More on the voting problems in the mid-term elections:
Voting experts say it is impossible to say how many votes were not counted that should have been. But in Florida alone, the discrepancies reported across Sarasota County and three others amount to more than 60,000 votes. In Colorado, as many as 20,000 people gave up trying to vote, election officials say, as new online systems for verifying voter registrations crashed repeatedly. And in Arkansas, election officials tallied votes three times in one county, and each time the number of ballots cast changed by more than 30,000.
--David Kurtz
A hard-to-understand story in tomorrow's New York Times on a secret U.S. report that finds Iraqi insurgent groups are self-financing.
What makes the piece murky is no distinction is made between "insurgents," "terrorists," and other militant groups in Iraq. Maybe that's the approach of the secret report that the NYT piece is based on. But it would seem to me that lumping all of the various armed factions in Iraq into one category called "the insurgency" would be to miss many important differences in the goals and strategies--and the means of funding--of the many disparate groups currently operating in Iraq.
For instance, one of the secret report's more surprising conclusions, according to The Times, is "that terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.” It seems counterintuitive that the armed Shiite and Sunni militias battling for control of Iraq would be financing terrorists outside of Iraq while the battle inside of Iraq still hangs in the balance.
In fairness, The Times makes clear that the secret report may be flawed: "Some terrorism experts outside the government who were given an outline of the report by The Times, criticized it for a lack of precision and a reliance on speculation."
The overwhelming impression I'm left with from the piece is that more than three and half years after ostensibly seizing control of Iraq, the U.S. government is still largely ignorant of the armed groups arrayed against its efforts there.
--David Kurtz
Let me return briefly to this issue of who is going to be the chairman of the House Intelligence committee under the Democrats starting in January.
First, though, a brief bit of backstory. In the outgoing Congress, Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) was the senior Democrat on the committee. Speaker-elect Pelosi has made it clear that she doesn't want Harman to continue in that role. And the next most senior member of the committee is Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) of Florida. There are various explanations for why Pelosi wants Harman out, ranging from interpersonal animus to disappointment over her unwillingness to push back hard enough against the White House in the intel wars. I'm honestly not sure which. And I don't really care.
Going back to well before the election, Harman has been lobbying aggressively to keep her post (which would make her chairman in the new Congress). And Hastings and the Congressional Black Caucus have also been pushing hard to make sure he isn't passed over.
Now, I've noticed in some emails and on some blogs that some are saying that because we've been reporting on the ethics cloud over Hastings that this must really mean we're really secretly pulling for Harman to hold the post. That must be a convenient read for some people. But, alas, not a correct one. TPMmuckraker is a different sort of site than TPM. It focuses on reporting, not opinion. My issue with the intel chairmanship, however, has nothing to do with Jane Harman. I just think it's a bad idea to have someone chair the intel committee who has previously been impeached and convicted by Congress for corrupt acts.
To the extent that it matters, I'd be happy if the chairmanship went to Harman. I'd be just as happy if it went to Rush Holt -- who has less factional backing, but unique qualifications for the position -- or someone else. Indeed, if there were some showing that Hastings wasn't compromised by the incidents that happened in the '80s, I'd be happy to see him get it. And he might end up being good at the job, notwithstanding. Who knows? People change.
But it's not about Jane Harman. It's about Alcee Hastings.
--Josh Marshall
Recently I heard President Bush take a line I believe he said he got from Henry Kissinger to the effect that the only way the United States can be 'defeated' in Iraq is if we ourselves pull up stakes and leave. Thus the whole drama is one of national stamina and nerve.
I've seen little better illustration among the Iraq War advocates of the interrelationship of 'defeat', 'victory' and denial.
A very wealthy man can keep pouring money into a failed business venture forever. So, if he chooses to use his vast wealth to paper over his business failure, he can say pretty much the same thing: The keys to victory are in my hands. The only way this venture can fail is if I lose my nerve and stop investing.
But of course this is only the very questionable advantage of the very rich and the very powerful: the ability to fund or prop up denial indefinitely.
And so it is with the president and whoever is still buying into his arguments. If all reality can be denied, then there really is only one way you can be defeated: when you yourself say you've been defeated.
--Josh Marshall
One of the least commented upon aspects of the so-called debate on global warming is the extent to which the business community has for some time now been to the left of the Republican Party on the science of climate change and even, to a certain extent, on the potential political solutions to the problem.
