Jim's Attic

2006-01-17T05:45:00.000-08:00

Garbage In, Garbage Out

When I attended Congressman Markey's town hall meeting earlier this month, one of the points that Carol Rose, the President of the Massachusetts ACLU made repeatedly was that more informatioin doesn't always mean better information. Who knew how right she was. Today, the New York Times publishes an article that indicates that the NSA warrantless surveillance program may not have been, how shall we say, finely tuned, as the President would have us believe...

In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.

President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives."

But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.

"We'd chase a number, find it's a schoolteacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed," said one former F.B.I. official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."

The article goes on to say that the FBI officials who came forward may not be aware of overseas successes attributable to the program, and also points out that combing through thousands of pieces of information looking for the small gem of useful intelligence is part of the NSA culture but not so familiar to the FBI, so part of the resistance from the FBI may be due to cultural issues. Still, the number of dead ends and innocent people investigated strongly refutes the President's claim that this surveillance only affected the 'bad guys'.

2006-01-16T07:59:00.000-08:00

Can Congress Matter?

Today's Boston Globe contains a very interesting opinion piece by Drake Bennett entitled 'Can Congress Matter?'. The article looks at the concern among many that the Bush Administration's attempts to bypass Congressional legislation represents a return of the Imperial Presidency that reached its height during the Nixon Administration. While beginning with a brief discussion of how the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito are likely to make the Supreme Court much more deferential to the Executive, Bennett claims that the Founding Fathers originally intended Congress to act as the true brake on presidential power and it is they and not the courts that have dropped the ball in recent years.

Blake makes several key points. First, he documents how Presidents all the way back to Jefferson have taken actions that probably exceeded their Constitutional powers, especially in times of crises, particularly war. When the crisis ended, Congress would reassert its powers and balance would be restored. However, things seemed to change starting with the Truman Administration. Blake references Andrew Rudalevige, author of a new book entitled The New Imperial Presidency who claims that "during [the Korean War] era 'you had a sense of crisis becoming business as usual, so presidential power became business as usual.'" Jump ahead to today, with our constant emphasis on 'threat levels' and apocalyptic warnings of 'mushroom clouds' and you can see the attempt to maintain the sense of crisis in order to justify the grab for additional power.

Blake points to several key pieces of legislation passed during the 1970's in order to try and correct some of the abuses that occurred during Vietnam and Watergate, including FISA, the War Powers Act, and the Congressional Budget Act. Unfortunately, he claims, Congress has not followed through with diligent enforcement of these laws and so they have not had the desired effect of reigning in the Executive Branch.

Blake sees two reasons for this. The first is the increasingly partisan nature of our national politics. When members of Congress believe place political party above the institution it should not be surprising that Congress is not eager to reign in an President who, in their view, is 'on our side'. The second reason cited is the claim that Congressmen find little electoral value in taking stands on issues of foreign policy, seeing it as a high risk, low reward proposition. They have therefore been willing to cede foreign policy to the President, in essence letting him take all the risks, while they choose to concentrate on domestic issues which they believe play a far larger role in getting them re-elected.

A very interesting article. I've ordered Rudalevige's book, and will try to offer a review when I get a chance to read it.

2006-01-13T13:24:00.000-08:00

More on the Band of Brothers Project

In an earlier post I mentioned the 'Band of Brothers' web site, the goal of which is to help organize support for military veterans running as Democrats in the 2006 election. Remarkably, the site now lists almost 40 candidates. That's almost 10% of the Congressional districts in this country, and if you assume that the vast majority of these men and women would be running for a seat currently held by a Republican, that would mean that almost 20% of the current Republican caucus could have to face a Democratic challenger with a military background in the coming election. I haven't seen much coverage of this trend in the MSM yet (I did catch an NBC news feature on one particular veteran, but I don't recall it putting her story in the context of a larger movement), but someone's bound to notice sooner or later.

2006-01-13T12:51:00.000-08:00

More on the 'Not Even a Hint' Standard

OK, here's a real practical example of the right way and wrong way to avoid the appearance of ethical conflicts of interest. First the right way, in the form of a memo circulated by my company's HR department at the beginning of the holiday season last month....

Dear Colleagues:

We should all be proud to work for a company that upholds the highest ethical standards as expressed in our corporate vision, values and behaviors. With the holiday season quickly approaching, now is a good time to remind you about the company’s policy regarding gifts and gratuities.

Employees and members of their immediate families may not accept gifts over $10 in value from our suppliers or potential suppliers. This policy goes beyond the letter of the law to avoid even the appearance of improper conduct in our business dealings. The company also prohibits giving anything of value to officials or employees of the U.S. government, however innocent the intention. The company prefers that employees avoid giving or receiving even gifts of nominal value.

Should you receive a gift, please send it back unless special circumstances make the return impractical. For example, a perishable gift of small value may be shared with co-workers. You also may contact the sector Ethics Office to donate it to the company’s Holiday Giving Program, where it can benefit a community agency. Whether you return the gift or not, please send a note indicating our company's policy. For example:

Thank you for your recent gift. While I appreciate the good intention of your gesture, it is my company's policy that employees not accept gifts from our suppliers.

I am, therefore, returning your holiday gift. Thank you for your good will, and best wishes for the holidays.

If you are not returning the gift, the second paragraph above might be changed to read:

Since it would be impractical to return your gift, I have made it available to our company Holiday Giving Program, which will donate it to a community service agency. Thank you for your good will, and best wishes for the holidays.

For further information on gifts and gratuities...

Now the wrong way, as documented in this post from the Project on Goverment Oversight...

Deploying his deep pockets, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA) throws the annual holiday party for his committee staff. Some committees in Congress have their staff members cover the costs of their holiday party.

But House Government “Reform” Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) has come up a more creative arrangement. Lobbyists and defense contractors threw the annual holiday party for the Committee which, coincidentally, oversees federal agency contracting. Here's the invite.

Who needs Santa Claus when contractors have Chairman Tom Davis to thank for opening up the government’s coffers! By our calculation following the House gift rules, each of the nine sponsors could spend up to $450 per staff or member of Congress. That’s quite a party!!!

The December 15, 2005 bash was held in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building and was sponsored by:

-- McGuire Woods Consulting which employs former Tom Davis staffer Barnaby Harkins. Harkins worked for Davis for four years, “specifically focused on education, federal procurement and appropriations.” Harkins lobbies for one of the largest foreign-owned defense contractors, shipping giant Maersk. In addition, one of the firm's clients is defense contractor Northrup Grumman Mission Systems.

-- Patton Boggs, which, in 2005, retained Peter Sirh, the former Staff Director for Davis’ House Government Reform Committee and former Chief of Staff to Davis. Sirh helped Patton Boggs rake in a hefty $260,000 lobbying fee from MCI in the first six months of 2005, in part to “Assist MCI with contract issues relating to specific government contracts…” MCI is competing for a $20 billion telecommunications contract which has been a pet project of Tom Davis. Committee staff members strenuously deny that Davis has a hand in choosing who gets the contract but a recent article suggested that contractors think otherwise.

