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 |
JUNE, 2006
A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON BUILDING NATIONS
(June 22, 2006)
[It] started off as a humanitarian mission and it changed into a nation-building
mission, and that's where the mission went wrong. The mission was changed. And
as a result, our nation paid a price. And so I don't think our troops ought to
be used for what's called nation-building. I think our troops ought to be
used to fight and win war. I think our troops ought to be used to help overthrow
the dictator when it's in our best interests. But in this case it was a
nation-building exercise, and same with Haiti. I wouldn't have supported either.
....
But we can't be all things to all people in the world, Jim. And I think that's
where maybe the vice president and I begin to have some differences. I'm worried
about overcommitting our military around the world. I want to be judicious in
its use. You mentioned Haiti. I wouldn't have sent troops to Haiti. I didn't
think it was a mission worthwhile. It was a nation building mission, and it was
not very successful. It cost us billions, a couple billions of dollars, and I'm
not so sure democracy is any better off in Haiti than it was before.
Speaker: President George W. Bush
Title: Second Presidential Debate
Location: Winston-Salem, NC
Date: 10/11/2000
Perhaps September 11, 2001, exactly 11 months
later to the day, changed the administration's whole nation building
perspective. But not
according to the President's former Treasury Secretary.
Cost of the Iraq war to date?
Estimates vary, but,
conservatively, somewhere over a quarter of a trillion
dollars (This
site keeps a running count, based upon Congressional
Appropriations. Current figure as of today, June 22, is approximately
$290,370,000.00). No price can be put on our freedom and national
security. But the real question, considering that our enemy is al-Qaeda and not
Iraq, is; could that money have been better spent in the
broader war on
terror?
Permalink
THE LIFE OF REILLY, CLEVER FOX EXHIBIT A: INSANE, CLOSET MUSSOLINI FAN, OR JUST
"FAIR AND BALANCED" ?
(June 19, 2006) As the 9/11 Commission and Senate Intelligence Committee
reports
both concluded, Iraq was not connected to the attacks of September 11. Prior to
our military effort there, it was also largely unconnected to radical Islamic
extremism, the wellspring of the anti-Western international terrorism movement.
We went
in, officially and ostensibly, because we thought that Iraq had WMD (although by
the spring of 2003 when we went, that was being
called
into
question
by the inspectors over there). We
went in to create a democracy, which is both admirable, and interesting, given
that we are starting to
undermine some
of
the
principles
of
Democracy here at home.
And we
went in because Hussein was a "brutal, ruthless dictator who threatened world
peace."
If this
doesn't bring it all into focus, nothing can: Right wing extremist Bill
O'Reilly, whose poses as a journalist, and whose cable show reaches far times
the number of the far more moderate
Keith
Olbermann on MSNBC's
Countdown
airing in the same time slot,
allegedly had this to say about Iraq on his
radio show today:
Now to me,
they’re not fighting it hard enough. See, if I’m president, I got probably
another 50-60 thousand with orders to shoot on sight anybody violating curfews.
Shoot them on sight. That’s me… President O’Reilly… Curfew in Ramadi, seven
o’clock at night. You’re on the street? You’re dead. I shoot you right between
the eyes. Ok? That’s how I run that country. Just like Saddam ran it. Saddam
didn’t have explosions - he didn’t have bombers. Did he? because if you got out
of line, you're dead.
Now… is that the kind of country I want to have for Iraq? No… But you have to
have that for a few months to stabilize the situation so the Iraqi government
can get organized, can get security in place and can get the structure going.
And what
was the difference between the argument for "a couple months" and the countless
years that Hussein used such arguments to keep the very same stability that
existed prior to this action?
Permalink
ARLEN SPECTER: SIGN OF THE TIMES
(June 17, 2006) (Part I of II) The
underlying story has not been sufficiently highlighted,
or clarified, in the media. But Senator Arlen
Specter (R-PA) has been playing a pivotal role in the
NSA surveillance case, for better or for worse.
Specter, a sometimes moderate conservative in a Senate replete with right
wing conservatives (and who is portrayed by the mainstream media as a
moderate -- the same media that is loathe to paint anything congressionally in
colors other than "conservative," "liberal," or "moderate," no
matter how out of touch with reality) has been serving as an apt symbol for our
times: protesting against clandestine practices by the Bush administration that
have been questioned, and openly protested even by
staunch conservatives as being in violation of the
separation of powers clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
In late April, Specter,
asked
"where is
the outrage." As noted
at
that time, he asked this:
Not necessarily because the program unambiguously
violated the
Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA), not necessarily because the program
unambiguously
violates the Constitution,
and not necessarily because the
program was clandestinely authorized (and had to be discovered via leaks, which
the administration now also condemns and ostensibly wants to imprison
journalists for), but because, on top of all this, the
administration
has
not even been
forthcoming
about
the
program itself.
Developments
since
have rendered the story even
more
consequential.
And last week, according to CNN
News, Specter
finally warned of a "constitutional confrontation"
with the Bush administration over it.
He reportedly had enough votes on the
Judiciary Committee to press the administration into at least answering
questions about the NSA programs, but apparently, some last minute
behind the scenes lobbying by Vice President Dick Cheney, unbeknownst to
Specter, altered the
outlook.
In response, he wrote a three page
letter to the
Vice President, dated June 7:
I am taking this unusual step in
writing to you to establish a public record. It is neither pleasant nor easy to
raise these issues with the Administration of my own party (emphasis
added), but I do so because of their importance.
No one has been more supportive of a strong national defense and tough action
against terrorism than I. However, the Administration's continuing position on
the NSA electronic surveillance program rejects the historical constitutional
practice of judicial approval of warrants before wiretapping and denigrates the
constitutional authority and responsibility of the Congress and specifically the
Judiciary Committee to conduct oversight on constitutional issues.
Specter's letter continues:
The Administration's
obligation to provide sufficient information to the Judiciary Committee to allow
the Committee to perform its constitutional oversight is not satisfied by the
briefings to the Congressional Intelligence Committees. On that subject, it
should be noted that this Administration, as well as previous Administrations,
has failed to comply with the requirements of the National Security Act of 1947
to keep the House and Senate Intelligence Committees fully informed.