GOP stalwarts like Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who is chairman of the Senate committee on the environment, are way out on the whacky right fringe but have managed to dominate their party's discussion of global warming, if not stifle the conversation outright. That's not to say that corporate America has suddenly turned green. Exxon Mobile, for example, has been a particularly vigorous sponsor of global warming deniers. But there has been in place a broader political consensus on the issue than one might be led to believe by looking at the leading voices of the GOP.
Today the WaPo surveys the current political landscape. Corporate America knows that the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions is coming. Now it's gearing up to maximize its influence on what that legislation will look like.
--David Kurtz
The Wall Street Journal has a rundown on the state of play of Democratic ethics reform proposals.
--David Kurtz
Is it just me or has George W. Bush checked out of the stumbling national crisis we know as 'Iraq'?
I know his name shows up in the headlines. He's meeting Iraq Prime Minister Maliki next week in Amman. Vice President Cheney is shuttling to Saudi Arabia. And all of this is being billed as a part of a new and broader 'regional' approach to getting the conflict under some measure of control.
But I don't hear the president. Not his voice. The one thing that's been a constant over the last three and a half years is the president as the voice of American Iraq policy. Whether he's the author of it is another question entirely. But the voice and pitbull of it, always.
And yet since the election he seems to have disappeared from the conversation entirely. Like he's just checked out. It's not his thing anymore.
To a degree, this has been the case since early 2004 -- the point by which it was clear the entire effort was a failure. But politics -- first his reelection and then the 2006 election -- has kept him powerfully in the game, constantly arguing staying the course or cutting and running or how a rebuke for his policies would amount to a win for the terrorists.
But now the rebuke has been given. And what is more than that he validated it, confirmed the rejection by summarily firing his Defense Secretary. By doing so, he admitted (even if he can't quite admit it to himself) that his war policy has been a failure.
With that admission out of the way, there's really no more cheerleading to be done for the whole effort. It's a hard slog, a tortuous battle to find some least bad outcome to the whole affair.
Back when he was riding high President Bush used to say that he 'didn't do nuance' -- a point on which he was unquestionably right. And that being the case, there's just nothing left for him to say. No more chest-thumping or rah-rah or daring his opponents to say he's wrong. So he's just gone silent. Like it's not his problem any more.
--Josh Marshall
Warrantless wire-tapping, one year later:
For all the sound and fury in the last year, the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program continues uninterrupted, with no definitive action by either Congress or the courts on what, if anything, to do about it, and little chance of a breakthrough in the lame-duck Congress.While the Democrats have vowed to press for more facts about the operation, they are of mixed minds about additional steps.
Some favor an aggressive strategy that would brand the program illegal and move to ban it even as the courts consider its legality. Others are more cautious, emphasizing the rule of law but not giving Republicans the chance to accuse them of depriving the government of important anti-terrorism tools.
--David Kurtz
Saudi and Israeli sources are sounding the alarm on stepped-up Iranian activity in Lebanon, according to Time:
Iran is smuggling weapons through Syria to re-arm Lebanese allies Hizballah, despite renewed efforts by United Nations peacekeepers and the Lebanese army to seal off the mountain borders with Syria in the wake of last summer's war between the Shi'ite militia and Israel, according to reports by Saudi and Israeli intelligence sources that have been confirmed by western diplomats in Beirut.Israeli military officials in Tel Aviv say that Hizballah replenished nearly half of its pre-war stockpiles of short-range missiles and small arms. But western diplomats in Beirut say these calculations under-estimate the weapons flow and that Hizballah has now filled its war chest with over 20,000 short-range missiles -- a similar amount fo what they had at the start of the conflict, during which the group is believed to have fired over 3,000 rockets at Israel.
--David Kurtz
TPM Reader CS on Mullah Dobson and his gospel of conversion from homosexuality ...
RE Dobson's decision not to help the Rev. Ted Haggard convert to heterosexuality.Okay, so here's Dobson, the leader of America's anti-gay lobby, telling us he's not going to bother working on curing Haggard cuz it'll take too long. This from the "movement" whose only rational argument for discrimination rests entirely on the (wrong) assumption that homosexuality is a behavior of choice -- and demonstrably curable.
You'd think Dobson et al would embrace the opportunity to deploy the latest in Exodus-style conversion therapy, especially on Haggard, one of their own most glaring and needy cases. Imagine the PR value! If the almighty priests of family values can "restore" Haggard, they can restore anyone, guaranteed!
