December 2005 Archives

Repeating a lie many times may not make the lie true, but it can lead a sizable number of people to believe it is true. As Taegan Goddard writes over at Political Wire:

From a new Harris Poll: "About 22% of U.S. adults believe Saddam Hussein helped plan 9/11, the poll shows, and 26% believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded. Another 24% believe several of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis."

Shouldn't reporters take steps to ensure that their new stories are consistent with their previous reporting, or explain in detail why things have changed?

Atrios makes a nice catch after reading today's Washington Post story about the Jack Abramoff case:

Grimaldi and Steno Sue, October 18:

Ney and Abramoff, whom DeLay once described as "one of my closest and dearest friends," crossed paths as early as 1996. That year Ney took a trip to Montenegro sponsored by a foundation that had links to Abramoff, who was a lobbyist for Montenegro.

Grimaldi and Steno Sue, today:

DeLay, a Christian conservative, did not quite know what to make of Abramoff, who wore a beard and a yarmulke. They forged political ties, but the two men never became personally close, according to associates of both men.

My parents, who still live in Limestone, Maine (in the northeast corner of that state), shared this Bangor Daily News article with me, their Bay Area-living son, to share what the latest major snowstorm to hit their area can do.

People in northern and eastern Maine were digging out Tuesday from a storm that pounded parts of the state for 48 hours and dumped more than 3 feet of snow in the St. John Valley.

By the time the storm ended, Fort Kent and St. Francis residents were coping with 39 inches of snow, one of the biggest snowfalls ever in the Valley. Clayton Lake reported 38 inches, Madawaska 37 inches and Caribou 31.7.

Grandma and Grandpa apparently have a story to tell the next time we call. I think our son will want us to take a drive to the mountains soon to see what they are talking about.

Americablog's Joe in DC makes an important observation about our so-called liberal media: just a few years after they cheerleaded the impeachment of a Democratic president, the opinion mafia now scoffs at the notion that breaking a federal law could rise to the high bar required to impeach this president.

Why did the bar suddenly rise on January 21, 2001?

The more we learn about Samuel Alito's beliefs, the more I fear for the future of our Republic should he be confirmed.

The man is a true radical -- in favor of presidential power. Checks and balances and oversight are things he would causually toss in the Constitutional dumpster.

The New York Times editorializes about two recent Alito memos that should give people great pause about whether he really should be given a spot on the Supreme Court:

One troubling memo concerns domestic wiretaps - a timely topic. In the memo, which he wrote as a lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, Judge Alito argued that the attorney general should be immune from lawsuits when he illegally wiretaps Americans. Judge Alito argued for taking a step-by-step approach to establishing this principle, much as he argued for an incremental approach to reversing Roe v. Wade in another memo.

The Supreme Court flatly rejected Judge Alito's view of the law. In a 1985 ruling, the court rightly concluded that if the attorney general had the sort of immunity Judge Alito favored, it would be an invitation to deny people their constitutional rights.

In a second memo released yesterday, Judge Alito made another bald proposal for grabbing power for the president. He said that when the president signed bills into law, he should make a "signing statement" about what the law means. By doing so, Judge Alito hoped the president could shift courts' focus away from "legislative intent" - a well-established part of interpreting the meaning of a statute - toward what he called "the President's intent."

Where the hell does that come in to our Constitutional process? Hell, why bother with a legislative branch at all?

Executive branch officials have immunity. The president's intent trumps legislative intent.

That's not a Republic. And I do not want a Republican, Democratic, or other-party president from having anywhere near the powers Alito proposes the executive should have.

He needs to be kept off the Supreme Court.

Oh. My. God. The Republican National Committee's web site wishes people a Happy Holidays.

General Bill O'Reilly of the War on Christmas Brigade cannot be pleased. Will he use the Power of the Factor to turn the RNC away from its secular ways?

O'Reilly's made-up War on Christmas (a Fox News Channel trademark) would certainly consider this a major defeat -- that is, if the whole deal were anything more than a way to distract people from presidential scandals and to increase ratings during December.