(emphasis added).
In condemning past administrations as well, Specter leaves out
that prior administrations did not
expressly violate and
in effect wholly repudiate sweeping national statutes, such as
FISA,
in the
process.
The letter to the Vice President went on to address the telephone call database
issue, and Cheney's behind
the Scenes lobbying (which apparently left Specter none too happy):
When there were public disclosures
about the telephone companies turning over millions of customer records
involving allegedly billions of telephone calls, the Judiciary Committee
scheduled a hearing of the chief executive officers of the four telephone
companies involved. When some of the companies requested subpoenas so they would
not be volunteers, we responded that we would honor that request. Later, the
companies indicated that if the hearing were closed to the public, they would
not need subpoenas.
I then sought Committee approval, which is necessary under our rules, to have a
closed session to protect the confidentiality of any classified information and
scheduled a Judiciary Committee Executive Session for 2:30 P.M. yesterday to get
that approval.
I was advised yesterday that you had called Republican members of the Judiciary
Committee lobbying them to oppose any Judiciary Committee hearing
(emphasis added), even a closed one, with the telephone companies. I was further
advised that you told those Republican members that the telephone companies
had been instructed not to provide any information (emphasis added) to the
Committee as they were prohibited from disclosing classified information.
I was surprised, to say the least, that you sought to influence, really
determine, the action of the Committee without calling me first, or at least
calling me at some point. This was especially perplexing since we both attended
the Republican Senators caucus lunch yesterday and I walked directly in front of
you on at least two occasions enroute from the buffet to my table.
It's classified, but yet the telephone companies
have the information as well?
Further in the letter, Specter
addressed the NSA surveillance question directly:
It has been my hope that there could be an accommodation between Congress's
Article I authority on oversight and the President's constitutional authority
under Article II. There is no doubt that the NSA program violates the
Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act which sets forth the exclusive procedure for domestic
wiretaps which requires the approval of the FISA Court. It may be that the
President has inherent authority under Article II to trump that statute but the
President does not have a blank check and the determination on whether the
President has such Article II power calls for a balancing test which requires
knowing what the surveillance program constitutes.
His analysis here stops well short of being
correct. Article I authority on oversight, for example, is far deeper than the Senator
implies, and extremely specific.
Section
1 therein, states, in full, "All
legislative Powers (emphasis added) herein granted
shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a
Senate and a House of Representatives."
The President has
no such authority under our Constitution to merely set aside laws in their entire
application (in effect substituting for the Legislature under Article I), and
has never, in our entire history. (This is also in stark contrast with opposition to the application of a particular law
in a case specific, isolated instance, in
very specific circumstances, for specific reasons -- and with a record for
oversight and review -- as, for example, in the most extreme of circumstances, Lincoln did
after the South had succeeded from the Nation, and as Clinton did to eventually search the
residence of CIA agent
Aldrich Ames,
who was subsequently convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.) The
implicit argument that the administration nevertheless does have such authority
-- reducing Congress to an ultimate body of advisement, in
essence turns the Constitution upside down on its head. Again, this is aptly
illustrated in the
link above,
and in this December 17
piece by Glenn Greenwald, written the day after the
NY Times
officially
broke the clandestine wiretap story.
An
article appearing the same day in the NY Times, nevertheless, put
forth a veritable litany of circular logic in support of the program: "The
President wants to use his 'full authority,'" the President has "authority under
the "Executive Powers clause of Article II as 'Commander in Chief,'" "Congress
authorized the action in its resolution of September 14, 2001, when it directed
the use of all 'necessary and appropriate' force."
These
arguments are gone over in detail in the above links, and illustrate
the degree to which by using vague terminology and rhetorical logic, almost
anything can be argued and made to sound reasonable. The phrase "well, the
President is just using his Presidential authority," for instance, can in effect become a
catch all for the reality that "The executive branch can expressly violate the
Constitution, and in effect do whatever it wants -- and keep it secret so there
is never any basis for review with respect to what was actually done and for what
purpose -- so long as it says that it was done in the interests of 'national
security.'"
Consider the last and most substantive argument put forth above, as an example of the type of assertions that have been
offered in support:
"Congress authorized the action in its resolution of September 14, 2001, when it
directed the use of all 'necessary and appropriate' force." This argument has
been made repeatedly by the administration, and apart from some Op eds here and
there, has been put forth by the media as seemingly reasonable, even though it is
among the most basic of legal principles (if not outright common sense) that a
general provision, unless expressly so stating, does not authorize the violation
of specific prohibitions. In other words, a law that says "get this done,"
does not ever mean "by breaking preexisting law." As conservative
commentator George Will aptly
put it:
The next time a president asks Congress to pass
something akin to what Congress passed on Sept. 14, 2001 -- the Authorization
for Use of Military Force (AUMF) -- the resulting legislation might be longer
than Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past." Congress, remembering what is
happening today, might stipulate all the statutes and constitutional
understandings that it does not (emphasis in the original) intend the act
to repeal or supersede.
As if that wasn't enough, the administration has made this
claim -- and the media has again repeatedly and duly reported it as reasonable
-- that
the AUMF authorized this blanket disregard for the law as set forth under
FISA even though, again as noted, the
USA Patriot act, which
amended FISA, was passed (and signed into law by the President) after
the
AUMF, and which as amended
after the AUMF was passed and signed into law by the President expressly forbids the precise
activity which the administration nevertheless clandestinely authorized.
As the numerous links above illustrate, the arguments with respect to the
Constitution are similarly tautological, illogical, or merely circular in nature.
Greenwald, in his
piece
written just a day after the story first broke, puts
the fundamental underlying principles best. More importantly, these points
are as applicable today as they were back in December, and as applicable as they will be
tomorrow, next year, and fifty years from now. While times change, the most
basic principles of democracy and the separation of checked powers upon which
our government was founded, do not:
The notion that one of the three branches of our Government can claim power
unchecked by the
[other two] branches is precisely what the Founders sought, first
and foremost, to preclude. And the fear that a U.S. President would attempt to
seize power unchecked by the law or by the other branches – i.e., that
the Executive would seize the powers of the British King – was the driving force
behind the clear and numerous constitutional limitations placed on Executive
power. It is these very limitations which the Bush Administration is claiming
that it has the power to disregard because the need for enhanced national
security in time of war vests the President with unchecked power.