Sirh’s access to Tom Davis was a hot commodity for Patton Boggs. While there, Sirh also lobbied for:

* the DC government ($140,000 in fees in Jan-June, 2005)
* Defense contractor ADS ($20,000 in fees from Jan-June, 2005)
* Defense contractor DDL Omni Engineering ($20,000 in fees from Jan-June 2005)
* PriceWaterhouseCoopers ($100,000 in fees from Jan-June 2005)

-- Innovative Defense Strategies, where Peter Sirh also worked in 2005, also sponsored the party. It’s an awfully strange coincidence that the firm gave a $5,000 political contribution to Tom Davis’ wife in 2003, although Jeanmarie Devolites and Tom weren’t married at that point.

--PodestaMatton which lobbied on behalf of the government’s #1 defense contractor, behemoth Lockheed Martin ($140,000 in fees from Jan-June 2005) as well as the Native American Contractors Association ($100,000 in fees from Jan-June, 2005). Hey, whatever happened to the Committee’s investigation into abuses in Native American contracting?

--Defense contractor BearingPoint which reported a whopping $500,000 in lobbying expenses in 2005 (that’s a lot of Christmas parties!) including on “Govt. Contracting issues.” BearingPoint (previously KPMG) has supported Tom Davis’ annual legislative goody bag of contractor favors (known in shorthand as SARA and ASIA), some provisions of which he has succeeded in attaching to Defense Authorization bills.

--Holland and Knight which openly brags about joining in a “drafting summit… with members of industry” held by Davis’ staff to draft that contractor legislation.

--Defense contractor General Dynamics, which opened a production facility in Tom Davis’ district a few years back. At the time, Davis bragged of playing “a pivotal role in bringing the project to Northern Virginia.”

Must have been one heck of a party.

2006-01-13T12:26:00.000-08:00

Injecting a Little Bible Into the Congressional Ethics Debate

As the Jack Abramoff guilty plea continues to shine a light into the complex relationships between congressman, lobbyists, and the clients who hire them, one of the most disappointing realizations is that the line between what constitutes legal lobbying and straight out bribery seems to be so gray and fuzzy. Since so many of our political leaders are eager to apply a biblical standard to the lives of their constituents, I thought it would be appropriate to turn the tables for once and remind them of the following passage from the book of Ephesians...

But among you there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Ephesians 5:3

Note that the standard for greed is the same as for sexual immorality, 'not even a hint'. It's not good enough to stop just short of illegality, you need to conduct your business in such as way that no one could have any question that your actions are motivated by greed and not by concern for what's best for your constituents. Bottom line, we don't need new lobbying legislation, we need more moral politicians.

2006-01-13T11:14:00.000-08:00

The 'Few Bad Apples' Defense Starts to Rot

Its beginning to look like Lynndie England wasn't the mastermind of the plan to torture prisoners at Abu Ghraib after all. The Washington Post published a front page story yesterday indicated that Major General Geoffrey Miller is now invoking his right not to incriminate himself now that a colonel who served under him has been given immunity and ordered to testify at the trial of soldiers accused of using dogs to intimidate prisoners.

The idea that a group of overzealous, under trained National Guardsman started abusing prisoners on their own initiative without any guidance or direction from above in the chain of command has never passed my sniff test. There were just too many other alleged instances of abuse at other facilities and too much discussion of the issue at the highest levels of our government for their not to be a more institutional problem. Larry Wilkerson, the ex-aide to Colin Powell indicated last November he believed that responsibility may ultimately trace back to the Vice President's office.

2006-01-13T11:07:00.000-08:00

Friday IPod Blogging

One of the latest fads to hit the blogosphere recently has been posting the first 10 songs that your IPod comes up with when you put it into shuffle mode. Not wanting to be left out of the cool kids club, here's my contribution for 1/13/2006:

1) I'm On Fire - Bruce Springsteen
2) Running From an Angel - Hootie and the Blowfish
3) Hey Kind Friend - Indigo Girls
4) Behind the Wall - Tracy Chapman
5) The Sounds of Silence - Simon & Garfunkel (Live in Central Park version)
6) Seen it All Before - Amos Lee
7) Tramontane - Foreigner
8) Mamma Cried - Alison Krauss & Union Station
9) Go Down Gamblin' - Blood, Sweat & Tears
10) Showdown - Electric Light Orchestra

The fact that half the songs are over 20 years old confirms my old fogie status.

2006-01-13T11:02:00.000-08:00

We're Trying to Have a Conversation Here

There have been several times over the past six years when I have become so frustrated with George Bush that I just didn't know what to do. I had another one of those moments Wednesday night. 'All Things Considered' played a clip from the speach Bush gave yesterday. The gist of the clip was, "After 9/11 I was criticized for not connecting the dots, and now that we're using tools like the Patriot Act to connect the dots, I still get criticized. I can't win." My frustration springs from his obviously superficial understanding of the key issues in the debate over warrantless NSA spying. I was reminded of the recent television commercial in which a man and a woman or in a restaurant, and when the waitor brings the woman a Dr. Pepper she suddenly becomes so enamored with her soda that all of the conversation going on around her devolves into a sing-song 'Na na na na'. I seriously wonder if the President ever bothers to listen to what his critics are saying or just tunes us out like the woman in the commercial.

I'm aware that there people in this country who's faith in this Administration has been so totally destroyed that they are unable to trust the President on any issue. However, I'm convinced that the bulk of the current criticism being leveled at the President's actions is not directed at his goal, protecting the American people from another terrorist attack, but by the means he chose to achieve that goal.

In a democracy such as ours, process matters. If in the days after 9/11 the President believed he needed to institute expanded surveillance programs to prevent another attack, he had a duty to call the Congressional leadership into the White House and persuade them. He had the people of America behind him and as much political capital at that point as any President in modern times. That's the job he signed up for when he threw his hat into the ring back in 1999. If Congress had failed to go along and he had decided he needed to go ahead anyway, at least he could now make the argument that he tried to go through the proper channels first. To have not even tried is what many of us now find inexcusable.

I've long since given up trying to figure out why President Bush insists on going through life with such a black and white, you're either for me or against me mentality. I can't tell if he's intellectually incapable of grasping nuance and subtlety, emotionally unable to admit he's not perfect, or so arrogant as to believe he really is always right. Remember, we're talking about a man who's campaign for re-election was characterized by the unprecedented lengths it went to in order to isolate him from tough questions, who when asked in a press conference to share what he thought his biggest mistake was could only come up with trading Sammy Sosa when he was owner of the Texas Rangers, and who, after inviting every living ex-Secretary of State or Defense into the White House for a discussion on Iraq spent a mere 15 minutes listening to a few token comments, gathered the group together in the Oval Office for a photo op, and then passed them off to his NSA advisor (Bill Clinton, for all his faults, would have been dragged kicking and screaming from an opportunity like that). In the end, it really doesn't matter why he is the way he is, but its costing this nation dearly.

