going to pay the price for this [the Bush Administration's] feckless and irresponsible approach."

I agree with Josh Marshall's analysis of new reports about how the Bush Administration is taking steps to prepare the nation for a downscale of U.S. troops in Iraq. He writes:

I'm going to way out on a limb and take James Fallows' word over the president's and assume that there's been no radical turnaround in the training and functioning of the Iraqi Army over the last couple months.

And if that's true, it clarifies this essential point: there is no
debate about withdrawing American troops from Iraq. That's over. What
we have is posturing and positioning over the political consequences of withdrawal. The White House and the president's partisans will lay down a wall of covering fire, calling anybody who considers withdrawal an appeaser, to allow the president to go about the business of drawing down the American presence in Iraq in time to game the 2006 elections.

Murray Waas writes in the National Journal that President Bush was told 10 days after the September 11 terrorist attacks that there was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

That's right. Of course, as Think Progress notes, this has not stopped the Bush Administration from trying to tie Hussein and Al Qaeda together. Waas writes:

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the "President's Daily Brief," a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.

One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources. (emphasis added)

The Houston Chronicle's Lise Olsen authors a chilling report that should have everyone rethinking our nation's use of the death penalty:

Texas executed its fifth teenage offender at 22 minutes after midnight on Aug. 24, 1993, after his last request for bubble gum had been refused and his final claim of innocence had been forever silenced.

Ruben Cantu, 17 at the time of his crime, had no previous convictions, but a San Antonio prosecutor had branded him a violent thief, gang member and murderer who ruthlessly shot one victim nine times with a rifle before emptying at least nine more rounds into the only eyewitness — a man who barely survived to testify.

Four days after a Bexar County jury delivered its verdict, Cantu wrote this letter to the residents of San Antonio: "My name is Ruben M. Cantu and I am only 18 years old. I got to the 9th grade and I have been framed in a capital murder case."

A dozen years after his execution, a Houston Chronicle investigation suggests that Cantu, a former special-ed student who grew up in a tough neighborhood on the south side of San Antonio, was likely telling the truth.

And remember that Cantu has been executed. There is no way to remedy this if it is an error.

(Hat tip: TalkLeft.)

Here is another example showing how leading conservatives value ideology over our national security. Josh Marshall writes:

Yesterday morning we noted that Ahmad Chalabi is being feted next week at the American Enterprise Institute. Set aside the fact that little more than a year ago he was implicated in sharing US intelligence with Iran. What we know pretty much conclusively now is that Chalabi connived at gaming the US into war by cooking up all manner of bogus intelligence and unsubstantiated claims about WMD and terrorism. It is almost a cliche at this point -- Chalabi, the Iraqi emigre behind most of the outlandish bogus intel.

One extreme view would have it that Chalabi is an Iraqi patriot
and, as such, any lying and cheating and stealing in America is just a
means to the end of getting the previous regime overthrown. As it
happens, I think the guy is more just a gamer and an opportunist. But
be that as it may, what sort of American organization would
be hosting and celebrating such a man after all we know today, after
all the bad acts we know he has committed against this country.

Atrios points to a great Financial Times column written by James Boyle. As we near the 15th anniversary of the World Wide Web's creation, Boyle reminds us that we should not take the web's existence for granted:

That is a shame, because there are three things that we need to understand about the web. First, it is more amazing than we think. Second, the conjunction of technologies that made the web successful was extremely unlikely. Third, we probably would not create it, or any technology like it, today. In fact, we would be more likely to cripple it, or declare it illegal.

Does President George W. Bush really think that an ethics training refresher course mandate for White House staff is an appropriate response to the CIA leak case?

Mr. President, you promised that you would fire anyone involved in the leak.

I'm not against ethics training, but training is not a response to this situation. Face it, Mr. President. You broke your promise to fire those responsible.

Instead of trying to deflect the blame and use public relations tactics like ethics training mandates, you should deal with the problem. Keep your promise. Fire Karl Rove and anyone else who was involved.

Then maybe you can start lecturing people about ethics again.