But that theory of the Executive unconstrained by law is completely repulsive to
the founding principles of the country, as well as to the promises made by the
Founders in order to extract consent from a monarchy-fearing public to the
creation of executive power vested in a single individual. The notion that all
of that can be just whimsically tossed aside whenever the nation experiences
external threats is as contrary to the country’s founding principles as it is
dangerous.
It cannot be said that the Founders were unaware of the potential for national
emergencies and external threats. They engaged in a war with the British which
was at least as much of an existential threat to the Republic as those posed by
9/11 and related threats of Islamic extremism. Notwithstanding those threats,
the Founders, in creating an Executive branch, sought first and foremost to
ensure that the President could never wield unchecked powers which would exist
above and separate from Congressionally enacted laws.
Yet that is exactly what the administration has done, and which
Specter has been strangely ambivalent on, even while most of the rest of the
rather far right wing current Congress has been relatively silent given the
gravity of the Constitutional issue. At the same time, much of the mainstream
media continually
applauds
attempts at "compromise" even though on the most basic principles
of democracy, the term is virtually a non sequitur:
Think of as akin to the right to
vote. Say that the executive branch decided that anybody who
disagreed with the Administration's policies was not allowed to vote, because this
might help vote out of office those who would "correctly apply the Constitution
to fully protect us and our national security." The media would report the
issues this way: "The administration asserts this authority under the U.S.
Constitution, meanwhile, some civil liberties groups and a few outspoken
democrats and republicans, argue otherwise, and while their intent seems to be
valid, they won't even compromise on the issue."
The analogy seems extreme, but it is exact. The
discretion to do "one thing" in the interest of "national security" is no more
constitutionally valid, if it violates the separation of powers clauses of the
Constitution, because it seems "reasonable" to some people, than the discretion
to do "another thing" which seems (as in the above analogy) to be patently
unreasonable on its face. The principles are identical. Yet the media
somehow views the idea of checks and balances upon which our government was
founded, as suddenly, in essence, a "flexible principle," and one that seeks
"compromise."
There is only one possible resolution. Either we have a system
of checks and balances, or we don't. The executive branch either has the power to
do what it wants with respect to protecting "national security" (similar
to the
powers of a monarch) or it doesn't, and must operate within the constraints set
by the people of the United States through their elected officials, namely,
Congress, and under the Constitution itself, including the Bill of Rights
therein.
Following Specter's letter, which was largely
reported to have denoted a larger break with the administration than it actually
did, the record, as Specter seemingly flip flops on the peripheral issues once again, becomes even more
dangerously ambiguous. At the same time, leading media coverage on the issue continues to
be poor.
(Part II of this piece to follow).
Permalink
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS, AND FAKE NEWS STORIES
(June 11, 2006) George Mason, who drafted the Virginia Declaration of
Rights in 1776, therein
stated:
The freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and can
never be restrained but by despotic governments.
As reported by
several
sources (but apparently not much in the mainstream media), the FCC is apparently
investigating numerous television stations for broadcasting segments produced by
corporations and the Bush administration, and passing them off as regular news
pieces without any disclosure of their source.
The FCC investigation was allegedly prompted by a
report by a media group called the
Center
for Media and Democracy. The report itself seems reasonably
credible.
The full (lengthy) report is
here.
THE DEATH OF aL-ZARQAWI
(June 8, 2006) We
may have foolishly
forgone some opportunities
to capture or eliminate terrorist leader Abu Musab
al-Zarwawi, but his elimination
in an air
strike
yesterday, is
welcome news.
Brookings
Institute Scholar and noted foreign policy and international
security expert
Ivo
Daalder, however, says we should not read
too much into it:
What we have in Iraq today -- and have had for
many, many months -- is not a traditional insurgency or even wanton terrorism,
but a large-scale sectarian conflict. Much of the killing in Iraq today isn't
the result of Zarqawi's men, but of Sunni and Shite militias engaged in a big
fight for control of neighborhoods, towns, cities, and the resources they
control. The vast majority of the 1,400 bodies that showed up in the Baghdad
morgue last month (that's right: 1,400 bodies -- or nearly 50 people each and
every day!) were killed by militias of one kind or another. The guys responsible
for these deaths are not fighting an existing government (which is what an
insurgency implies) but they're fighting to determine who governs Iraq and what
spoils will fall to which group of Iraqis.
(Updated June 9) The Washington Post, a staunch
backer of the military action in Iraq, and of a continued and committed presence
in order to ensure the new government's sucess therein, took a slightly more
upbeat
tone:
THE KILLING of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of
al-Qaeda in Iraq, is a big gain for the U.S. mission in Iraq and the country's
new government, the more so because it comes at a critical moment. With one
airstrike, U.S. forces deprived Iraq's insurgency -- diverse and fragmented
though it is -- of its sole widely recognized leader, probably its biggest
fundraiser and recruiter, and the organizer of some of the most spectacular and
demoralizing attacks in Iraq, from the bombing of the United Nations
headquarters three years ago to the beheadings of foreign hostages to the
massacres of Shiite worshipers in Najaf and Karbala. Although al-Qaeda in Iraq
makes up only a part of the Iraqi insurgency, it has been the organization most
intent on fomenting sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites; the elimination of
its leader will surely contribute to stanching that civil conflict.
Perhaps a;-Zarqawi played a larger role in inspiring
that sectarian violence than Daalder implies. Perhaps not. Either way, it's still a good
step, and one that should have been taken
long ago.
Permalink
MORE KENNEDY: ROBERT F, JR.
(June 8, 2006) Sometimes Kennedy makes some fairly good
points, that warrant wider coverage
than they receive.
These
perspectives on the environment, from a little
publicized interview at
Grist magazine, are as applicable
today as ever:
Q:
So is the culprit free-market capitalism?