Here's what I know. In the next few months, we're going to have a serious debate in this country with respect to finding a proper balance between national security and civil liberties, and about the need for constitutional checks and balances and the rule of law. The President can participate in this debate, or he can retreat back into his White House cocoon, stick his fingers in his ears, and recent the '9/11, 9/11, Mushroom Cloud' defense until his term either expires or he is impeached. Either way, it won't be pretty.

2006-01-11T06:58:00.000-08:00

On Trusting the Opinions of Government Lawyers

It occurs to me this morning that the Bush Administration is asking us to accept two competing views of the proper role of executive branch lawyers simultaneously. From the White House we are being told by the President and his spokesmen that we can be confident that the controversial NSA warrantless spying program is legal because White House legal counsel and the Justice Department have studied the matter. "Is it legal, absolutely," states the President. The unstated assumption of this argument is that, if these same lawyers had reached the opinion that the program was in fact illegal, they would have been free to say so and the President would not have gone forward with the program.

Meanwhile, down Pennsylvania Avenue at the confirmation hearings for Judge Samuel Alito, we are assured by the nominee that we can discount the controversial opionions contained in briefs he wrote while working for the government because he says "I was merely an advocate making my client's case." We were not getting his best, unbiased legal reasoning in these instances but deliberately slanted opinions designed to support a pre-determined side of the argument.

You simply cannot have it both ways. You can't take the legal arguments of the current crop of administration lawyers at face value and at the same time give Judge Alito a free pass. Either government lawyers have the right, if not even the obligation, to 'speak truth to power' or they are no more credible than your common ambulance chaser. Either way, the Bush Administration has a problem.

2006-01-11T05:56:00.000-08:00

Lawrence Tribe Weighs In on NSA Spying

Rep. John Conyers asked well known legal scholar Lawrence Tribe to share his opinion on the Bush Administration's use of warrantless surveillance by the NSA. Tribe responds with this letter, from which my favorite line is "The technical legal term for that, I believe, is poppycock". Needless to say, he doesn't think much of the Administration's arguments.

In my business, I often find myself faced with non-technical people trying to tell me how I should build their software. They apparently think that, because they can make out a budget in Excel or defeat the demons in Doom they know how to design databases and build web applications. There's a lot of similar amateur legal analysis taking place in the current surveillance debate ("the Moose continues to believe that the President had authority both under Article II of the Constitution and the Authorization for the Use of Force passed by Congress to conduct the interception of enemy communications", for example). Marshall Wittman is free to believe whatever he wants, but I'm going to leave the legal analysis to constitutional scholars like Lawrence Tribe.

Rep. Conyers goes on to announce that the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are going to start holding hearings on Jan. 20th. He invites the Republican members to join them, but makes it clear they're going ahead with or without their participation. It will be interesting to see if the Republican leadership tries to force the Committee to hold its hearings in the same basement broom closet of a room they forced them into before.

2006-01-10T12:17:00.000-08:00

Its The Republican's Stupid

I borrow the above title from a column published today by Rich Lowry, editor of that liberal mouthpiece, the National Review. It shows that the talking points circulating around trying to tie various Democrats into the Abramoff scandal are ridiculous even to Republicans. The basic message of the column is that, rather than playing a silly game of mutually assured destruction with the Democrats, the Republican party needs to face up to its problems and offer a reform package that actually stands a chance of making a difference.

Lowry goes on to address two of the issues that contribute to the current environment. One is the huge discrepancy between what a member of Congress is paid and what he, or even one of his aides, is able to make in private practice. Lowry suggests that this increases the temptation to accept the fancy golf trips and other favors that lobbyists have thrown at the members in the past. Lowry's solution is to tell the members that if they want the upscale lifestyle they should quit and go make the money in the private sector. An alternative suggestion I've seen tossed about lately is the idea of significantly increasing the base salary that members of Congress receive. It sounds expensive at first, but it only takes a few earmarks NOT getting inserted into the budget for this option to pay for itself. It might also have the side benefit of making public service a more attractive option to talented young individuals who haven't already made millions of dollars and therefore still need to be concerned with their family's well being.

Another suggestion I've heard is to institute a 72 hour waiting period between the time a bill completes markup and when it can actually be voted on. One of the memorable moments in Farenheit 911 was when in the course of a discussion of how the original Patriot Act passed in the middle of the night without most Congressman having a chance to read it, John Conyers explained that they don't have time to read most of the bills that they vote on. Now there's a case to be made that even the 72 hour requirement doesn't do anything to cut down on the volume of legislation that pass across the members desks, so I would like to expand the idea to require that these bills be posted on a public web site during the 72 hour period (exceptions to be made of course for bills dealing with classified issues). Then the public would at leaste have the access needed to scan the bills ourselves and contact our representatives if we see items we have a concern about. On issues like this, the more transparency the better as far as I'm concerned.

2006-01-10T05:26:00.000-08:00

Legal Scholars Dispute Bush Administration Justification for NSA Spying

The Huffington Post publishes the text of a letter written by 14 legal scholars to Congress disputing the Bush Administration's legal justifications for the NSA warrantless spying program. These are serious men and women, almost all of whom have worked in the government at some point in their careers. It's not light reading, but if you want to be a serious participant in the upcoming debate, you owe it to yourself to try and slog through it.

2006-01-09T12:49:00.000-08:00

Stupid Executive Tricks (Guam Edition)

Sometimes you have to ask if the Bush Administration is corrupt or just plain stupid. Today, Arianna Huffington points us back to the results of an investigation originally published in the LA Times back in August. The gist of the story is that the Superior Court of Guam hired Jack Abramoff to lobby on its behalf against a bill pending in Congres that would have ceded some of the court's power to the Supreme Court of Guam. Frederick Black, who had been the 'acting' U.S. Attorney for the island for over 10 years issued a subpoena on Nov. 18, 2002 seeking records concerning the connection of Abramoff to the court. The very next day, Black was demoted. The man named to be his successor turned out to be the cousin of one of the key figures in the investigation, so he recused himself and the investigation died.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....

It should be fun to watch Scott McClellan try to explain this one away if the White House press corp ever gets around to asking him about it.

2006-01-06T12:12:00.000-08:00

Law and Order, Capital Hill Edition

Wow, this just gets sadder and sadder. Now it turns out that Duke Cunningham wore a wire for a brief period in the days leading up to his guilty plea. Wonder who else the prosecutors may have in their sights now?

2006-01-06T07:17:00.000-08:00

I Never Knew 'Political Scandal' Was Part of the School Curriculum

Talk about your weird coincidences, it turns out Monica Lewinsky and Jack Abramoff attended the same schools.