But I guess it's not that important, or maybe it's a game Focus on the Family knows it can't win.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader RY on the delay at House intel ...
Intelligence Committeee is Pelosi's mini-Iraq: She doesn't know what to do, thus the delayDon't assume that there's a strategic logic, however inept, behind the delay in the selection of the Committee Chair. If she knew what to do, she would do it. The problem is: a) She hates Harman; 2)Hastings is blatantly inappropriate (and thus will not be selected, no matter how much the CBC squawks); 3) alternative selections to Harman seem strained.
Therefore, she will likely select Harman anyway--appeasing at least two factions, the Blue Dogs, and the MSM, who will praise her for being centrist and pragmatic, rather than vindictive and "ideological." But she just can't stand the thought of it--thus the delay.
Btw, if Pelosi does decide to screw Harman, Holt would be a smart political choice, too, not just on the merits, because this high profile position sets him up nicely to replace octengenarian Frank Lautenberg for the Party's Senate nomination in 2008 (many New Jersey politicos think that Corzine should have picked Holt this time around, rather than the scandal tainted Menendez).
--Josh Marshall
What I can't understand is why Nancy Pelosi is waiting so long before signaling her choice for chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
Here's what her drag-it-out approach has accomplished:
(1) It has generated numerous news reports (and blog posts) that Pelosi is considering selecting an impeached federal judge to head up such a sensitive committee. Even if she goes with someone other than Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL), she will have absorbed the punishment for simply considering the move.
(2) It has unnecessarily ginned up a hot competition among important caucuses on the Democratic side of the House. The Blue Dog Democrats, the Congressional Black Caucus, and to a lesser degree the Hispanic caucus have all seized on the lack of direction from the Speaker-elect to tout their own preferred candidates. The longer the competing parties vie for the chairmanship, the more likely that the losers emerge disgruntled.
(3) By letting this play out in a public and contentious way, Pelosi will look beholden to one interest group or another regardless of whom she picks--unless she goes with a dark horse candidate like Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ). (David Corn and Joe Conason have touted Holt in recent days.) Even then, Pelosi will have antagonized not just one key bloc within the Democratic caucus, but several of them.
The only strategy I could imagine Pelosi may be using here is to let the political tempest itself eliminate the competing candidates rather than doing so herself. But I don't really have the sense that this is being managed so shrewdly. Rather, it feels like things are drifting without strong guidance from the top.
--David Kurtz
Perhaps even more alarming than the car bombings that killed more than 200 people yesterday in Baghdad was an attack earlier in the day on the Health Ministry building:
The attack on the ministry headquarters began around midday when three mortar shells hit the main building, Lt. Ali Muhsin of the Iraqi Police told The Associated Press. Gunmen positioned on the upper floors of surrounding buildings then opened fire on the main building, pinning down hundreds of workers inside, ministry officials said. Ministry security guards with assault rifles fired back and managed to keep the insurgents at bay until Iraqi and American troops responded two hours later, the officials said.
Think about that for a minute. It took two hours for American and Iraqi troops just to respond to the siege of a major governmental building in the capital.
--David Kurtz
E.J. Dionne on the voting problems in Sarasota:
Imagine if 18,000 votes had just disappeared in either of the key Senate races. Or imagine a presidential election in which the electoral votes of Florida were decisive and the state was hanging in the balance by -- to pick a number that comes to mind -- 537 votes. And, by the way, in 2000 we could at least see those hanging and dimpled chads. In this case the votes have -- poof! -- simply disappeared.. . .
But there is good news here: This is a problem in just one congressional district. Control of the House does not depend on how this race turns out. It is therefore in the interest of both parties, not to mention the country, to be simultaneously aggressive and judicious in figuring out what went wrong in Sarasota and to use that knowledge to fix the nation's voting system before a major disaster strikes. Sarasota is the canary in the electronic coal mine.
--David Kurtz
Senate Judiciary Committee Soon-to-be Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) also has oversight fever -- which means the days of the Justice Department simply ignoring his requests will soon be over. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
Focus on the Family's James Dobson is too busy to help cure disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard's gayness because the process could take years.
--David Kurtz
Incoming Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) promises oversight on warrantless wiretapping and the CIA's secret prison system.
--David Kurtz
Since June, Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) has taken free trips to Turkey, Italy, Poland, England, Canada, Spain and Belgium, even though he is retiring from Congress and the subcommittee he chairs had finished its major piece of legislation in May.