A:
No! The best thing that could happen to the environment
is free-market capitalism. In a true free-market
economy, you can't make yourself rich without making
your neighbors rich and without enriching your
community. In a true free-market economy, you get
efficiencies and efficiency means the elimination of
waste. Waste is pollution. So in true free-market
capitalism, you eliminate pollution and you properly
value our natural resources so you won't cut them down.
What polluters do is escape the discipline of the free
market. You show me a polluter, I'll show you a subsidy
-- a fat cat who's using political clout to escape the
discipline of the free market.
...
Q:
You are an avid fisher and
president of Waterkeeper Alliance. Do water issues hit home for you even more
than air issues?
A: They
hit home quite literally. It's now unsafe to eat any freshwater fish in
Connecticut because of mercury contamination. The New York City reservoir system
is so contaminated with mercury that no fish in them can be safely eaten. Most
of the fish in New York state can no longer safely be eaten. All the fish in 17
states can no longer safely be eaten because of mercury contamination.
I have so much mercury in my body right now, having tested it recently, that if
I were a woman of childbearing years, my child, according to Dr. David
Carpenter, the national authority on mercury contamination, would have cognitive
impairment -- permanent IQ loss. I said to Carpenter when he told me this, "You
mean might have?" He said no, the science is very certain on this. She would
have. One out of every six American women of childbearing years now has so much
mercury in her body that her children are at risk for permanent IQ loss, kidney
and liver damage, blindness, and possibly autism because of the mercury. And
this of course is connected to air issues, too. Half of the mercury emissions in
our country are coming from those coal-burning plants in the Ohio Valley.
...
Q:
You are well-known for
converting celebrities and politicians to the environmental cause through
speeches in which you frame environmentalism as a civil-rights issue. Let's
start there. How is environmentalism a civil-rights issue?
A: The environment is the
most important, the most fundamental, civil-rights issue. In the word ecology,
the root "eco" is the Greek word for home. It's really about how we manage our
home. The environmental movement is a struggle over the control of the commons
-- the publicly owned resources, the things that cannot be reduced to private
property -- the air, the water, the wandering animals, the public land, the
wildlife, the fisheries. The things that from the beginning of time have always
been part of the public trust.
...
Q:
So you're saying
free-market economies have to be controlled by regulations and strong central
government?
A: Laissez-faire
capitalism does not work, particularly in the commons. Individuals pursuing
their own self-interest will devour the commons very quickly. That's the
economic law -- the tragedy of the commons. You have to force companies to
internalize costs. All of the federal environmental laws are designed to restore
free-market capitalism in America in this regard.
Q:
So you consider yourself a
crusader for the free market first and an environmentalist second?
A: I don't even consider
myself an environmentalist anymore. I'm a free-marketeer. I go out into the
marketplace and I catch the polluters who are cheating the free market and I
say, "We are going to force you to internalize your costs the same way you are
internalizing your profit." That's what the federal environmental laws allow us
to do: restore real property rights in America. You cannot get sustained
environmental protection under any system but a democracy. There's a direct
correlation around the planet between the level of tyranny in various countries
and the level of environmental degradation.
Q:
Is
Bush's anti-environmentalism simply practical politics -- payback to corporate
contributors -- or is it ideological?
A: There's a history since
1980 of a link between [anti-environmentalism] and the fundamental Christian
right (which I don't even consider Christianity but Christian heresy) called
dominion theology. It's driven by people like James Watt, who claimed that the
Bible justified environmental destruction in the same way that white people in
the South used to claim that the Bible justified slavery. God gave man dominion
over nature, and that means man should dominate and destroy nature. But of
course other people read in the Bible myriad mandates that we care for nature.
It is not ours to own but ours to keep as a gardener would keep for the owner,
who is God.
...
Q:
How so?
A: Industry wants us reading
those books that say "50 things you can do to help the environment" because it
distracts you from what you ought to be doing, which is joining an environmental
group and voting for politicians who support the environment and fighting
against the lobbyists on Capitol Hill. I mean, you can go out and buy a car that
gets 40 miles per gallon, but it's not going to change the planet. What's going
to change the planet is if we have somebody standing up to the auto-industry
lobbyists on Capitol Hill to pass standards that require that every car in this
country gets 40 mpg. I try to focus on that part, not on how individuals are
incorporating environmental ethics into their lives. I think it's important for
people to do, but to the extent that it's distracting you from participating in
the political process, it's not a good thing.
It wasn't covered very much by
the media, but
as noted below, the current administration's environmental policies have been
extremely
poor. Kennedy tried to
address this also, in a way that both the democrats,
conservation minded republicans, and conservation groups, all effectively failed to do in 2004:
Q: Your
upcoming book,
Crimes Against Nature,
addresses many of these issues. Is the larger mission of your book to help oust
Bush?
A: It's to help the voting public
recognize the truth. We win this battle when the American public knows what's
going on. You can't talk about the environment today honestly in any context
without being critical of this president. A few years ago, if you asked the
principal environmental leaders in our country, "What's the greatest threat to
our global environment?," you would have gotten a range of answers from global
warming to acid rain, overpopulation, etc. But today, they will all tell you the
same thing: It's George W. Bush. There is no other issue today."
Most of the public went to the voting booths in
November, 2004, largely unaware of the environmental record of the current
administration, just as they did with respect to many of the critical facts surrounding
opposing presidential candidate John
Kerry and
the Iraq war.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., THE ENVIRONMENT, AND THE UNEXAMINED
QUESTION FROM 2004
(June 6, 2006) Robert F. Kennedy,
Jr., who wrote a notoriously overlooked
book
on the Bush Administration's
environmental policies,
has also suggested that "many republicans are democrats,
they just don't know it." This has been suggested
elsewhere.