2006-01-06T05:49:00.000-08:00

The 'Die Hard' Theory of American Politics (Supreme Court Edition)

In my last post, I outlined my 'Die Hard' theory of politics. It occurred to me last night that there might be another way in which the theory needs to be applied. Since the resignation of Justice O'Connor and the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist, liberals have reacted under the assumption that the overriding issue on which the nominations of their replacements must rise or fall is their views on Roe v. Wade. Given the recent revelations concerning the potentially illegal NSA spying program, which someone in the Administration must have assumed would get exposed and dragged into the courts sooner or later, is there a chance that the Bush team has been evaluating candidates based on their views on presidential power rather than abortion.

This might explain the Miers nomination. Ms. Miers made little sense to the religious right because her views on abortion were a bit muddled (whatever happened to that 'Every nominee deserves an up or down vote' principle, BTW?). But in the context of a presidential powers debate, she was the perfect nominee, at best a sure vote in your favor and at worst a recusal that would have resulted in a 4-4 tie vote. The fact that she was replaced by Samuel Alito, who seems to be quite a strong advocate for presidential power, seems to strengthen the argument. I hope the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee will take this into account when the hearings finally start.

2006-01-06T04:36:00.000-08:00

The 'Die Hard' Theory of American Politics (West Virginia Edition)

I'm a big fan of the Die Hard series of movies. There are a couple of themes that run through these films. One is that, unlike many action heros, John McClain isn't invincible. At the end of each movie he may walk off with the girl, but he's a bloody mess who needs to be checking into a hospital rather than riding off into the sunset. The other is that in each movie, the plans of the bad guys depend on using the predictable response of the authorities to a crisis situation to create a diversion that hides your ultimate goals:

Die Hard: Create a hostage situation that will lead the FBI to cut power to the building so that you can break into a vault protected by impenatrable electrical locks

Die Harder: Crash an airliner so that the paramilitary swat squad (which happens to be under your control) gets called in

Die Hard With a Vengeance: Send the police off in search of a bomb planted in school while you use the cover of an explosion in a subway station to break into the Federal Reserve and walk off with millions in gold bars

In the end, McClain always sees through the deception and saves the day.

All of this inciteful movie review has been presented as background for what I call my 'Die Hard' theory of American politics. The true powers of the Republican party don't really care about the 'values' agenda they've run on quite successfully for several years. It in fact runs counter to the small government, libertarian philosophy that has characterized the party in the past. However, since the rich comprise such a small percentage of the population and corporations can't vote, they have to find a way to distract people from their real agenda (helping the rich get richer and corporations make more profits) in order to get them to vote against their own economic interests.

Take the role that gay marriage played in the 2004 presidential election. Whatever your feelings about the moral aspects of this issue, laws governing marriage have always been controlled by the states. Republicans for years have been the champions of state's rights with respect to the federal government. Much of the resistance to the civil rights legislation of the 1960's was couched in the language of defending state's rights. Yet in 2004, the conservative Christian community was assured that, if George Bush was reelected, he would defend the sanctity of marriage. These congregations responded as you would expect, turning out in huge numbers to vote for Bush and probably swinging the election his way in key states like Ohio. Then, once the election was over and the real pay off that the religious conservatives had been looking for (a Supreme Court nomination for one of their favorite judges, Bush tried to appoint his own personal counsel instead. The furor that ensued was more than predictable.

What's this got to do with West Virginia, you ask? Well, the tragedy at the Saco mine has triggered a lively debate in the blogosphere over whether the Mine Safety and Health Administration has become too interested in protecting the interests of the coal mining companies at the expense of the miners themselves. Consider this post from Scott Shields over at MyDD...

In 1997, as a top executive of a Utah mining company, David Lauriski proposed a measure that could allow some operators to let coal-dust levels rise substantially in mines. The plan went nowhere in the government.

Last year, it found enthusiastic backing from one government official - Mr. Lauriski himself. Now head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, he revived the proposal despite objections by union officials and health experts that it could put miners at greater risk of black-lung disease.

More to the point, one of the "unnecessary" proposals canceled by [Laurinski] was a Clinton-era rule titled "Escapeways and Refuges." It dealt specifically with "methane ignition" and "entrapment deaths." This standard would revise and clarify an existing standard that requires underground metal and nonmetal mines to have at least two separate exits to the surface. Because of the physical limits in underground mines, fire, massive ground fall, methane ignition, inundation, for example, could result in multiple entrapment deaths. A second escapeway increases the likelihood that miners will not be trapped underground during an emergency if one escape route is cut off. In December of 2001, under the leadership of Lauriski, it was withdrawn from the agenda due to "changing safety and health regulatory priorities." In other words, increased regulation of the mining industry was seen as a roadblock to increased profits.

OK, let's be clear. Nobody's blaming this specific accident on President Bush. If the explosion was caused by a lightning strike, as is being theorized, the explosion was an act of God that no one could have prevented. However, if the rule requiring a second escapeway had been put into effect, the 12 men who died at Sago might have had a chance to make it out.

West Virginia coal miners used to be as reliable a Democratic vote as there was. In more recent elections, the state has gone Republican over issues like gun control and family values. Do you think in 2008 West Virginia miners ought to think a little more about which candidate is more likely to work to keep them safe on their jobs?

2006-01-06T04:22:00.000-08:00

Pat Robertson, Meet William of Occam

There is a well known principle of logic known as Occam's Razor that is commonly translated as 'Given two equally predictive theories, choose the simpler'. Let's apply that principle to try and reason the cause of Ariel Sharon's stroke:

A) God is 'smiting' him for giving Gaza back to the Palestinians, or
B) He was a morbidly obese man working an extremely stressful job

Those who would pick answer B have successfully applied Occam's Razor. I really don't mean to make light of this situation, its always a tragedy when a man working to bring peace dies (yes, I know he's not dead yet, but according to the news reports I've heard it doesn't look good), and the nation of Israel has certainly lost its share. Isn't it interesting that the peacemakers are almost always those who have learned the horror of war the hard way.

2006-01-05T21:00:00.000-08:00

Why I Think Bush Would Make a Lousy Poker Player

Good poker players will tell you that as they play, they are always watching the other players to see if they have what's called a 'tell', some expression or physical tic that they exhibit when they have a particularly good hand or when they're bluffing. In the movie Rounders, the character KGB kept a package of Oreos next to him as he played and when he had a strong hand he would start to play with one of the Oreos. Knowing a man's tell can be a huge advantage.

Last night at Rep. Markey's town meeting, Markey ran several video clips of Bush reassuring people during the 2004 campaign that all surveillance required a warrant or a court order. Every time he'd start to talk about warrants, he'd kind of scrunch his shoulders, dip his head a bit, and half chortle condescending tone of his. Its a behavior that occurs a lot during his speeches. Since we know now that he was lying about the warants, I wonder if he's always lying when he does that. I'm going to start watching more closely and see if I can find a pattern.

2006-01-05T19:30:00.000-08:00

Bush Meets the Spanish Inquisition (with apologies to Monty Python)

NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise....