(Hat tip: Americablog.)

President George W. Bush, and those who defend his illegal wiretapping orders, are once again trying to muddy the issues at stake here so people give up and stop paying attention.

So, it is important to keep shining a light on the core of the president's problem: he chose to undertake an activity that was prohibited by Congress. As this is a Republic, and not a monarchy, President Bush does not have a divine right to do whatever he pleases.

Glenn Greenwald makes this important observation:

There is not a single bit of authority in any of this for the absurd and dangerous proposition that the President has the right to violate a criminal law passed by Congress. Period. The Administration is trotting out lawyers to make legalistic arguments designed to cloud this extremely clear issue, but none of that can change the fact that Bush defenders are arguing that he has the right to enage in conduct which Congress made it a crime to engage in, and there is nothing in the law which gives a President that right. To the contrary, as one would expect, it has been repeatedly made clear that under our system of Government, the President does not possess the authoritarian right to engage in behavior which Congress expressly prohibits under the law.

Bush defenders are primarily relying upon cases which said that the Executive has authority inherently under the Constitution to order warrantless eavesdropping on Americans. But that is not the issue, and they have to know that. The issue is not whether the President has this authority to eavesdrop without a warrant but whether it is legal for him to do so in the face of a Congressional law which makes it a crime to engage in such conduct. And none of the authorities they cite conclude that the President has such a royal power. Not one.

Marty Lederman has a superb and crystal clear post on precisely this issue. Even if one assumes to be true the dubious proposition that the President possesses inherent constitutional authority to order warrantless surveillance on American citizens, that does not mean that it is legal for him to do so in violation of a criminal statute enacted by Congress. But that is what Bush did here, and there is just nothing which even arguably gives that behavior the color of legality. That’s because we live under the rule of law where not even Presidents are bestowed with the right to engage in conduct which Congressional criminal law expressly prohibits.

John at Americablog asks a good question:

I'd like to know what limit, if any, there is to Bush's commander-in-chief powers. Bush said that the New York Times jeopardized national security and the war on terror by publishing its story revealing that he broke the law by spying on Americans. So, can Bush have New York Times reporters arrested and executed for treason? Or at the very least, when the NYT executive editor met with Bush at the White House to discuss whether or not to run the story, could Bush have simply had the NYT editor shot?

It is extremely troubling that we even need to contemplate this question.

Atrios is right to wonder if anyone will dare offer a justification for this story:

Undercover New York City police officers have conducted covert surveillance in the last 16 months of people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident, a series of videotapes show.

In glimpses and in glaring detail, the videotape images reveal the robust presence of disguised officers or others working with them at seven public gatherings since August 2004.

The officers hoist protest signs. They hold flowers with mourners. They ride in bicycle events. At the vigil for the cyclist, an officer in biking gear wore a button that said, "I am a shameless agitator." She also carried a camera and videotaped the roughly 15 people present.

Beyond collecting information, some of the undercover officers or their associates are seen on the tape having influence on events. At a demonstration last year during the Republican National Convention, the sham arrest of a man secretly working with the police led to a bruising confrontation between officers in riot gear and bystanders.

Tony Blankley should reread his own columns before declaring that the media and Democrats should leave President George W. Bush alone during the holiday season.

Apparently it is only a tradition when Republicans get a pass.

When did telling a direct lie to the American people become a family value, Christian thing to do, Mr. President?

Obsidian Wings provides a short overview of what is at stake with the claims of power made by President George W. Bush in the domestic spying scandal:

I was shocked by the brazen defense of the wiretapping thing like anyone else, but when I thought about it for a moment...it's not like this should be news to us.

Look. We have a President here who is making a claim of unlimited power, for the duration of a war that may never end. Oh, he says it's limited by the country's laws, but they've got a crack legal team that reliably interprets the laws to say that the President gets to do whatever he wants. It amounts to the same thing.

I am not exaggerating. I am really and truly not.