Kennedy puts it more
eloquently:
Every poll shows that both Republicans and
Democrats want strong environmental laws, up around 75 percent of the public,
and there's almost no difference between the parties. Those polls are confirmed
by my own anecdotal evidence. I speak all around the country on environmental
issues. Three weeks ago I spoke at a petroleum and gas industry conference, and
I got a standing ovation from the audience when I told them about Bush's
environmental record. And I'll give you another example: I was recently in
Richmond, Va., speaking to the Women's Club, which is solidly Republican -- I
was told that none of its members had voted for a Democrat since Jefferson
Davis. And I got a standing ovation there, too. It's because most Republicans
are actually Democrats; they just don't know it. If they knew what was happening
in the White House, they would be angry, they would be furious. And when they
are told what is happening, they get angry. And that's the reaction I get all
around the country. If we get the message out, we win.
Asked why there wasn't much outcry about the Bush
Administration environmental policies, Kennedy flatly stated;
"The primary reason is it's not being covered
in
the news."
A few days ago, in a copiously footnoted piece in
Rolling Stone, Kennedy explored the
unanswered questions from the 2004 Presidential election:
By midnight, the
official tallies showed a decisive lead for
George Bush -- and the next day, lacking enough
legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry
conceded. Republicans derided anyone who
expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut
cases in ''tinfoil hats,'' while the national
media, with few exceptions, [did
little] to question the validity
of the election. The Washington Post
immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as
''conspiracy theories,''(1) and The New York
Times declared that ''there is no evidence
of vote theft or errors on a large scale.''(2)
But despite the
media blackout, indications continued to emerge
that something deeply troubling had taken place
in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American
voters living abroad(3) never received their
ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4)
-- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a
state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas
registrations.(5) A consulting firm called
Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the
Republican National Committee to register voters
in six battleground states,(6) was discovered
shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New
Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8)
malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to
properly register a presidential vote on more
than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to
the federal commission charged with implementing
election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots
were spoiled by faulty voting equipment --
roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)
The reports were
especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical
battleground state that clinched Bush's victory
in the electoral college. Officials there purged
tens of thousands of eligible voters from the
rolls, neglected to process registration cards
generated by Democratic voter drives,
shortchanged Democratic precincts when they
allocated voting machines and illegally derailed
a recount that could have given Kerry the
presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church
in Miami County recorded an impossibly high
turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling
place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an
equally impossible turnout of only seven
percent. In Warren County, GOP election
officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist
threat to bar the media from monitoring the
official vote count.(11)
Any election, of
course, will have anomalies. America's voting
system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run
mostly by county and city officials. ''We didn't
have one election for president in 2004,'' says
Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for
Democracy and Election Management at American
University. ''We didn't have fifty elections. We
actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000
independent, quasi-sovereign counties and
municipalities.''
But what is most
anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was
their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without
exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited
George Bush. After carefully examining the
evidence, I've become convinced that the
president's party mounted a massive, coordinated
campaign to subvert the will of the people in
2004. Across the country, Republican election
officials and party stalwarts employed a wide
range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix
the election. A review of the available data
reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000
voters, the overwhelming majority of them
Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots
or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12)
-- more than enough to shift the results of an
election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See
Ohio's Missing Votes)
In what may be the single most astounding fact
from the election, one in every four Ohio
citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed
up at the polls only to discover that they were
not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts
to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats
eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn't even
take into account the troubling evidence of
outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of
80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for
Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000
votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the
White House.(15).
Again the full
article, well worth reading, is
here.
RESTRICTING PUBLIC ACCESS TO PUBLIC
INFORMATION
(June 2, 2006) Salmon are now the latest threat to national security.
The Bush Administration has continually pursued
policies aimed at restricting access to, and the flow of, information.
As Representative Henry Waxman, (D-CA) put as
early as several years ago, the Bush Administration:
Has repeatedly rewritten laws
and changed practices to reduce public and congressional
scrutiny of its activities. The cumulative effect is an
unprecedented assault on the laws that make our government open
and accountable."
A related development has been the excessive use
by the current administration of so called "Presidential signing statements."
Not only has President Bush used such tactics to change congressional laws far
more than most of his predecessors combined, he has often
used them
in a
fundamentally different
manner.
For example, one of the administration's
signing statements changed a law that said
this:
When requested, scientific information ''prepared
by government researchers and scientists shall be transmitted [to Congress]
uncensored and without delay."
To one that said this:
The President can tell researchers to withhold any
information from Congress if he decides its disclosure could impair foreign
relations, national security, or the workings of the executive branch.
Of course, "workings of the executive branch,"
ultimately means any information that the administration wishes to withhold.
This changes a congressional law to the effect that scientific information shall
be transmitted to Congress, to one that says "at the executive branch's
discretion," essentially rendering the law itself null and void.
A similar, far more egregious example of the
excessive use of such signing statements, is found
here.
The general, and very anti-democratic "information control" approach of the Bush
Administration has affected topics far and wide. For example, the administration
has reportedly sought to even
control what government
climate
change information is publicly shared, and has even allegedly
altered the
accuracy of related reports.
Now such heavy handed approach to information sharing apparently even extends to
salmon. The fish. In an article on the bottom of page a17, Washington Post
reporter Blaine Harden
writes:
The Washington office of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- the agency
responsible for protecting endangered salmon -- has instructed
its representatives and scientists in the West to route media
questions about salmon back to headquarters. Only three
people in the entire agency, all of them political appointees,
are now authorized to speak of salmon, according to a NOAA
employee who has been silenced on the fish (emphasis added).
The order was issued the day after an article appeared last
month in The Washington Post quoting federal technocrats making
positive statements about two recent decisions -- one by a
federal judge, the other by federal scientists -- that
challenged previous Bush administration policy about protecting
salmon in the troubled Klamath River, which flows out of Oregon
into California.
The underlying presumption in all of this is that
the public can not be trusted with even basic science information, or be trusted
to know what information is relevant.
A lot of countries have been founded upon this
principle. Just none of them democracies.
Permalink
CHECKS AND BALANCES UNDER OUR CONSTITUTION?
WHAT CHECKS AND BALANCES?
(June 2, 2006) As
reported by the Boston Globe:
Two senior Democratic House members yesterday
demanded that President Bush withdraw his assertion that he can
ignore portions of the USA Patriot Act
calling on him to provide periodic reports to Congress on how new
law-enforcement tactics are being used.