There's something that's been bugging me for awhile about the way the Bush administration defends its actions in the war on terror, and that is there almost constant need to keep us afraid. Whether it was the constant ratcheting up and down of the terror alert color before the 2004 election or the almost Manchurian Candidate like way in which the phrase 'mushroom cloud' is uttered every time somebody disagrees with them, the thinking seems to be that if we are afraid enough of another terrorist attack, we will dissolve into a quivering ball of goo and stand by gratefully as the Bill of Rights is rolled up and placed in drawer for the next hundred years while we wait for the tide of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism to collapse.

Now don't get me wrong. Today's world is definitely a dangerous place and a good healthy dose of fear can be a good thing. I remember going on a business trip in the days immediately after the airlines started flying again after 9/11. I remember sitting in the nearly empty terminal watching state troopers with automatic rifles walking back and forth past our gate as 10 or 15 of us who had to start flying again waited to board, seeing a woman burst into hysterics because the same Muslim man who had delayed her flight to DC for two hours while police questioned him was flying home to Boston on the same flight she was traveling on. To this day I get the chills every time a jet passes over my condominium at an altitude that seams too low to be heading for a landing at Logan. But in the end, isn't that exactly what the terrorists want, to make us live in fear?

Am I the only one who remembers the Cold War. Didn't we survive a period of 30 to 40 years where we were threatened not by a single 'mushroom cloud' but by the utter destruction of life as we knew it. How did those of us born in the 50's and 60's survive to adulthood without our parents trading our freedom for our safety. (For that matter, how did I survive without car seats, bicycle helmets, 24 hour news channels and the Internet, but that's a story for another day).

It appears that I'm not the only one bothered by this trend. Consider for example, this post from Digby, speaking of the Republican party of the late 90's:

They won elections in the west and the south by swaggering around extolling the blessed Bill Of Rights and the need to keep the federal government at arms length because Real Men and Women don't need no Democrat sissy nanny state and her Big Brother taking away their rights.

9/11 changed everything. Suddenly the he-men of WalMart and the NRA leaped into Big Brother's arms and shrieked "save me, save me! Do what ever you have to do, they're trying to kill us all!" They now look to Daddy Government not to discipline the children, but to check under the bed for them every night, reassure them that the boogeyman won't hurt them and then read them a nice bedtime story about spreading freedom and democracy. It turns out that underneath all this swaggering bravado, the Republicans aren't the Daddy party --- they're the baby party.

Glenn Greenwald, in a response to Digby adds the following observation...

The Administration has managed to get away with the Orwellian depiction of fear as being the hallmark of courage, and conversely, depicting a rational and calm approach as being a mark of cowardice. They were aided in this effort by a terrified national media and a national political elite who live in Washington, DC and New York and were so petrified of further attacks that they were easily whipped into a state of passive, uncritical compliance in exchange for promises of protection. But we are far away from the emotional shock of September 11, and the power of that Fear weapon is breaking down.

Even Kos gets into the act...

When our nation was founded, we had men of real character and courage fighting for their nascent America, one in which liberty and freedom trumped the authorative tendencies of the monarchy. Patrick Henry gave words to those efforts:

Give me liberty or give me death!

My, how far we have fallen, with an administration that parlays the incessant fear of its supporters into increased authoritativeness to the point where he now resembles the very despot we fought in our war of independence.

And his supporters bellow, as they cower under their beds:

Here's our liberties, just spare us from death!

I would be much happier if we chose to follow the example of the citizens of London who endured Hitler's blitz, mourned their losses, rebuilt their lives and never gave Hitler the satisfaction of ever thinking they would ever give up because they were afraid. These times call for the leadership of a Churchill, not a Chicken Little.

2006-01-05T10:52:00.000-08:00

Rep. Markey Hosts NSA Spying Meeting

Well, I had one of those 'put up or shut up' moments tonight. My evening plans to veg on the couch and watch the Rose Bowl were interrupted when I came home from work to find an email from the Massachusetts Democratic Party announcing that the congressman from my district, Ed Markey, was hosting a town meeting tonight down the road in Lexington to discuss the currrent NSA spying scandal. Since I'm always arguing with my friends that one of the reasons our government doesn't work for the average citizen is that we're too lazy to get involved, I felt obligated to put my coat back on and go over. No that I'm back home, and apparently the football game has gotten off to a less than compelling start (7-3 in the second quarter), I thought it would be worthwhile to share a few of the highlights of the meeting.

To begin, it must be said that since the only announcements of this meeting that I'm aware of were through vehicles such as Democratic email lists it shouldn't surprise anyone that there was virtually no support in the room for the President's position. In fact, at one point when we were given the opportunity to vote on whether the NSA employees that leaked the existence of the program were criminals or heros, not a single hand rose in support of the 'criminal' proposition.

Congressman Markey, who is probably the leading congressional expert on telecommunications issues, was joined on the panel by Carol Rose of the Massachusetts ACLU and Mark Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. All three strongly argued that we are in the midst of a constitutional crisis and that this program has to be vigorously resisted. While I obviously can't remember everything that was said, a couple of observations stood out.

One of the speakers noted that any member or supporter of Al Qaeda operating in this country would naturally assume they were under surveillance even before last month's revelations. After all, such surveillance would have been perfectly legal IF the requirements of the FISA law had been followed. So in fact, the only 'secret' that was revealed by the leak was that the Bush Administration was skirting the law by initiating the taps without a warrant. That is of course IF the program is operating as the President has described it.

In her closing statement, Carol made the following observation (paraphrased or embellished a bit by me because I don't remember her exact words, but the theme was powerful), "As we enter the 21st Century, our ability to monitor the activity of our government is getting smaller while the government's ability to monitor OUR activity is getting stronger. If we're going to survive as a free society, that trend has got to be reversed".

Congressman Markey was surprisingly optimistic about how strongly this program will be resisted by the Congress when it goes back into session this month. He believes that the libertarian wing of the Republican Party will join forces with the civil liberties wing of the Democratic Party to overcome the objections of what he refers to as the 'pragmattic middle' (You know, the guys who don't care what we do to the Constitution as long as the threat of another 'mushroom cloud' exists).

Finally, when the panel was asked what we could do, the answer was to write to our legislators demanding public hearings on this subject, and to encourage our contacts in other districts and states to do the same. So if you managed to hang in there and read this far in this blog post, consider yourself urged to get writing.

Now, finally to the couch to see if the second half of this football game is going to be any good :-).

2006-01-05T10:38:00.000-08:00

Recalculating the Cost of the War

Earlier, I posted an observation on how the $200B we've spent so far on the war in Iraq could have been better spent to improve our security. Now a team of respected economists is publishing a paper that comes up with a new figure for the war's cost, and the result is staggering. By including things like added healthcare costs for those wounded in the war, loss in economic output from those who have died, etc., they calculate that the total cost is at least $1 trillion and could exceed $2 trillion. Again, you have to ask the question, couldn't this money have been put to better use than this?

