Along the lines of what to expect in the president's State of the Union address next month, see this post from Reed Hundt.
--Josh Marshall
I went back to look how I marked the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005 a year ago. And it turns out that I didn't even mention it -- apparently because I was so deep into harassing and chronicling the slithers and wiggles of the 'Fainthearted Faction'. I'm sure it was a better use of my time.
The last post of 2004 was a teaser about a "leadership shake-up in the fainthearted faction" and I followed up with six posts, all on the same topic, on January 1st.
I'm not sure it would have occurred to me to do a year-ending post. But a number of other blogs I read have done so. So I'll give it a try.
First, I'd like to thank the readers of this site, and even more thank the core of regulars who visit every day, send tips, feedback, criticism, all of it. I've been doing this now for more than five years. And sometimes it's hard for familiarity not to lead to taking for granted the fact that something like a hundred thousand people show up to read this site on any given weekday.
So let me just say that I really appreciate your being a reader of this site. On top of that I want to say a special thanks to the few thousand of you who've contributed this year to the upkeep and now expansion of what we're doing. Thanks.
Now on to a more substantive issue.
For folks of my political persuasion, last year ended on a very bleak note. But things started going badly for the president from the beginning of 2005 and went down hill from there. Looking toward next year, a lot of stars seem to be in alignment for the Democrats. And history, scandal and the comeuppance of past mistakes and villainies all seem stacked against the president and his party.
A moment so pregnant with possibility has inevitably turned to speculation about how the Dems could blow it -- which is a possibility well worth considering. And that leads to all the questions of which issues should the Democrats pursue, which will position them better, should they have more new ideas -- those and a thousand other questions that, together, all amount to paralysis and a morbid self-indulgence and introspection.
I say let's forget about all of that. Far better to concentrate on two things.
First, attack!
Saying that amounts to a lightning rod in itself, hoisted up for battering from all sorts of scolds. But it's nothing to be ashamed of. The point of a political opposition is to oppose -- if there are no grounds for opposition, then there is no reason for such an opposition to exist. Better to join the president's party or go out of existence. And certainly, for those who share the perspective of this site, there is plenty to oppose. To say 'attack!' simply means to maintain the initiative in the debates of the day -- always. And when it's lost to get it back as soon as possible.
Second, you can't be an opposition without knowing what you oppose and what you're for.
Bad writing is usually imprecise writing -- and its badness usually stems from the bad writer not having taken the time to think through just what he or she means to say. The cobwebs and vagaries of their minds are revealed in bad prose.
Bad politics usually stems from people not having a clear idea of what they're trying to achieve, where they're trying to go. Once you know where you're trying to lead the country, strategy and tactics and optics and gutting the other side all tend to fall into place. If not perfectly, then a whole lot easier. Where do we want to take the country? Forget the rest and think about that. That's the guiding star.
Enough of my sermonizing. Happy New Year!
--Josh Marshall
Another point on the excellent Abramoff piece in today's Post (discussed below).
Look at the sums of money involved and the what they were being used for -- off-the-books political activity and individual personal enrichment. A lot of attention has been focused on 'hard money' contributions from Abramoff and his associates and clients. But these hard money (i.e., federally regulated contributions) pale in comparison to the sums of money talked about here. They're not the real story or the heart of the money lubricating the cogs of this machine. They're more like the initial ante up. As in the case with Duke Cunningham, the above-board hard money contributions were more like a clue to the real action going on either out of the regulated money system or through straight out cash bribes.
--Josh Marshall
Late edition? An interesting revision pointed out to me by TPM Reader SM. In last night's version of the AP story reporting Jack Abramoff's impending plea deal, AP writer Toni Locy wrote ...
Abramoff’s cooperation would be a boon to an ongoing Justice Department investigation of congressional corruption, possibly helping prosecutors build criminal cases against up to 20 lawmakers and their staff members.
Overnight versions were updated as follows (emphasis added) ...
Abramoff's cooperation would be a boon to an ongoing Justice Department investigation of congressional corruption, possibly helping prosecutors build criminal cases against up to 20 lawmakers of both parties and their staff members.