--David Kurtz
CNN: More than 130 people killed in a series of car bombings today in Sadr City in Baghdad.
Update: The death toll now stands at more than 144.
--David Kurtz
There are 99,000 families in Louisiana and Mississippi living in FEMA trailers this Thanksgiving.
--David Kurtz
Happy Thanksgiving.
I was in Tennessee yesterday, scene of this year's most racially-charged Senate race. I got the holiday gluttony off to a roaring start with a stop at Interstate Barbecue in Memphis. It was my first time, and I now mourn all those lost years. If you ever get the chance, it's a must-stop. You can't go wrong with the pork ribs.
The family that runs the joint has a little girl, the same age as my daughter, who was helping out for the holiday. They hit it off, and I sat back and watched as two five-year-olds--one white, one black--sat side-by-side in their own booth coloring in their coloring books, casting sidelong glances at the each other's work and clearly basking in each other's presence. Above them on the wall was a photo of Rep. Harold Ford, Jr.
I was struck as I looked around at the restaurant's patrons--half black, half white--that this is Memphis. This is the South. So when someone like Bob Corker comes along and runs a race-baiting campaign against a black man like Harold Ford, dredging up old prejudices and old fears, and wins, I am angry and disappointed, but I don't despair the way I used to.
People like Senator-elect Corker can still harken to an earlier era, but that kind of appeal more and more requires a willful ignorance of the reality that is all around you now in the South, the reality of two little girls, one with black kinky hair, the other with board-straight brown hair, hunched together over coloring books in a restaurant frequented by blacks and whites. It is what the South has been for a long time now. It has happened gradually (never fast enough) and sometimes almost imperceptibly. But the changes have come.
--David Kurtz
Ever since I started watching The Sopranos I guess five or six years ago, I've watched and marveled at the way the creative arc of what we might call the high-form premium cable drama has been to plumb further and further into deviance, pathology and taboo and yet still pull out characters and worlds a mass viewership can identify with and love. Sopranos was the first move into this space: the brutal mobster in psychotherapy. But of course the mob drama as a refraction of and escape from the American scene has a long history.
Then, I remember, after the smash success of The Sopranos seeing HBO start hyping its new show Six Feet Under, a show about a family of undertakers. I remember seeing the previews for it and it seemed like a cliche of what we expect from brain-dead studio execs who've stumbled on a good thing: try to reproduce the magic with a hamfisted and soul-killing version of what worked the first time. So, if a show about a neurotic mobster murderer hit big, how about a drama about a dysfunctional family running a funeral home? If death sells, how about double-death?
But then Six Feet Under, for my money at least, turned out to be one of the best, arguably even the best (though I'm not sure I'd quite give it that superlative) television series ever created.
Even so, I had a similar feeling when I saw that Showtime had picked up Six Feet's Michael C. Hall for Dexter, an oddly comic drama in which the protoganist is a serial 
killer -- clearly the dramtic Everest on the terrain of humanizing the vile or socially shamed.
(Hall was David, the gay brother in Six Feet.)
Now, this would seem hard to pull off. After all, while serial killers get a bad press, most of us tend to believe it is deserved. But it is an amazingly good show. And I have to confess that I fell under its spell after one episode. And I've pined through each week waiting for the next episode.
(I missed the live airing of this week's. But then Sunday was our first day home with our new son. And, did anyone else know about this whole crying thing?)
The preview bills Dexter Morgan as a 'vigilante serial killer', which struck me as an odd billing when I first read it. But he's a real serial killer, a true sociopath, though some elements or emerging elements of his personality might not fit the clinical definition, a man with a driving compulsion to dissect humans. He works as a blood spatter expert for the Miami PD. But by night, or rather on his own time, he finds people like himself, sociopaths and habitual murderers, to kill.
The concept behind the show is that Dexter's adoptive father, a MPD homicide detective, spotted his son's predilections at a young age -- remorselessness, inability to grasp basic human emotions and emotional idioms, killing small animals -- and helped him channel his nascent serial killer-dom into the at least quasi-acceptable form of killing people society would do better off without.
Getting creeped out yet?
I understand. I probably would too before I'd seen the show. But it's very, very good. One of the treats of the show is the way the writers play with allowing us to see the world through the eyes of a damaged sociopathic personality, the alienation from basic human interactions, the inability to understand them, like going through life hearing the libretto of human existence without any of the score or the cues.