2006-01-05T10:24:00.000-08:00

Gary Hart on Checks and Balances

I've been fussing a lot lately about how the constitutional system of checks and balances has broken down recently because members of Congress think its more important to keep the other party in check than another branch of government. Gary Hart makes a similar observation today in a post over at The Huffington Post where he discusses whether or not the US plans to maintain permanent bases in Iraq. Here's the quote:

Under circumstances where Congress was performing its constitutional oversight responsibilities, and where the press was less intimidated by power, it would be a straightforward exercise to determine whether a final neoconservative trick is afoot. Congressional committees would have senior civilian and uniformed Pentagon and State department officials answer direct questions about US plans. "Mr or Madame secretary, are we, or are we not, constructing permanent military bases in Iraq and, if so, for what purpose?"

But this Congress has made clear it is a purely partisan institution, not a separate branch of government, and that it has no intention of fulfilling its duties to oversee the executive branch and inform the American people. Obviously, reporters could do the same with the White House press secretary (with no serious hope of an honest answer) or, even better, the president.

Lets hope that when Democrats return to power we don't just turn the tables but that we take our constitutional responsibilities seriously.

2005-12-31T08:36:00.000-08:00

Band of Brothers

No, not the HBO mini series (which by the way is outstanding if you haven't seen it). This Band of Brothers is an organization forming to support military veterans running for Congress as Democrats in the upcoming election. The web site already features the bios of two dozen veterans who have thrown their hat into the ring. Does anyone else find it interesting that there doesn't seem to be a similar groundswell of veterans running as Republicans?

2005-12-31T08:26:00.000-08:00

And the Number Just Keeps on Rising

In an earlier post, I linked to an article that predicted as many as a dozen congressmen could be implicated if Jack Abramoff entered into a plea bargain with the Justice Department. Today, that estimate jumps to 20. One begins to wonder if we're going to have to wait for November for the Democrats to regain control of Congress.

2005-12-31T07:56:00.000-08:00

Dear Visa

Imagine the following letter:

Dear Visa,

As you know, my recent purchase of a state of the art home security system has put me over my credit limit. However, there are several other purchases which I still plan to make in the coming months, including a new Rolex for my rich uncle and a speed boat for my lake vacation home. Therefore, I am writing you this letter to inform you that I am raising my credit limit by $50,000. Looking forward to doing business with you.

Sincerely,

The Jones Family

Doesn't work in real life, but it works for the US government.

2005-12-31T07:13:00.000-08:00

New Information on the Delay - Abramoff Connection

The front page of today's Washington Post has an article tracking the interesting story of the U.S. Family Network. USFN was, in theory, an non-profit advocacy group promoting "economic growth and prosperity, social improvement, moral fitness, and the general well-being of the United States." The article, however, points out several flaws in this story, including but not limited to:

Contributions came almost exclusively from foreign, tribal, and corporate interests with no clear stake in the organization's stated goals. Perhaps the most striking example is a $1M contribution from Russian energy executives seeking to eliminate a requirement in a congressional IMF funding bill that would have required Russia to raise taxes on oil and gas companies. BTW, if you really believe the executives were concerned about America's moral fitness, explain the declined offer to buy Delay a luxury automobile.

The organization in fact conducted very little actual public advocacy, unless you count paying for radio ads in the districts of vulnerable Democrats.

The organization paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to a lobbying fim run by Delay's former chief of staff, Edwin Buckham. The magnitude of these fees would be almost unheard of for a typical non-profit.

The organization purchased a Capitol Hill townhouse and allowed Delay to use the master suite to make fund raising phone calls. Meanwhile, the organization itself maintained a simple one room office in the back of the building.

As I said, there's a lot more information in the article. Its a challenging read, but well worth it.

2005-12-28T19:17:00.000-08:00

NSA Analyst Comes Forward, Wants to Testify to the Intelligence Committees

The guys over at All Spin Zone posted the following letter this evening:

Dear Chairman Roberts,

Under the provisions of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA), I intend to report to Congress probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted while I was an intelligence officer with the National Security Agency (NSA) and with the Defense Intelligence Agency ( DIA). These acts involve the Director of the National Security Agency, the Deputies Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations, and the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

These probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts were conducted via very highly sensitive intelligence programs and operations known as Special Access Programs (SAP)s. I was a technical intelligence specialist dealing almost exclusively with SAP programs and operations at both NSA and DIA.

Due to the highly sensitive nature of these programs and operations, I will require assurances from your committee that the staffers and/or congressional members to participate retain the proper security clearances, and also have the appropriate SAP cleared facilities available for these discussions.

Please inform me when you require my appearance on Capitol Hill to conduct these discussions in relation to this ICWPA report.

Very Respectfully,

Russell D. Tice
Former Intelligence Officer, NSA

Unfortunately, this will be one hearing we won't be watching on CNN.

2005-12-28T16:33:00.000-08:00

Bob Barr Compares Bush to Clinton

During the Clinton impeachment hearings, I found Bob Barr to be one of the most distasteful politicians I had ever seen. I will give the man credit, at least, for being consistent. In an op-ed in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Barr compares Bush's defense of his domestic spying program to Bill Clinton's defense in the Lewinsky affair. Yet another example of how the opposition to this policy is crossing party lines. Hopefully, the attempt to paint this as another partisan squabble will run out of steam soon.

2005-12-28T06:42:00.000-08:00

Any Fan of 'Law and Order' Could Have Seen This Coming

Looks like the Bush Administration has handed defense lawyers for many of the major terrorism cases in a late Christmas gift. The New York Times reports that motions are being filed to determine if evidence against their clients was obtained through the unauthorized wiretaps. Think there are a few prosecutors sweating bullets right now?

2005-12-28T06:15:00.000-08:00

You Can Never Find a Good Activist Judge When You Need One

Remember the Federalist Society? You know, the organization that conservatives turn to when looking for judicial candidates that will strictly interpret the Constitution?? Turns out that doesn't work out so well for you when its your turn to go around the law. Federalist Society board member Robert Levy takes a look at the administration's arguments in favor of warrantless NSA surveillance and the results aren't pretty.

Hopefully some of our favorite news commentators will read the article before the next time they're tempting to label the controversy over the surveillance a partisan issue.

2005-12-27T08:42:00.000-08:00

The Best Education Money Can Buy

Kevin Drum points to an op-ed piece in today's Washington Post that points out one of the unintended yet totally predictable consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act. Seems that with all of the focus on bringing the poorly performing students up to minimum standards, its now the gifted and talented students in the class that are getting neglected. Standardized test scores are showing that the percentage of students achieving 'advanced' ratings are declining as children move through the school system.

Now of course, if a gifted child's parents are doing well financially he or she can be sent to a private school where they will still be challenged. Unfortunately, this is an option not open most lower income parents, whose talented child might have otherwise been able to use those talents to lift himself and his family into the middle class and beyond. Of course, these kids still have pro sports and entertainment to aspire to.