Representatives Jane Harman of California and John
Conyers of Michigan -- the ranking Democrats on the Intelligence and Judiciary
Committees, respectively -- sent a
letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
asking that Bush follow the law.
''We ask that the administration immediately rescind this statement and abide by
the law," the lawmakers wrote. ''Many members who supported the final law
did so based upon the guarantee of additional reporting and oversight. The
administration cannot, after the fact, unilaterally repeal provisions of the law
implementing such oversight."
After some lawmakers raised concerns that the Patriot Act may pose a threat to
civil liberties, Congress added a series of new oversight provisions to it. The
law requires the Justice Department to keep track of how the FBI is using its
expanded powers to monitor suspects and seize papers during counterterrorism
investigations. The law required the administration to give Congress that
information by certain dates.
But after Bush signed the Patriot Act reauthorization on March 9, he issued a
signing statement -- an official document in which a president lays out his
understanding of the law -- asserting that he had the authority to withhold
the information from Congress if he decided that disclosing it would
interfere with foreign relations, national security, or executive branch
operations (emphasis all added).
The Phase "executive branch operations," is, of
course, a catch all meaning, "if we decide not to share it." In other
words, a law gets passed because oversight provisions are put in, and then the
administration simply ignores those oversight provisions.
A call to Conyers' office confirmed that as of
today, over two months later, there has been no response, directly, or
indirectly in terms of the administration's stance.
Permalink
MAY 2006
ANOTHER UN-AMERICAN SIGN OF THE TIMES
(May 31, 2006) The new conservatively revamped U.S. Supreme
Court joined in yesterday, and helped
support the increasing power of the federal government to quell the free flow of
information. In a mildly bizarre but perhaps predictable ruling, the five
member majority seemed to forget that government workers, unlike corporate
workers, work first and foremost for the people that they help govern.
The Court, essentially likening them to private employees, ruled yesterday that
governmental employees don't have free speech rights for what they say as part
of their jobs.
At first glance, this seems to make sense. Justice Ke nnedy,
writing for
the majority, expressed it this way:
"When public employees make statements pursuant to
their
official duties, [they] are not speaking as citizens for First
Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate
their communications from employer discipline."
"When an employee speaks as a citizen addressing a matter of
public concern, the First Amendment requires a delicate balancing of the
competing interests surrounding the speech and its consequences. When, however,
the employee is simply performing his or her job duties, there is no warrant for
a similar degree of scrutiny."
This approach might appear to make the most sense. Except
for the fact that government workers "work for" the people first and the
government apparatus that enables them second, unlike any other worker in
America. Therefore, with respect to protections that enable them to most
effectively do their job, they are citizens first, and government workers second,
even in the context of their employment.
It is undeniable that being subject to potential demotion or other worker
related punishment for speaking out, will have a chilling effect on robust
disagreement and criticism. This is fine in the non governmental world, where,
on all matters otherwise legal, the only duty is to the company. But in
the government world, that duty is to the citizenry, and only to the government
in so far as that duty enables the government to serve its duty to the
citizenry.
While the Court's ruling may stifle a few
otherwise frivolous lawsuits by disgruntled government employees claiming 1st
Amendment rights, the greater good -- in an America founded upon the principles
of limited, open government -- is the right of the citizenry being governed to
have its employees ultimately answerable to them, and not to their internal
government bosses.
In essence, in American Government, the process comes first, efficiency comes
in second. If some government worker speaking out against what she views
as poor or incorrect implementation of government policy, or even against that
policy itself, in that instance somehow threatens efficient administration, that should come in second
every time to the right of the American people to know, without potential
recriminations against the governmental employee. Apparently, however, not to
the new Supreme Court Majority.
Permalink
SPIN DOESN'T GET MUCH MORE SPUN THAN THIS
(May 31, 2006) NBC Chief White House Correspondent David Gregory recently sat
down with the President,
and, among other things, they discussed his low ratings. As MSNBC
reports:
GREGORY: let me ask you about your leadership. In
the most recent survey, your disapproval rating is now one point lower than
Richard Nixon's before he resigned the presidency. You're laughing, but...
BUSH: I'm not laughing, I just...
GREGORY: Why do you think that is?
BUSH: Because we're at war, and war unsettles people. We got-listen, we've
got a great economy. We've added 5.2 million jobs in the last
two-and-a-half years. but there's a-but people are unsettled. They
don't look at the economy and say life is good. They know we're at war and
I'm not surprised that people are unsettled because of war.
The enemy has got a powerful tool, and that is to
get on your TV screen by killing innocent people, and my job is to continue to
remind the people it's worth it. We're not going to retreat hastily. You know,
we're not going to pull out of there before the job is done and we've got a plan
for victory.
The fact is, with respect to the
economy,
most of that growth has benefited a very small percentage of Americans.
Yet it has been spurred in part by excessive deficit spending, that the bulk of
Americans currently pay large federal debt interest payments on, and bear the
full responsibility for.
With respect to war images and ratings, shortly
after 9/11, the most horrific images on our TV Screens in U.S. history helped
catapult these same presidential ratings to exorbitantly high levels, and after
the beginning of the war in Iraq, the President's ratings were again fairly
high.
It may be hard not to feel bad for the President in moments like this interview.
But the
realities of this
extreme right wing
administration are fundamentally changing America. Whether one wants
to blame the Bush administration for doing what it is they believe they were
elected to do (as democrats, and most liberals like to focus on), the Democrats,
for doing such a poor job in opposition, the current far right wing Congress
that has accommodated and continues to accommodate much of the Bush
administration agenda, or the media, for doing a poor job covering many of the
most controversial issues, the fact remains that America is suddenly on a fast
track towards something
very
different than what our founding fathers envisioned when they
penned the Declaration of Independence and wrote our
Constitution.
Permalink
WHEN EVEN THE LIBRARIANS GET MAD; STOP, AND
LISTEN
(May 31, 2006) From The Associated Press, as reported by
ABC NEWS:
Four librarians spoke out for the first time on Tuesday after being subjected to
a months-long gag order when the FBI demanded records about library patrons
under the Patriot Act.