Noting the change of course leaves untouched the underlying question of the accuracy of the reporting. Will Abramoff finger Dem lawmakers and members of their staffs? I've heard scatterings of rumors that he'll try to tag at least a couple on his way down. Just to keep things fair and balanced. Of course, he can't do things unilaterally. Public Integrity lawyers at the Justice Department have to be convinced, either by Abramoff or other evidence they've collected, that they got cases.
--Josh Marshall
AP: "Federal prosecutors and lawyers for Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff are putting the finishing touches on a plea deal that could be announced as early as Tuesday, according to people familiar with the negotiations. The plea agreement would secure the lobbyist's testimony against several members of Congress who received favors from him or his clients."
--Josh Marshall
Buckle-up your seatbelts. Then go read this Post article on Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Russian arms-and-oil hustlers, a piggy bank called the U.S. Family Network and a whole lot more.
First off, this is a helluva piece of reporting. And the story the author, R. Jeffrey Smith, tells has so many moving parts that it's not easy to summarize. If you want all the details, just go read the thing. It'll be time well spent.
The key points, though, ran as follows, near as I can tell.
For five years in the late 1990s there was an outfit called the U.S. Family Network, a pretty classic astroturf operation and, like a number of them, pretty closely linked with Tom DeLay.
Only USFN did little or no public advocacy on behalf of conservative family issues or much of anything else. It seems to have been run pretty much as a piggy bank and money pass-through by and for a number of DeLay operators -- including Jack Abramoff and Ed Buckham.
The Marianas Island sweatshop folks chipped in half a million dollars; the Choctaws chipped in a quarter million; and some shadowy Russian oil and gas interests (also Abramoff clients) ponied up a cool million dollars for USFN -- money laundered through a now-defunct British law firm. (The Russians apparently wanted to give DeLay a fancy car; but DeLay's folks suggested that might cause problems.)
Basically everybody who gave was getting something from DeLay; and USFN was the coin machine. As Smith puts it, rather prosaically, "records, other documents and interviews call into question the very purpose of the U.S. Family Network, which functioned mostly by collecting funds from domestic and foreign businesses whose interests coincided with DeLay's activities while he was serving as House majority whip from 1995 to 2002, and as majority leader from 2002 until the end of September. (italics added)"
And what did the money from USFN go for? A ton of it seems to have been cycled back to Ed Buckham's firm, The Alexander Strategy Group -- one of key money gatekeepers in the DeLay machine. Some went for attack ads against Democrats and other political operations. A pretty sizeable chunk was ...
used to finance the cash purchase of a townhouse three blocks from DeLay's congressional office. DeLay's associates at the time called it "the Safe House."DeLay made his own fundraising telephone pitches from the townhouse's second-floor master suite every few weeks, according to two former associates. Other rooms in the townhouse were used by Alexander Strategy Group, Buckham's newly formed lobbying firm, and Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), DeLay's leadership committee.
They paid modest rent to the U.S. Family Network, which occupied a single small room in the back.
Like I said, you can read all the lurid details in the piece. But let's back up for a moment to get a look at the big picture.
What's going on here? Abramoff's involved in this one; but not just him -- one-time partner and (surprisingly dangerous to Abramoff) eventual rival Ed Buckham. Foreign and domestic corporations pay money in to front groups for favors. And what happens to the money? Lots certainly goes to personally enrich the chief lobbyists like Abramoff and Buckham. But look closely and you'll see that lots gets pumped back in to the machine -- the capitol hill 'safe house', political ads, money to the consultancies that no doubt underwrites other political operations, 'grassroots' and otherwise.
It's like we've been telling you for months. This is a slush fund. Lots of secret money, often from overseas, that can get spread around off the books in DC. That's how this sort of political machine works.
--Josh Marshall
Here's a question some of our lawyer readers may be able to help with -- but software developers and others may have good suggestions too.
As regular readers know, we've spent a decent amount of time this last year putting together timelines of key events and stories, often with reader participation. As we build toward launching TPMmuckraker.com we're looking for ways to put these projects together in a more organized and graphically intuitive way.