In the new global economy, this country needs the help of every brilliant mind it produces to compete. We can't afford to not challenge these kids to become the best they can be. Fortunately, Kevin also points to an article that suggests a relatively minor change that could potentially address the problem. Its called 'value-based testing'. Rather than measure each student against a fixed state minimum standard, you measure the amount of progress each student makes from one year to the next. A school that helps a poorly performing student significantly raise his test score, even if he doesn't yet meet the minimum standard, gets rewarded. On the other hand, a school that lets a child coast along year after year barely over the standard gets penalized. In theory, everybody wins. Its worth considering.

2005-12-27T06:58:00.000-08:00

The Best Health Care System Money Can Buy

E.J. Dionne takes a look at last week's budget reconciliation bill and highlights the way in which corporate interests once again won out over the health care needs of the poor...

Consider federal health programs. The House bill proposed substantial cuts for Medicaid beneficiaries, but the Senate bill -- partly because of pressure from moderate Republicans -- did not include those cuts. Instead, the Senate proposed to save taxpayer money by eliminating a $10 billion fund to encourage regional preferred-provider organizations, known as PPOs, to participate in the Medicare program. It also sought more rebates to the federal government from drug manufacturers participating in Medicaid.

Note the difference: Instead of imposing cuts on the poor, the Senate sought savings from corporate interests. Surprise, surprise: The final bill dropped the $10 billion cut to the PPOs and most of the rebate demands on drug manufacturers. Instead, the agreement hammered Medicaid recipients with $16 billion in gross cuts over the next decade. (The net cuts are lower because of new Medicaid spending, partly to help cover the scattered victims of Hurricane Katrina.)

The Medicaid cuts include increased co-payments and premiums on low-income Americans, and the budget assumes savings because fewer poor people will visit the doctor. As Kevin Freking of the Associated Press reported: "The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that such increases would lead many poor people to forgo health care or not to enroll in Medicaid at all -- contributing to some of the $4.8 billion in Medicaid savings envisioned over the next five years."

Ah, say their defenders, but these cuts will be good for poor people. According to the New York Times, Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Tex.), an architect of the Medicaid proposals, said the higher co-payments were needed to "encourage personal responsibility" among low-income people. Spoken like a congressman who never has to worry about his taxpayer-provided health coverage.

Now there's a brilliant idea. Drive more people out of the health care system so that the PPO's and drug companies can make another penny or two profit per share. I can't wait for the day that the people of America wake up and realize how few of their 'values' the Republican Party actually shares.

2005-12-26T19:16:00.000-08:00

Chapman Tracks the 'Imperial Presidency'

Interesting observation today in a column by Steve Chapman in today's Chicago Tribune:

President Bush is a bundle of paradoxes. He thinks the scope of the federal government should be limited but the powers of the president should not. He wants judges to interpret the Constitution as the framers did, but doesn't think he should be constrained by their intentions.

He attacked Al Gore for trusting government instead of the people, but he insists anyone who wants to defeat terrorism must put absolute faith in the man at the helm of government.

His conservative allies say Bush is acting to uphold the essential prerogatives of his office. Vice President Cheney says the administration's secret eavesdropping program is justified because "I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it."

But the theory boils down to a consistent and self-serving formula: What's good for George W. Bush is good for America, and anything that weakens his power weakens the nation. To call this an imperial presidency is unfair to emperors.

The contrast between the desire for judges who will 'remain faithful' to the Constitution and the willingness to toss that same Constitution aside when it suits the Executive branch is indeed striking.

2005-12-26T18:54:00.000-08:00

I can't recommend strongly enough the essay 'Confessions of a Repentant Republican' by Dr. William Frey. This will sound corny, but I almost cried when I finished reading the essay, because it was filled with the thoughtfulness and honest intellectual searching that I feel is so sorely lacking in today's political debate. These are the clearly the thoughts of a man who has wrestled with his convictions, sought out the historical parallels, and has produced the sort of eloquent indictment of the Bush Administration that puts to shame those of us who came by our distrust of this administration more instinctively.

Read it. Share it with your friends on both sides of the political spectrum. Dr. Frey's is a voice that deserves a much wider audience.

2005-12-23T12:44:00.000-08:00

Stupid Legislative Trick: Cashing in on the Jerry Lewis ‘Porkathon’

Here’s a story that illustrates how badly money is corrupting our political process…

Jerry Lewis (no, not THAT Jerry Lewis) and Bill Lowery, both Southern California Republicans served together on the House Appropriations Committee from 1985 – 1993, when Lowery retires from Congress to become a full-time lobbyist. Between personal contributions and hosted fund raising events, Lowery and his firm’s partners help raise $480K for Lewis’s PAC since 2000, approximately 37% of the total funds raised by the PAC. Thanks in large part to these contributions, Lewis is able in 2004 to turn over $650K in ‘excess campaign funds’ to the Republican leadership to help in other close House races. January 2005 rolls around and Lewis is named by that same leadership as the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee. From this seat, he is in prime position to help earmark funds for special projects promoted by his friends, especially the clients of Bill Lowery. These clients include government agencies, universities, and defense contractors from all over California. Throw in a little informal staff exchange program
between the Congressman’s office and the lobbying firm, and you’ve got yourself quite an efficient operation. Everyone involved wins; the taxpayer loses.

Remember the day when a balanced budget amendment was one of the keystones of the
Gingrich Contract With America? I guess they forgot to tell us that deficits were only bad when the ‘other guy’ is in charge. Look, I'm not stupid enough to believe that waste like this didn't go on when the Dem's were in charge, but if you're going to preach against in '94 you can't be wallowing in it in '05. This case to me seems to be particularly outrageous in that the ties between the lobbyist and the congressman seem so tight, and that this is, after, the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee.

2005-12-23T10:20:00.000-08:00

$200B and 2000 Lives Would Have Bought a LOT of Homeland Security

One of the things that consistently aggravates me about the Bush administration's approach to justifying the war in Iraq is the implication that if we hadn't invaded we would have essentially been sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for the next terrorist attack. In fact, there are hundreds of things we could have been doing with the time, manpower, and, perhaps most importantly, money that has been spent in Iraq.

One of course has to start by pointing out the nagging little fact that Osama bin Laden is still at large. The death of one American soldier under any circumstances is tragic, but can anyone deny that 2000 casualties storming the hills and caves of Tora Bora in order to capture bin Laden would have been viewed much differently not only by the American public, but by the world at large? Instead, we try to outsource the attack to a bunch of Afghan tribesman who, in the end, took our money and waved goodbye to bin Laden as he crossed the border into Pakistan or wherever else he's been hiding for the last four years. Then we pull key assets out of Afghanistan to start preparing for the Iraq invasion. Four years later, Saddam Hussein is on trial in Baghdad, but the guy who proved he was ready, willing, and able to carry out attacks inside the US is still free, still plotting.