September 11 started the war. When will it end? Maybe never. Where is the battlefield? The entire world, including the United States. Who is an enemy combatant? Anyone the President says is an enemy combatant, including a U.S. citizen--no need for a charge, no need for a trial, no need for access to a lawyer. What if they're found not to be an enemy combatant? We can keep them in prison anyway, and we don't have to tell their families they're alive or their lawyers that they were cleared. What can you do to an enemy combatant? Anything you want. Detain him forever, for the rest of his life, because this is a war like any other and we have always been able to detain POWs for the duration of the war. But you don't need to follow the Geneva Conventions, because this is a war like no other in our history. And oh yes--if the President decides that we need to torture a prisoner for the war effort, it's unconstitutional for Congress to stop him. They took that position in an official memo, and they have not backed down from it. They have said it was "unnecessary" but they have never backed down from it.

They are not only entitled to do these things to people; they are entitled to do them in secret. When Congress asks for information about them, they can just ignore it. And they are entitled to actively deceive the public about all this.

That's the power they claim. At what point are we going to take that claim seriously?

Really.

(Hat tip: Atrios)

Matthew Yglesias aptly sums up President George W. Bush's speech:

Just finished watching the President's speech which was, of course, entirely absurd. Not nearly as absurd, however, as what I heard immediately afterwards on NBC News -- the White House apparently thinks that speech represented a serious effort to engage with opponents of the war and bring us around to the President's view. I sincerely hope that whichever "senior aides" said that to NBC was just lying for spin purposes, because if they think that's what they're actually doing then the people running the country are far more inept than I dared fear. The speech was, like everything else Bush has said on the topic, a nice object lesson in the rhetorical possibilities of the straw man and the false dilemma. As an effort to smear the opposition, it's good work. As a serious argument, it's patronizing and insulting.

Marty Kaplan takes on the Huffington Post's Russert Watch task this week, and catches the Meet the Press moderator mouthing a preemptive right-wing talking point.

Kaplan is correct to knock this one down now.

And since I know that many HuffPo readers come to this feature looking for blood, or at least pumpkin pie, let’s start with a slice of dessert: to me, Tim’s low point was when he asked Senator Carl Levin whether – if Congress establishes that W broke the law by eavesdropping without court approval – this would cause “a Constitutional crisis.”

No, Tim, impeachment isn’t a Constitutional crisis. A President who holds himself above the law: that’s a Constitutional crisis. Republicans will no doubt try to spin any attempt to hold the President accountable as “a Constitutional crisis,” just as they’ve already tried to spin an attempt to violate the Senate’s filibuster and cloture rules as “the Constitutional option.” Russert’s preemptive use of a talking point that’s still just a gleam in Ken Mehlman’s eye may be good marketing (“Stay tuned to NBC for continuing coverage of the Constitutional crisis!”), but it frames the issue exactly backwards. It’s not Congress that will cause a crisis if it looks into Bush’s lawbreaking; it’s W who’s already caused a Constitutional crisis by crowning himself King George.

Can someone explain to me how torturing children and holding children as POWs is a family value or is helping us remain safe from terrorism? T. Harris posts on her Rebellious Peasant blog an except from President Jimmy Carter's new book to begin a troubling observation:

After visiting six of the twenty-five or so U.S. prisons, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported registering 107 detainess under eighteen, some as young as eight years old. The Journalist Seymour Hersh reported in May 2005 that Defense Secretaary Donald Rumsfeld had recieve a report that there were "800-900 Pakistani boys age 13-15 in custody." The International Red Cross, Amnesty International, and thePentagon have gathered substantial testimony of torture of children (emphasis Harris'), confirmed by soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse. In addition to personal testimony from children about physical and mental mistreatment, a report from Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, formerly in charge of Abu Ghraib, described a visit to an eleven year old detainee in the cell block that housed high risk prisoners. The general recalled that the child was weeping, and "he told me he was almost twelve," and that "he really wanted to see his mother, could he please call his mother." Children like this eleven year old have been denied the right to see their parents, a lawyer, or anyone else, and were not told why they were detained. A Pentagon spokesman told Mr. Hersh that "age is not a determining factor in detention."