Now, I know that there is software designed primarily for litigators who want to use graphically intuitive timelines in their courtroom presentations. So that's one source of software we might be able to use to put information together in a more user-friendly way than just a straight vertical list of events in chronological order. I know there are other niche software tools available that do similar sorts of things as well.
So if you've worked with any of these programs or tools of whatever sort, can you drop us a line? Let us know how well you think the tool worked, whether it produces timelines that might be useful for us as we create various scandal and event timelines at TPMmuckraker.com. Thanks in advance for your help.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JL thinks TPMmuckraker is only the beginning ...
TPM said"Perhaps the new owners [of renamed Signatures] can turn it into the pol-nerd equivalent of a sports bar where aggreived Dems hang out and whip themselves up into a frenzy over the latest Abramoff story".
If TPM is going to branch out, rent office space, have a "world office" and hire beat reporters, it needs to invest and let its vast wealth do some work. I suggest TPM ask for donations so TPM can buy Signatures and make this stroke of genius idea happen ASAP.
My check for your coming scamblog is on its way. I'll invest in the new TPM Signatures scam-bar tourist attraction too!
Once we've got reporters hired and some place to put the computers and phones we'll consider other strategic acquisitions.
--Josh Marshall
Play to your strengths! says TPM Reader CD in this shrewd bit of business advice ...
in true abrahamoffian fashion, they really need to capitalize on whatever angle they possibly can for their own selfish profit. i say it has to be "the ethically compromised cafe." it's not as if the movers and shakers they once catered to would really ever get comfy there again, so they might as well exploit their notoriety to draw in the tourists
Sounds right to me. Perhaps the new owners can turn it into the pol-nerd equivalent of a sports bar where aggreived Dems hang out and whip themselves up into a frenzy over the latest Abramoff story.
Jack Flips Hot Cakes, DeLay's Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato sandwich, Mike Scanlon Chicken Wings.
Late Update: Still more from TPM Reader CD: "and of course they would serve milkshakedowns and scamburgers. possibilities are endless....."
--Josh Marshall
Bush tumbles from 42% approval in last week's CNN/USAToday poll to 41% in new CNN poll out today!
What?
Can't I make a big deal about meaningless statistical blips too?
--Josh Marshall
Ahh the Shame! the Humanity! the pure unadulterated humor value!
Signatures, Jack Abramoff's pricey DC eatery where the beautiful people right-wingers ate well and the congressmen ate for free, is looking for a new name.
And they've set up a special page at the restaurant's website where you can sign up and suggest one.
I think I'm going to put in for 'License Plates'.
(ed.note: Special thanks for TPM Reader OM for the catch.)
Late Update: Okay, I thought License Plates was pretty damned funny. But TPM Reader VT just came in with Jack in the Box. And that may take the prize.
Even Later Update: Bravo! TPM Reader HTH manages both nominal continuity and residential appropriateness by renaming Signatures, The Pen or perhaps The Federal Pen, though here brevity may be the soul of wisdom.
--Josh Marshall
It's not too early to start thinking about it: what is the president going to say in his state of the union address? what claims will he make, fraudulent or otherwise? And what will the alternative be?
--Josh Marshall
A couple quick follow-ups on the Abramoff article in the Post today.
First, there's this passage ...
DeLay, a Christian conservative, did not quite know what to make of Abramoff, who wore a beard and a yarmulke. They forged political ties, but the two men never became personally close, according to associates of both men.
"Personally close" can mean a lot of things. And what it means in the often-inherently-phony world of politics is anyone's guess. But in this context I take the passage above to mean that though they had politics and political money ties, it was always an arm's length relationship on a personal level.
That's not what I hear in talking to people. In fact, I have an February 2003 email between Abramoff and Christine DeLay in which they discuss a private dinner with the DeLays, the Abramoffs and Washington Wizards owner Abe Pollin and his wife Irene the night before. The email makes it sound the two couples were close and socialized together.
Remember too that back in August the Post ran an unrebutted but now endlessly discredited claim that DeLay had washed his hands of Abramoff in early 2001 after first hearing about the murder of Abramoff's erstwhile business partner Gus Boulis.