If you've seen the show you know about Rita, the Ice Truck killer, Dexter's, I guess you'd call him his rival and nemesis, and all the rest.
But tell me: have you seen Dexter? Do you like it? I'm eager to hear from other Dexter-philes. Drop me a line.
--Josh Marshall
Almost worse than you can possibly imagine (from CNN) ...
More than 140 bodies have been found dumped across Baghdad over the past three days, police said Wednesday.Police said 52 bullet-riddled bodies were found Wednesday, with 20 of them blindfolded, tied up and possibly tortured.
Police also discovered 29 bodies on Tuesday and 60 on Monday.
--Josh Marshall
Okay, here's our mega-run-down on whether Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) was guilty of leaking sensitive information from FBI wiretaps. On this charge the evidence is pretty shaky and Hastings' accuser and the accuser's pals were ... well, read the post and you decide.
--Josh Marshall
Be TPM's Tech King!
TPM is hiring a full-time web designer/programmer to work on each of our sites and at least one new one we're launching next year. The job will be working from our office in New York City and the work will be on Movable Type, Drupal and various other programs and platforms. We're a very small company. So the work will run the gamut from site design and maintenance to programming, coming up with creative ways to format documents and display information, timelines and other information we put out on our sites.
For the right person, I think it'd be a fun, challenging job and an opportunity to grow with a small company that's doing a lot of interesting things.
We'll be following up later with a proper job announcement. But if you're interested based on these limited details, send a resume, cover letter and two references to our comments email address up there on the right and use the subject line "Gizmocrat".
--Josh Marshall
Don't mess with Texas. Because Tom DeLay's already screwed the state so bad there's not much point anymore.
--Josh Marshall
Where do the 2008 contenders (GOP and Dem) stand on Iraq? Here's a handy guide.
--Josh Marshall
Keep this in mind as the court battle down in Florida over Katherine Harris' old seat moves forward.
According to a local paper's analysis, those many thousands of voters whose vote wasn't registered by electronic machines on Election Day were mostly Democrats.
--Paul Kiel
We're continuing to dig into the Alcee Hastings story. And, man, it's a pretty damn colorful story. The best thumbnail I can give you at this point is that the evidence against Hastings on a couple of key counts seems pretty bad. But probably his best defense is that there were at least two corrupt FBI agents involved in investigating him. One of them was actually H. Paul Rico, the now-notorious and now-dead FBI agent who was the 'handler' for Boston mobtser James "Whitey" Bulger of the 'Winter Hill gang' and ended up helping Whitey arrange mob murders. (I guess you could say he got in a bit too deep.)
Muckraker will be bringing you a run-down of all the muck later today.
But in general, yeah, you could say it's a rather colorful case. And if the standard is criminal guilt I think there's a decent argument that the case against Hastings is fatally compromised. But that's not the standard. This isn't even about a preponderance of evidence standard. The issue is which Democrat gets to be the senior Democrat in the House on intel issues.
I think it's a given that that person should be ethically beyond reproach, certainly in the sense of being someone deemed incorruptible. And I'm just not sure that word applies to Alcee Hastings.
Think of it this way: when they whack a decorated war hero as lying traitor, a triple amputee vet as a coward and an ex-Navy Secretary novelist as a pornographer, what do figure we hear when evidence of bribery and leaking classified wiretap info about the Dems' House intel chief hit Fox News and Drudge?
--Josh Marshall
In a lengthy "Dear Colleague" letter to House Democrats Monday, Alcee Hastings told his side of the story. You can read it here.
--Paul Kiel
Florida's recount battle is likely to litigate its way into the new year -- and the new Congress. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
Here's Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) statement before the senate (Oct. 18th, 1989) at the impeachment trial of then-federal Judge Alcee Hastings. (For background on what we're talking about, see this post from earlier today.) Conyers was the head of the House Judiciary subcommittee which invesitgated the Hastings matter and then served as an impeachment manager (i.e., part of a team of prosecutors) at the senate trial ...
Representative Conyers will now conclude the opening argument on the part of the House.Mr. Manager CONYERS. Mr. President, Mr. Majority Leader, Mr. Minority Leader, Members of this distinguished body, when I came to the Congress 25 years ago, to this body from the civil rights movement, in part, from local activity, I think I was one of four black Members of the House. My agenda focused then, as it does today, on increasing access to political power for African-Americans and members of other minority groups who for so long have been excluded from positions of influence and authority in American life. I have seen some progress in this past quarter of a century and I also know, as you do, that we still have a long way to go.