The United States of America should be a beacon of freedom and liberty. Not the enabler -- or the sponsor -- of such atrocities.

It is stories like this one that should make people angry with the pharmaceutical industry. James Love writes at the Huffington Post:

On December 15, 2005, AstraZeneca, the big pharmaceutical company, announced it would pull its cancer drug Zoladex from the market in New Zealand. Zoladex is used to treat both breast and prostate cancer.

The decision to withdraw the product from the Zealand market is due entirely to a dispute over the amount of money the New Zealand government would pay for the drug.

Senator Russ Feingold makes an important observation about President George W. Bush's national radio address admissions earlier today:

"The President believes that he has the power to override the laws that Congress has passed. This is not how our democratic system of government works. The President does not get to pick and choose which laws he wants to follow. He is a president, not a king."

(Hat tip: TalkLeft.)

Unfortunately, this headline refers to the United States of America under the leadership of George W. Bush.

A Daily Kos post points us to this troubling story:

NEW BEDFORD -- A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book."

Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.

The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.

The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.

"I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of the book," Professor Pontbriand said. "Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring inter-library loans, because that's what triggered the visit, as I understand it."

No need to worry, America. After all, we live during a time when members of Congress openly declare that the Constitution does not matter during a time of undeclared war.

Let freedom ring!

Dan Kennedy has some excellent questions for New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller and President George W. Bush regarding the domestic spying revelations and the Times' decision to hold the story.

CNN's Jack Cafferty sums up the Republican Party's governing philosophy. Crooks and Liars has the video:

Who cares if the Patriot Act gets renewed. Want to abuse our civil liberties-Just do it!

Who cares about the Geneva Conventions? Want to torture prisoners-Just do it!

Who cares about rules concerning the identity of CIA agents. Want to reveal the name of a covert operative? Just do it!

Who cares about whether the intelligence concerning WMD's is accurate. You want to invade Iraq? Just do it.

Who cares about qualifications to serve on the nation's highest court. Want to nominate a personal friend with no qualifications? Just do it.

And the latest outrage, which I read about in "The New York Times" this morning, who cares about needing a court order to eavesdrop on American citizens. Want to wiretap their phones conversations? Just do it.... What a joke.

A very cruel, very sad joke.

Think Progress has the video: President George W. Bush admits the weapons of mass destruction argument is irrelevant.

As Think Progress explains:

On day that the United States invaded Iraq, President Bush said that we were doing so “reluctantly” but that “our purpose was clear” — to get rid of Saddam’s “weapons of mass murder.” (Note: Bush did not say “purposes.” According to Bush, there was only one purpose.)

Yesterday on Brit Hume, he said he would have invaded even if he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction. Would have been nice if he’d mentioned this earlier. Of course, that would have meant that the president would have had to tell us the truth.

And they don't think we can be trusted with that.

Apparently the Bush Adminstration believes itself to be above the law. The New York Times and Washington Post have the shocking story:

President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in the United States, despite previous legal prohibitions against such domestic spying, sources with knowledge of the program said last night.

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies at George Washington University, said the secret order may amount to the president authorizing criminal activity.

The law governing clandestine surveillance in the United States, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, prohibits conducting electronic surveillance not authorized by statute. A government agent can try to avoid prosecution if he can show he was "engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction," according to the law.

"This is as shocking a revelation as we have ever seen from the Bush administration," said Martin, who has been sharply critical of the administration's surveillance and detention policies. "It is, I believe, the first time a president has authorized government agencies to violate a specific criminal prohibition and eavesdrop on Americans."

Or are we a nation of laws -- laws even the President of the United States must obey?

We have the Bush Administration's answer. Are we willing to accept it?

One of the big talking points expressed by President George W. Bush and his Republican allies recently is that the Democrats saw the same intelligence as they White House when they were debating going to war in Iraq.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) decided to ask the Congressional Research Service to investigate.

Unsurprisingly, the CRS has determined that this Bush/GOP talking point is not true.