Certainly, claims that the two men weren't close would be entirely self-serving from the DeLay side; on the Abramoff side, that's less clear. But for the reasons above and others, call me unconvinced.
Then there's this passage ...
Abramoff wallowed in his access, real and imagined. When his crack administrative assistant Susan Ralston bolted for a position with White House political adviser Karl Rove, Abramoff told colleagues he had gotten her the job even though it was Ralston's old boss, Reed, who made it happen, her former colleagues said.
Is this really credible? Abramoff was tight with Rove. And 2000/2001 when just on the cusp of Abramoff's glory days when he was a huge player in DC. And his right-hand-woman (she was a key player for both men; the title understates her role) went to work for Rove when the Bush administration came in.
We know that Abramoff worked assiduously and fairly successfully to get colleagues and business associates of his into key positions in the administration for obvious reasons. And his key assistant goes and becomes the gatekeeper for Karl Rove. But he had nothing to do with it.
I just don't think that passes the laugh test.
It was Ralph Reed? He's close to both men of course. And perhaps he put in a good word for her too. But somehow I figure the guy who'd worked with her closely for years would be the more likely person to have secured the appointment than someone like Reed she'd never worked with.
And look at the phrasing. "Ralston bolted for a position with White House political adviser Karl Rove." Apparently she just couldn't get away from him quick enough.
Of course her "former colleagues" say that Abramoff didn't have anything to do with getting her the job! Ralston's now at the center of -- if not necessarily implicated in -- two on-going criminal investigations. She doesn't need any more trouble than she's already got.
I don't know the specifics of how she went from Abramoff to Rove. But I think more than self-serving testimony from Ralston's proxies is needed to jettison the common understanding that Jack got her the job.
--Josh Marshall
The bamboozlement makes it half way around the world before ... well, this from the San Antonio Express-News ...
Media reports that U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay had convinced the state's highest court to hear his appeal were as widely circulated as they were, well, wrong.Justices for the Texas Court Criminal Appeals agreed merely to consider hearing DeLay's money laundering case. They never said they would accept the case, said Edward Marty, the court's general counsel.
The erroneous media reports, which the San Antonio Express-News published in a wire story and displayed online, come from DeLay's spokesman, Kevin Madden, in an e-mail sent to reporters Tuesday evening, after courts had closed for the night.
“FYI-Breaking news out of Austin, TX,” the e-mail stated. “The state Court of Criminal Appeals has agreed to hear Mr. DeLay's habeas motion that was filed at the end of last week. The court has set a one-week deadline for briefs to be filed by the parties involved. The court could essentially decide to end Ronnie Earle's prosecution after hearing this motion and the facts presented.”
Asked about his on-the-fly bamboozlement, Madden told the paper's Lisa Sandberg: "In an effort to be instantaneous, I wasn't precise.....My understanding (of the decision) was correct. The way I relayed it wasn't."
--Josh Marshall
I thought that in my years as a reporter I had navigated some fairly treacherous terrain. Then I tried making my way through the hectic ridiculousness that is the New York commercial real estate market. My God. Not that I'm trying to become a mini-Donald Trump or anything, just looking for a little slice of office space for our expanded operation here at TPM. But it ain't easy.
For instance, on one of my first jaunts into this square foot jungle, I went to see a space listed at 750 sq. ft.
That seemed like a decent amount of space for four people -- me and three employees, all in one open work area. So after working out some preliminaries over the phone, I made my way down to the neighborhood in question, found the appointed building and ambled up the staircase to get my first look at the new TPM world headquarters. After a bit more smalltalk with the landlord I found myself in a room that struck me as, well ... somehow very cramped.
I started making my way around the stretched out little box not knowing quite what to make of it. And as I looked around for things to look like I was looking at (not as simple a proposition as you might think) and questions I thought I should think to ask, we came to the conclusion that we were in a room that measured 30 ft. by 9 ft.
"Of course, you know, you lose a little square footage in commercial space," the man assured me with a sort of trailing off cadence.