As a lawyer who occasionally got into courtrooms, I have been before my share of hostile judges, racist judges, in the North and the South. I found nothing more satisfying, in the course of my congressional career, than to help the development of a capable and vigorous bar of African-American lawyers, men and women, and the elevation of some of its more outstanding practitioners to the prestigious position of Federal judge where they can serve, not merely as dispensers of equal justice under the law, but as models for their community and for the Nation.
So, I am saddened to come before you today to urge the removal of one of the handful of black judges who presently occupy the Federal bench. I am not happy to come here to argue that Alcee L. Hastings has forfeited his right to one of the most honored places in this American political system. But we did not wage the civil rights struggle in order to substitute one form of judicial corruption for another.
I do not question that Alcee Hastings is a man of extraordinary accomplishment who once contributed much to his community and to the Nation. But that recognition only saddens me all the more because his conduct of the last 9 years does not diminish his former accomplishments any more than his former accomplishments excuse his more recent misdeeds. It is precisely because he betrayed his trust and betrayed those who looked to him for leadership, the possibility of a fairer, better system, that our obligation to face the truth as we see it in this matter before us is so great.
This man has been a role model for all who want to see justice administered, administered with fairness and compassion, without regard to race or wealth. Instead, we argue that he must be removed from office, so that he may not teach others that justice may be sold and that our system of justice may be beaten by continuous outrageous prevarication; by blaming others and the system for one's own transgressions.
I cannot explain or have any claim to understand what caused the metamorphosis of this man. I can only deal with my impression of the facts, and they lead me to the indisputable conclusion that he has betrayed his office and is no longer fit to wield the power and authority that has been bestowed upon him.
No one could have been more skeptical than I at the start of this process. No one more anxious to ensure that this man be neither penalized for his race or insulated by his race, from the consequences of wrongful conduct. No one was more predisposed to believe the best of Judge Hastings and his case and to doubt his accusers. I said so.
I was also sympathetic to the notion that the jury verdict should have settled the matter. We had a delegate speaking on that with supposedly great authority just yesterday.
As chairman of the subcommittee that held the evidentiary hearings in the Congress, however, I began to reacquaint myself with the law in this matter. I may have had more to do with impeachment proceedings than anybody around here. And I heard some evidence that forced me to reevaluate my position, the evidence presented, not only in my subcommittee but over here as a manger. I have heard this thing twice. And what I have seen and heard and studied and listened to and reread and argued with my staff counsel and back and forth has only matured my conclusion that, measured by any standard, Judge Hastings' guilt has been established and Congress has an obligation to protect the integrity of the judiciary.
Whether, as for me, the conclusion of guilt tears at your soul, and it used to do that for me, should not deter you from making a decision that you will have to make. A few years ago the Congress grappled with the very question of what the standard of proof should be in an impeachment trial. Currently we choose to leave it to the decision of each Member, as it should be. So the House does not ask you to reach your decision lightly or based just on what we did or even just what your committee did.
Each of you have to review this yourself. But what we do ask is that when you weigh the evidence, you take into account the nature of the competing interests, for that is what is reflected in the concept of the standard of truth. It is the balancing of the interests of the public against those of any civil officer facing impeachment charges that is recognized by the standard of proof you adopt. So whether or not the particular catchwords make any real difference in your factfinding, the choice does have constitutional significance. In an impeachment trial, nothing short of our very liberty is at stake. For a free society cannot endure if it permits the corrupt to govern others. And that issue here is the public trust and the confidence in the officials who constitute our Government.
The penalty upon conviction is not a sentence of imprisonment. It is not a criminal adjudication; it is the removal from office. As you all know, it so happens to be the only way you can remove a judge from office. Thus, the public interests are clearly predominant over the interests of the respondent.
In American jurisprudence, the degree of certainty required for a verdict varies according to the weight of the competing interest of the parties. In criminal proceedings, it is one thing; in civil proceedings, it is another. But Judge Hastings has suggested that the strictest standard be applied. That will make it tough to arrive at the conclusions that we already arrived at, and his lawyer's reasoning flies in the face of precedent and logic. It is very interesting. They cite a Supreme Court case, Addington versus Texas, that says no such thing. Look it up.
This case started off complicated. There is no such thing. The facts are garden variety stuff. The law started off complicated. No such thing. We just do not handle impeachment measures that often in the Congress. Once you examine the precedent and the history, it is not that difficult at all by the standards of the work that we discharge every single day of the week.