Then there's the issue of the over $200B that's already been spent in Iraq. Of course no one in the administration thought the war would cost anywhere near that much, but let's just imagine for a moment that we could go back to 9/12/2001 with the knowledge that we're going to spend $200B to make the country safer. Would we still choose to spend it on Iraq? What could we have spent it on instead?

Let's look at the 9/11 Commission's recent report card on the progress that has been made in addressing their recommendations. Here are my suggestions on areas that could have used some of the $200B:

Incident Command Center
Improved border screening
Explosive checks at airports
Baggage and cargo screening
Securing WMD
First responder communications and equipment

I'm willing to bet that not only would Americans been in favor of spending money on these items, we would even have been willing to live with higher taxes to pay for it, rather than putting the whole $200B on the national credit card, leaving the costs to be paid for by our children.

2005-12-23T08:21:00.000-08:00

When the System of Checks and Balances Starts to Break Down

Two Muslim Uighurs (natives of a province of Western China) travel to Afghanistan in 2001 to receive military training from the Taliban. They're not terrorists interested in attacking America; they just want to help defend their homeland against the Chinese government. Then 9/11 occurs, America invades Afghanistan, and these two gentlemen decide its time to leave. They don't stay to fight the Americans, they want to escape to Pakistan. On the way they're seized by bounty hunters collecting rewards from the Americans for the capture of enemy combatants. They are held in Afghanistan for 6 months and then four years at Guantanamo, at which time an American military tribunal finally reaches the conclusion that they are not in fact enemy combatants.

Oh happy day, we're free, right? Wrong. The government continues to hold the men under the assertion that it now 'needs to wind up wartime detentions in an orderly manner'. After several hearings, a US judge agrees that the men are being held illegally. OK, that should get them out, shouldn't it? Again, no. The judge declares that despite the fact that the further detention of these men is illegal, he has no power to effect their release. He has no need for them to appear before him in court so a simple writ of habeus corpus won't work, he can't order them brought back to the US and freed because the executive branch controls immigration issues, he can't order them released at Guantanamo because the military has exclusive rights to control the military base, and to this point the government hasn't been able to find another country willing to take them (except for China, and you can imagine what their reception would be like there).

Bottom line, two men are imprisoned by the US government by mistake for over four years and we can't figure out a way to set them free. How messed up is that?

2005-12-23T04:09:00.000-08:00

WP Editorial: A Bad Finish

Looks like the Washington Post editorial page doesn't have much good to say about the recent year end manuevering in Congress.

"An exercise in budget discipline," acting House Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) called the agreement to save close to $40 billion in mandatory spending over the next five years. An exercise in self-delusion and the power of special interests is more like it. Start with the pretense that this Congress has buckled down to tackle the deficit. It hasn't. The $40 billion in budget cuts -- much of which doesn't consist of cuts at all but of money raised by things such as selling off the broadcast spectrum -- is, if Republican leaders get their way, to be followed by an even greater amount in tax cuts next year. So the 109th Congress will have added to the deficit, not trimmed it. Lawmakers got around their self-imposed spending caps by labeling expenses such as flu preparedness as emergency spending. Some discipline.

2005-12-22T12:05:00.000-08:00

Stupid Executive Trick: Leave the Chemical Plants Exposed for Fear of 'Regulation'

Today the Washington Post began a series of articles on the birth of the Department of Homeland Security. Here's an interesting little nugget...

One stark example was the White House's blockade of a Ridge-supported plan to secure large chemical plants. After Sept. 11, Whitman had worked with Ridge on a modest effort to require high-risk plants -- especially the 123 factories where a toxic release could endanger at least 1 million people -- to enhance security. But industry groups warned Bush political adviser Karl Rove that giving new regulatory power to the Environmental Protection Agency would be a disaster.

"We have a similar set of concerns," Rove wrote to the president of BP Amoco Chemical Co.

In an interagency meeting shortly before DHS's birth, White House budget official Philip J. Perry, who also happens to be Cheney's son-in-law, declared the Ridge-Whitman plan dead.

"Tom and I would just throw our hands up in frustration over that issue," Whitman recalled"

So let me get this straight, the average American citizen has to compromise his right to unreasonable search and seizure so that the terrorists can't attack us again, but the chemical industry remains a sitting duck because they're scared of the big, bad EPA? Are you kidding me???

2005-12-22T10:40:00.000-08:00

Hagel Apparently Gets It

Quoted today in the Lincoln Nebraska Journal-Star after being asked about Darth Cheney's threats to critics of the administrations policy of secret wiretapping...

“My oath is to the Constitution, not to a vice president, a president or a political party.”

I wish every Congressman and Senator from both sides of the aisle could be made to stay after class and write this sentence 1000 times on the blackboard.

2005-12-22T08:56:00.000-08:00

Boy, you know things are going badly in the Bush 'War on Terror' when Michael Luttig, former poster boy for the acceptable conservative Supreme Court nominee slaps you down when you try to manuever your way out of having the Supreme Court review the military detention of Jose Padilla.

Here's the money quote from the decision:

They have left the impression that the government may even have come to the belief that the principle in reliance upon which it has detained Padilla for this time, that the President possesses the authority to detain enemy combatants who enter into this country for the purpose of attacking America and its citizens from within, can, in the end, yield to expediency with little or no cost to its conduct of the war against terror — an impression we would have thought the government likewise could ill afford to leave extant.

Thank goodness they didn't ask a liberal activist judge to write the opinion.

2005-12-22T07:03:00.000-08:00

Question: How many Congressman does it take to make a 'Culture of Corruption'

Answer: I think a dozen makes a nice, round number.

2005-12-22T06:29:00.000-08:00

Tom Delay Gets One Right for Once

Political Wire has a great post this morning hanging Tom Delay with his own words. My only question is whether he thought back in 1995 that Congressmen accepting expensive perks from lobbyists was bad for the America or he was just upset that he wasn't getting his share.

2005-12-22T03:59:00.000-08:00

Stupid Legislative Trick: Attaching Welfare Reform Modifications to a Budget Reconciliation Bill

Many moons ago the Senate instituted a rule that said no provision could be added to a budget reconciliation bill that did not actually impact the budget. Jump ahead to 2005, and the Republican leadership wants to include reauthorization of the welfare reform law originally passed in 1996 to this year's budget reconciliation bill. Unfortunately, just reauthorizing the existing bill would not impact the budget. The solution? Modify the work requirements in the bill so that they are so severe that the Congressional Budget Office expects some states to pay penalties rather than take the steps that would be required to meet the new requirement. New money coming into the federal government! A budget impact!! We can now add this to the reconciliation bill (which passes 51-50 after Darth Cheney interrupts an overseas trip to come back and cast the tie breaking vote).

Republican leadership wins again. Who loses? State governments, who will face over $8B in added costs, 255,000 families who will lose the child care assistance that enables the parent/parents to go to work in the first place. End result, less work and more poverty. See the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis for details.