At this point, I should say that I quickly banged out the numbers in my head, which suggested this space was really rather closer to 270 sq.ft rather than the advertised 750 sq.ft. Should, but unfortunately can't since the whole experience had left me in such a cloud of weirdly-self-inflicted bamboozlement that somehow it wasn't till I was back on the street making my way back home that I progressed from thinking something just wasn't quite right about the place to a more mathematically-grounded realization that there had been a certain lack of truth in advertising about the aforementioned square feet.
In any case, now a couple weeks later I'm nothing like the commercial real estate naif I was then. I'm well-versed in the distinction between rentable and usable square feet. Only a rube wouldn't know that it's standard to include less-than-easily-utilized space such as the walls of the building, stairways you have no access to and sometimes even patches of land in nearby counties when tabulating 'rentable' square feet.
Anyway, live and learn.
What I choose to report on and write about here at TPM has always, to a great degree, tracked my own interests and obsessions and curiosities. So if you start noticing posts on sub-letting or loft space or the low-end Manhattan office space market popping up, you'll know what went wrong.
--Josh Marshall
The Washington Post has a lengthy backgrounder on Jack Abramoff on the front page of Thursday's paper. My main criticism of the piece would be that the authors do too little to place Abramoff's ascent into the context of the consolidation of Republican control over K Street and the operation of the DeLay Machine in the House of Representatives. I don't think the one can be properly understood without the other.
Still, not every article has to cover every topic or angle. And Schmidt and Grimaldi manage to bring together a great deal of information about Abramoff into a compelling narrative. Anybody interested in understanding this story should read this piece.
--Josh Marshall
DeLay gets a friendly ruling from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
Travis County DA Ronnie Earle is currently appealing a lower court ruling that threw out one of the counts he brought against REp. Tom DeLay (R-TX). But however the appeal is decided, the delay itself threatens to push the actual trial date well into 2006 and probably past the point of no return for the former Majority Leader.
In response, DeLay filed a speedy trial motion before the Court of Criminal Appeals. And today the Court, which Roll Call's John Bresnahan reports (sub.req.) is made up of nine Republican judges, gave Earle a week to file a brief in response to DeLay's request.
According to Bresnahan the Court "could either throw out the charges entirely or order an immediate trial for DeLay in the money-laundering case."
--Josh Marshall
Earlier in the history of this site, I used to periodically recommend books -- usually works of popular history. So here's another: The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians by Peter Heather. I'm only about half way through it. But I've read more than enough to recommend it.
This topic is a perennial. But it's also one that is almost hopelessly encrusted with myth and overworn interpretations which make the period very hard to get a hold of or approach in any fresh way. Heather's book is crisply and engagingly written. And it's quite accessible even for someone with no background or knowledge of the period. He manages to bring together both the high history of emperors and battles with the longer-term changes in the societies and economies of the German and other 'barbarian' peoples from central and eastern Europe who dismantled the western Empire in the 5th century.
If you're the sort who likes finding a thick book about some distant period in the past that you can lose yourself in for a spell, try this one out.
--Josh Marshall
You've probably heard the name Jim Marcinkowski. He has been one of a handful of retired CIA officers who've stood up publicly over the last couple years to take on those in and out of the administration who say that outing Valerie Plame was no big deal. Now he's running for Congress in Michigan's 8th District against incumbent Mike Rogers (R).
My recollection is that Rogers was a Social Security phase-out wobbler, last time we checked.
--Josh Marshall
There are so many complicated details of what is happening today in Iraq, as various factions and sectarian groupings vie for position in the aftermath of this month's national election. But one clear and bright spot does stand out -- the utter and seemingly limitless humiliation of Ahmad Chalabi.
Last week we noted Chalabi's feebler-than-feeble election results, which showed him coming in well under 1% of the national vote and facing a complete shut-out from the new national assembly.
Apparently, though, Chalabi was hoping for something of a rebound from ballots cast by Iraqis living overseas.
Seems that didn't pan out, though.
The Washington Post reports that preliminary results of the "special vote" -- which includes Iraqis living abraod, in hospitals, the army and in prisons -- showed Chalabi bagged a mere 0.89 percent of the vote.
The Post also notes that without seat in the Assembly, Chalabi would presumably also not be able to join the government, thus perhaps limiting at least to some degree his ability to preen, pose and posture in the western press.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader CS checks in ...