The purpose, traditionally at least in modern times where officials have been accused of more than one act of misconduct, the House has included, the Senate has accepted, an omnibus article of impeachment. The purpose is not only to permit the Senate to consider whether the acts of misconduct constitute impeachable conduct in combination rather than individually. It is also a recognition of the devastating effect that a pattern of such misconduct has upon the institution, the judiciary, upon which this respondent serves. Accordingly, I urge you to conclude that Judge Hastings be convicted on article 17 as well.
You do have to study the record carefully, and you have. There is an enormous amount of evidence that makes no sense at all unless Judge Hastings conspired with William Borders and lied at the trial. It is the mass of evidence that makes the case, but it may be just one of the undisputed facts that convinces you that Judge Hastings is not to be believed on this and many, many other facts made both in and outside of this legal process.
Can anyone study this document and really believe that the judge was expecting Borders at the Fontainebleau Hotel even though when he was seated at a table for four, he watched the extra place settings removed? Everybody knows that Borders was a fight fan that night and anybody who knew, including the judge, knew exactly where he was.
Is it credible that the judge insisted that the Romano forfeiture order be mailed out immediately on October 6 because he was worried his law clerk was going to leave 4 weeks later? What about the judges' inexplicable behavior in leaving Washington upon learning of Borders' arrest and his gratuitous and discredited tales of telephone calls from L'Enfant Plaza to persuade the jury that some innocent reason, the concern for his mother, compelled his hurried departure?
Does it make sense that on the evening of Borders' arrest, the judge, if he were innocent, would tell Ms. Williams to leave her home and go to a pay phone to call him? Does it ring true that the judge and Borders spent months working on a strategy to help their mutual friend, Hemphill Pride, poor guy, and that their months of talking and writing culminated in absolutely no action at all? Is there any plausible source for Borders' insight or knowledge of the Romano case, other than Judge Hastings himself? Is this tough, difficult fact?
Is it plausible that the judge could draft six pages of handwritten letters while simultaneously trying cases without a single mistake or crossout? Those letters for Hemp are fakes, never shown to the judge's secretary or to his original legal representative, for that matter, written after October 5 to explain the coded telephone conversation that was sure going to get him in a lot of hot water.
What about Borders' choice of imprisonment rather than testify here? One Senator pointed out Borders' explicit assumption that he was being called by the Senate to testify against a friend. That is his assumption; certainly not ours.
The incriminating evidence cannot be ignored, and it is compelling. But the most compelling testimony of all came from his former best friend, quiet, unwilling, reluctant witness who did not want to say what he had to say about Judge Hastings. Yes, Judge Hastings says he was not conspiring with Bill Borders to sell justice. He and Borders were just working out a plan to help their good buddy Hemp. They were always working out details to send letters to the South Carolina bar to get Hemp readmitted.
The only thing was Hemp did not know anything about it. The only thing was that when he found out about it, he said:
Do not do it because in South Carolina they do not like you guys advising us who should be practicing law.
And following the indictment, the judge told Hemp that he needed Hemp's testimony to support his alibi.
And you read what Hemphill Pride told the judge.
And he did this no matter how much he loved and admired or probably used to love and admire Judge Hastings.
Judge Hastings said Pride was wrong when he said that he, the judge, made no calls from L'Enfant Plaza after they learned of Borders' arrest, wrong again when he said that they never discussed Hemphill's letters while driving to the airport in Columbia, SC. Well, who are you going to believe?
Justice and the integrity of our Government depend on the importance of these impeachment proceedings, and they argue that the judge should be removed from the bench.
When he came to my subcommittee, he said:
I'm glad I'm here. Finally, we're going to get a hearing. Let's get it on with, ready to go. You got the right place.
He put on nothing, nobody. I even called the two judges that filed the impeachment action before my committee. I even allowed the judge to make an opening statement without being subject to cross examination. I allowed the judge to cross-examine his Federal colleagues that filed the complaint against him. Read what happened. He said, `Isn't it true we disturbed the collegiality of the bench down there?' Well, you bet we disturbed the collegiality of the bench. Not one remark about racism, which is what is going to be the subtly argued problem around here. `What's a hundred white guys and women doing picking on this black judge. What do you know about it?' And nobody in this country, save maybe Jesse Jackson, has fought harder to integrate this body than me. So he is going to say, `Well, look at the system.' Well, like so many in our system he came to my committee and he wanted a fair hearing and he got one. That was when the trouble started.