U.S. District Judge Janet Hall ruled last year that
the gag order should be lifted, saying it unfairly prevented the librarians from
participating in a debate over how the Patriot Act should be rewritten. But it
wasn't until April that prosecutors dropped an appeal of that order.
The librarians, at a press conference organized by the American Civil Liberties
Union which represented them did little to hide their displeasure at being told
by the government to keep quiet.
"I am incensed that the government uses provisions of the Patriot Act to justify
unrestrained and secret access to the records of libraries," said George
Christian of Windsor, Conn., executive director of the Library Connection, Inc.,
a consortium of libraries in the central part of the state.
Christian noted that the gag order was lifted only after Congress voted to
reauthorize the Patriot Act.
"The fact that I can speak now is a little like being permitted to call the fire
department only after a building has burned to the ground," he said.
Peter Chase, the vice president of Library Connection and director of the
Plainville Public Library, said as a librarian he has a duty "to speak out about
any infringement to the intellectual freedom of library patrons. But until
today, my own government prevented me from fulfilling that duty."
Nothing to add.
RESTRAINT ON IRAN - A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
(May 28, 2006)
It has suddenly become fairly popular to jump onto the "We have to do something about Iran"
Bandwagon.
True, the Iranian President is a maniac who believes he has a mandate from God.
But many outside of the U.S. believe the same about our
President.
And Iran does pose a problem. A
problem whose day was inevitable, with
the increasing ubiquity of nuclear WMD proliferation. But it is important to
remember that from their perspective, Iran believes that the world does not have
the authority to dictate to them.
Understanding this will help us in
dealing with this problem intelligently.
It is against global interests,
and against our interests, for
the continued
development of
nuclear capability -- particularly within those countries with no
already established nuclear capability, and within those countries with a more
aggressive pattern of behavior. (This latter point is yet another reason
why it was so important to communicate to the rest of the world exactly what we
are doing in Iraq -- that is, liberating Iraq from a repressive regime, and
temporarily assisting the new government with security, nothing more.) The fact
that such nuclear development is against global interests, yet is so difficult
to contain, is also one of the major reasons why it is extremely foolish to hint
at the possibility of using even limited nuclear bunker busting weapons. Ever.
Let alone against Iran. It undermines credibility on the key message that
nuclear weaponry can not be used, and therefore does not need to be developed.
But these considerations do not necessarily mean that now is the best time for
playing hardball with Iran. For one thing, there is the slightly sensitive
consideration of whether we currently have the reasoned, contemplative, and
appropriately restrained leadership to best engage Iran, whether it be
diplomatically or otherwise.
By the handling of the Iraq war, and the gross miscalculations made therein, the
present administration has established a track record of strategic
miscalculation and misunderstanding that ought to give pause to any thought for
aggressive action, even were there a good case for it.
But there is not a good case for it. Iran does not pose a direct threat to us.
Iran will probably not pose a direct threat to us. Additionally, acting as
unilateral military police keeper will only further undermine our authority, our
standing in the world, inspire greater and more extreme opposition to our
country and its policies, and reduce, not increase, our own security.
Multilateral action with the full support and active participation of the entire
United Nations security council, on the other hand, may raise a different set of
considerations.
Until such time as those become relevant, we need to focus on the war on
terrorism, and, secondarily, rebuilding our standing in the world.
Remember, al-Qaeda attacked us directly on September 11, 2001, wants to again,
and has no nation, sovereign identity, or even real estate holding it back.
Permalink
BACKWARDS ENFORCEMENT
Article I,
Section I of the U.S. Constitution states that
"All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the
United States." Article II,
Section 3 states that the President shall "shall take Care that
the Laws be faithfully executed."
Thus, for the executive branch, rather than take care that those laws be
faithfully executed, to authorize a program that
expressly
violates those laws, is a rather extreme step. But the
administration has, apparently, gone a few steps further.
The FBI is now allegedly
seeking to interview parties of Congress to
see if they leaked information regarding the administration's "potentially"
unconstitutional NSA wiretap program (the same Constitution that
the administration
now argues that only it, in essence, has
the authority to interpret, and to apply.)
The administration engaged in a potentially unconstitutional activity, in
express violation of a statute, and now it is using its own enforcement powers,
not to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" under Article II,
but to take care that Congress does and did not disclose potential
violations of those laws, and potential constitutional violations, to the people
of the United States.
Permalink
THROWING OUT THE CONSTITUTION
(May 25, 2006) Reuters reports that the Executive
Branch, having "potentially"
violated
the separation of powers clauses of the
Constitution, is now also the sole arbiter as to whether or not it has.
Which, of course, would mean that there is no arbiter. It's reasoning?
The same used to undertake the program in the first place. The new, legally
magical, "get out of constitutional jail free card," i.e., "national
security."
Reuters
reports:
The United States government, not any court, is
the best judge of whether to keep programs such as its ["controversial"]
effort to eavesdrop on citizens a secret, an assistant attorney general said on
Wednesday.
Peter Keisler, an assistant attorney
general, and other U.S. officials made the claim in the latest filing to
a lawsuit alleging that telecommunications firm AT&T illegally allowed
the government to monitor phone conversations and e-mail communications.
"In cases such as this one, where the
national security of the United States is implicated, it is well
established that the executive branch is best positioned to judge the
potential effects of disclosure of sensitive information on the nation's
security," they wrote in a filing on Wednesday evening.
This is a gross misapplication of the law.
The plaintiff in the case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (who
should have been joined by Congress, and every American citizen), is
seeking an injunction that would order the government to stop the
program. Therefore, the issue of judging the potential effects of
sensitive information is not relevant. (Also, for those Americans
who do think that giving up some liberty to grant the government the
power to engage in unchecked spying "to protect us" is not cowardly, but
necessary, write your congressional representatives and ask them to pass
such a law. Until such time, the applicably Law,
FISA,
amended since the attacks of September 11, specifically forbids such a
program as this, applied without warrant. Additionally Congress could
write a new law or amend the law again, to allow for the
ostensible aims of the current
program, but still provide a basis for review).