That Post story was a great example of bogus even-handedness in action. And Sunstein's statement that Yoo doesn't deserve vilification is an example of the over-clubbiness of the legal profession.Set aside Yoo's book on presidential powers, which is tendentious and unconvincing but well-written. His "torture memo" is inarguably a horrific piece of legal reasoning, which uses lawyerly cleverness to evade the plain sense of words and endorse the policies his superiors wanted endorsed. It's an utter embarrassment, by any measure.
--Josh Marshall
For more on John Yoo, see this appropriately-titled piece in the New York Review of Books, "What Bush Wants to Hear".
--Josh Marshall
Atrios has a good catch here about Trent Lott, whether he'll retire next year, whether that will hand the Senate to the Dems and what it all might mean.
--Josh Marshall
The Post has a profile of John Yoo out today. Cass Sunstein, while disagreeing with Yoo, calls him "a very interesting and provocative scholar" who "doesn't deserve the demonization to which he has been subject." And Yoo himself makes the fair point that he himself was hardly in a position, as DOJ lawyer, to make policy.
All that aside, there's something deeply pernicious about this man's work. The Post gives some sense of the cadre of lawyers and ideological incubators he comes out of. Provocative as Yoo's ideas may be, they are deeply authoritarian. And his claim that there is any historical basis for such absolute presidential authority is laughable. I try not to get too deep into legal arguments because I lack the necessary expertise. But on the historical points I'm on my own professional ground.
Democracy can be lost in a lot of ways. This is one of them. These theories of executive power deserve a thorough airing and discussion quite apart from the particular abuses they may have been used to justify.
--Josh Marshall
John Yoo stepped back in the debate over presidential power recently with this opinion column which appeared first in the Los Angeles Times.
But read it and tell if me if I'm not right to think that he has taken the opportunity not to engage this debate he's helped spawn but to duck it.
Yoo, you'll remember, was the author of several key Justice Department memos from Bush's first term that, taken together, claim that the president's war powers give him a virtually untrammeled power to act as he believes in the best interests of the security of the nation, even if in doing so he breaks the laws of the country itself.
Yet in Yoo's column he doesn't even explore the complicated issue of how and where Congress might constrain the president's war-making power, particularly in areas that are not clearly or traditionally in the military realm. Instead, he chooses to attack a claim no one is making -- that the president cannot use the military until the Congress makes a formal declaration of war.
This is an argument that has no significant following in political or legal-constitutional circles. Simply stated, no one believes anything like that. It's just phony. And he builds from this phony argument to a lengthier straw man version of that which the president's critics make against him.
As in this passage ...
Liberal intellectuals believe that Bush's exercise of his commander-in-chief power has exceeded his constitutional authority and led to a quagmire in Iraq. If only Congress had undertaken the solemn process of declaring war, they have argued, faulty intelligence would have been smoked out, the debate would have produced consensus, and the American people would have been firmly committed to the ordeal ahead.
This is no more than a nonsense proceduralism version of the debate we're now having in this country.
Who has said that a declaration of war against Iraq would have made any difference to anything? No one says that. No one says anything like that.
With respect to war powers, the debate we're having is not about where they begin, as Yoo disingenuously suggests, but where they end.
With faulty intelligence and national consensus, the disputes are not procedural but substantive -- whether the president and his chief aides were simply dishonest with the public and the Congress in presenting information about Iraq, its war fighting potential and its ambitions, whether they gamed the country into war to create a fait accompli that would make the debate moot. These aren't issues of proceduralism and box-checking but tough substance -- whether President Bush betrayed his oath and whether he can be held accountable.
Yoo's diversionary OpEd suggests he's not eager to confront either of these questions. You'd think he'd use the moment to show his stuff; but Yoo doesn't.
Late Update: TPM Reader BF says Yoo was likely responding to this article in the Atlantic by Les Gelb and TPMCafe's Anne-Marie Slaughter. Seems likely he was. But I stick with my critique. If Yoo is willing to talk now he should talk about what's at issue. Courage is a good quality for those who talk a lot about war.
--Josh Marshall