But our so-called liberal media's reporters should feel free to accept at face value the next set of GOP talking points while ignoring this finding.

(Hat tip: Josh Marshall.)

Yep. Here's an NBC News special report:

A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.

A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a recent 10-month period.

Welcome to the Bush Administration's United States of America.

(Hat tip: Demagogue.)

The Dan Froomkin weblog title controversy took an unexpected turn, giving us our latest example of the so-called liberal media at work:

John Harris, the Washington Post's national political editor, yesterday represented as a mere conservative citizen blogger a man who was actually the webmaster for the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign and who has a front page blog post about how he is the current eDirector for the Republican National Committee.

I am know left to wonder if Washington Post National Political Editor John Harris acts on Karl Rove's orders directly, or if they act through some sort of intermediary.

Harris needs an answer a hell of a lot better than his no comments yesteday to Brad DeLong if he expects to have any credibility left by the New Year.

Or, as Brad DeLong asks:

It would be one thing if the great mass of readers were confused, or angry. But if the only person who Harris points to who is confused and angry is an RNC operative--well, put it this way: should the touchstone of the Washington Post be making RNC operatives happy?

First Draft's Athenae links to a troubling op-ed written by a University of Maine journalism professor. In his commentary, the professor argues:

The tension between the press and the government has hypertrophied to the point that neither is acting in the public interest. It is time for these two adversaries to discuss the patterns of behavior creating such rancor and frustration. Both sides must be willing to exchange and recognize legitimate criticism in an open forum. Grievances may not be easily resolved. But discussion in the spirit of inquiry rather than recrimination will initiate a more constuctive relationship.

If our journalism professors really believe that our media needs to be less adversarial with our government, rather than significantly more so, I truly fear for the future of our Republic.

No, Mr. Professor, we need more conflict. Not less. Don't believe me? Then read this post by Talking Points Memo reader JA about the Dan Froomkin Affair. The so-called liberal media's sucking up to the White House continues.

Via Josh Marshall, we learn that Robert Novak has made an important observation about the Valerie Plame affair:

Newspaper columnist Robert Novak is still not naming his source in the Valerie Plame affair, but he says he is pretty sure the name is no mystery to President Bush.

"I'm confident the president knows who the source is," Novak told a luncheon audience at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh on Tuesday. "I'd be amazed if he doesn't."

"So I say, 'Don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is.'"

Regardless of everything else involved with the Plame affair, the fact is that President George W. Bush has had the ability to get to the bottom of it, or fire those who would not help him figure it out, since the beginning.

Despite all the protestations from Scott McClellan's podium that no one is more interested in figuring this out than our president, no one has been fired. Only one person has resigned.

You might think this would be a story.

But our so-called liberal media, as we see all too often, is too busy protecting its access to the powerful to actually do its job.

Yes, I think we should be very concerned about the message sent by this prosecution. From Demagogue:

In a chilling case of prosecutorial misconduct, in Oregon a 17-year old woman accuses 3 adult men of gang raping her, but since her charges can't be proven she's charged with filing a false report-- and found guilty.

Since Vice President Cheney lied to us and said that the insurgency was "in its last throes," 462 U.S. soldiers have died.

If this Administration had any decency, they would admit what is obvious: that the Vice President was wrong.

As Think Progress outlines, our National Security Advisor refused several opportunities to do so today.

Oh, no. There's absolutely no need to have anyone review the actions our government is taking to imprison people around the world. Except, as the Washington Post's Dana Priest writes:

In May 2004, the White House dispatched the U.S. ambassador in Germany to pay an unusual visit to that country's interior minister. Ambassador Daniel R. Coats carried instructions from the State Department transmitted via the CIA's Berlin station because they were too sensitive and highly classified for regular diplomatic channels, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation.

Coats informed the German minister that the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, the sources said. There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries, and possible legal challenges to the CIA from Masri and others with similar allegations.

Is our government's position really that as long as we keep such a mistake quiet, we should not worry when our agents wrongly imprison a man and torture him?