The increasingly
autocratic like Bush
administration's legal reasoning is also tautological. First of
all, having a record of what has been monitored, and having a basis
therein for congressional (or FISA court) review, has nothing to do with
"keeping this information out of the hands of our enemies," and is a
specious argument. But more importantly, the "potential effects of
disclosure," is not germane to the underlying issue of
constitutionality in the first place. The Constitution also does
not give the President special power to violate the Constitution to
"protect national security," and at the same time be the sole arbiter of
that power, let alone at the same time do so for undisclosed or general
reasons.
In other words, the system of checks and
balances which our Constitution was written to institute, is thrown
right out of the window. Under this contorted reasoning, the executive
branch can do whatever it wants under the auspices of national security
(secretly, too, to boot, and, prosecute any whistleblowers or press
members for reporting it), prevent any review if there is a difference
of opinion, and prevent the rest of the country, even congress, from
knowing about it.
The administration's argument for the
program in the first place, takes the Constitution and
turns it on its head.
Yet now the administration, of all things, is also arguing that
this decision as well can not be reviewed. This is somewhat
incredible for an open democracy based upon a system of governent checks
and balances. (Links to the contact information for every
Senator and Congressperson are to the right. Call them).
And it is EXACTLY what the Constitution
was written to prevent.
Permalink
MIXED SIGNALS FROM USA TODAY
This piece in USA today, which otherwise broke
the telephone database story, also suggested:
Bush signed an executive order allowing the NSA to engage in eavesdropping
without a warrant. The president and his representatives
have since argued
that an executive order was sufficient for the agency to proceed. Some civil
liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, disagree.
Except it isn't just "civil liberties groups." It's basically anybody who is
versed in the issue and who is not a representative of the Bush administration,
or one of a relative handful of "blind loyalists who have a far different view
of the Constitution and America than our founding fathers did" (as aptly noted
here). The issue is
clear cut,
and unambiguous.
Painting a much more realistic
picture, USA Today Board of
Contributors member (And GW Law Professor) Jonathan Turley, while still
slightly sugar coating the surveillance
issues, notes:
This month, Congress is faced with a most inconvenient crime...
...What is most striking about these programs is that they were revealed not by
members of Congress but by... Journalists who confronted Congress with
evidence...
In response, President Bush has demanded to know who will rid him of these
meddlesome whistleblowers, and various devout members have rushed forth with
cudgels and codes in hand. Now, it appears Congress is finally acting —
not to end alleged criminal acts by the administration, mind you, but to stop
the public from learning about such alleged crimes in the future. Members are
seeking to give the president the authority to continue to engage in warrantless
domestic surveillance as they call for whistleblowers to be routed out. They
also want new penalties to deter both reporters and their sources.
The debate has taken on a hopeful Zen-like quality for besieged politicians: If
a crime occurs and no one is around to reveal it or to report it, does it really
exist?
This seems to have more in common with the governmental attitude of the regime
that we just took out in Iraq, than America, land of the free, home of the
brave. More related irony.
Republican Journalist Lex Alexander
covers the issue
here, and has generally done a good job
on the larger topic. Former Provost, historian, and University of Law
Professor Geoffrey Stone, in part of a memo to the House Special Intelligence
Committee,
dissects the general issue further. And Glenn
Greenwald, Constitutional Lawyer and author, "How
Would a Patriot Act," offers a brilliant
analysis here:
.......It really is hard to imagine any measures which pose a greater and more
direct danger to our freedoms than the issuance of threats like this by the
administration against the press. If the President has the power to keep secret
any information he wants simply by classifying it -- including information
regarding illegal or otherwise improper actions he has taken -- then the
President, by definition, has complete control over the flow of information
which Americans receive about their Government.
A skeptic might argue that the President would only seek this with respect to
information that pertains to "fighting terrorism." But it doesn't really
matter what the reason is, the principles are the same, and it is why, as Stone notes,
they have served us well and been fairly ironclad for over 200 years. And it is why
the freedom of the press that they supported was considered by Jefferson,
as Greenwald notes, to be more essential to America than the establishment of
government itself. Additionally, by authorizing the NSA surveillance
program in violation of FISA, the administration has
already
established that it believes that it has the right to undertake
any action in the name of "combating terrorism," including the action itself,
the classification of it, and
now the persecution and prosecution of
anyone who leaks it. Alexander, Greenwald, and others have made
references to Pravda and the former Soviet Union, and those references are
appropriate.
It may also be enlightening to recall, as Russia, under the rule of Putin, slips
back towards its old repressive habits, the words of President Bush with respect
to Putin a few years back; "I looked into his eyes, and I knew I could
trust him." Perhaps what the President saw, when he looked into
Putin's eyes, was a reflection of himself.
Permalink
MISFOCUS IN THE WAR ON
TERROR?
Are we focusing on the
wrong things?
We may have purposefully not
captured or eliminated al-Zarqawi when we had the chance.
The leader of al-Qaida, Usama Bin Laden, has
never
been caught, and continues making videotapes. Our standing
in the world has plummeted. Our borders and, more notably, our ports
are not secure. According to the Washington Post, at least some plans to have
these secure are overdue by
a few years.
And unsecured fissile materials -- perhaps our largest threat -- remain
unsecured.
We just did a Google search of "unsecured fissile materials." It may be an
awkward phrase, but 15 entries came up. A Google search of WMD yielded about 25
million entries, and a Google search of Britney Spears yielded 52 million.
Fissile materials provide the key component of a nuclear WMD, of course.
But it is unsecured WMD's, and more commonly, the fissile materials used to make
them, that present the gravest threat to us.
15 Google entries? We're just saying that perhaps a little more attention needs
to be paid to this issue, and more done around the globe to ascertain the
location and control of all unsecured WMD's and fissile materials.
In the meantime, our Constitution is being
flagrantly undermined, while we witness an unprecedented
accumulation of federal executive
power, in order to "protect us," by, largely, spying on
Americans, and
journalists.
Permalink
AT THE VERY SAME TIME
It is hard to tell if this grotesque
manipulation of its readers and the issues:
"The left's larger goal is to turn the
Democratic Party solidly against the war on terror"
By the
Wall Street |