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

 

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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:

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

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 Kennedy, 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