And by the way, there are other black judges that have looked at this case. You do not hear much about them. The first black judge in Florida at the circuit level reviewed this matter. A distinguished member of the judiciary here in Washington reviewed this matter at the conference level. The Congressional Black Caucus reviewed this matter. The Hispanic Caucus reviewed this matter.
All of my friends that wanted to talk to me about it in the House of Representatives have discussed this matter with me to any point that they chose and that I could be available.
Circumstantial evidence. Well, there are so many lawyers here. What is wrong with circumstantial evidence?
And so I come to you to argue that this is not another case like Adam Powell. This is not another case like Clarence Mitchell. I happen to know something about those cases. This is not a case about Geronimo Pratt. This is the case of one Judge Alcee Hastings. There have been a lot of problems in our judicial system in which race has been involved. This is not one of them or I would be the first person in the Congress to tell you so.
I am on three committees that do mostly nothing but watch the FBI, and CIA, the Department of Justice, the criminal justice system, the corrections system, the courts. Police injustice, nobody in the Congress handles more cases than me. And so I am not here to downplay the impeachment process. I think it is an important one. It is very significant. So I join you to ask that you do what you have to do. I have done what I had to do. I have done it twice, as a matter of fact, and would do it again because I believe that this system can be made better than it is and that we are making it better than it is. So, ladies and gentlemen, do your duty.
There is, I hasten to point out, an epilogue to this story. In 1997, DOJ IG Michael Bromwich issued a 517-page report on FBI misconduct in a number of different cases. And he noted that the agent in the Hastings case, Michael Malone, had "engaged in very substantial misconduct" and in particular had lied to judges reviewing Hastings case about whether a particular forensic test had been done. Here's a passage from Ed Henry's May 21st, 1997 piece in the Palm Beach Post ...
In a reversal that sets the stage for a racially tinged dispute on the House Judiciary Committee, a Michigan lawmaker is calling for a complete review of the 1989 impeachment proceedings that drove Rep. Alcee Hastings from the federal bench.Rep. John Conyers, the Democrat who headed the House panel that investigated the bribery charges against then-U.S. District Judge Hastings and voted for his impeachment, said last week he was "very disturbed" by a whistle-blower's contention that an FBI agent lied in order to nail Hastings, D-Miramar.
"So we're pulling up the files and looking at the case - every aspect of it," Conyers said of his staff. Conyers is the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.
While Conyers, himself the most senior member of the Black Caucus, has previously dismissed suggestions that race played a factor in the impeachment of Hastings, who is black, he suggested otherwise in an interview.
"Maybe there's a Mark Fuhrman-type syndrome inside the FBI," Conyers said, referring to the Los Angeles police officer accused of racism during the O.J. Simpson trial. "I mean, what am I supposed to believe? We caught (the FBI) in this lie."
Misconduct on the part of investigators doesn't necessarily imply innocence on the part of the accused, especially in a case like this where we're not talking about criminal penalties but whether a particular individual is the best choice for a specific, highly-sensitive post.
To the best of my knowledge, the Republicans then leading the Judiciary Committee (circa 1997)refused to reopen the case. So it never happened.
We're going to be looking into this in greater detail to try to discern whether anything that came up in 1997 should in any way throw into question what happened in 1989. My sense is that there was a lot more evidence than that specifically connected to this one FBI agent. But we'll look into it and see.
--Josh Marshall
A bit more on Hastings. Back in 1989, when then-Judge Hastings was tried in the senate, one of the impeachment managers was Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). Conyers, of course, is now the incoming Chairman of the Judiciary committee. Then he was the head of the subcommittee that investigated the Hastings case and recommended his impeachment in the House. Conyers went into the thing wanted to find Hastings' innocent, but the facts just said otherwise.
Here's a passage from an article from the Washington Times from October 19th, 1989 ...
House prosecutors also said they had no doubt Judge Hastings lied 14 times to a federal jury to avoid conviction on conspiracy in 1983, and later revealed the confidential content of a federally authorized wiretap to Miami Mayor Steve Clark."Justice and the integrity of our government . . . argue the judge should be removed from the bench," said Rep. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat.
Mr. Conyers - a longtime leader in the civil rights movement - said no one had initially wanted more than he to find the judge innocent.
"No one was more predisposed . . . to doubt his accusers" or more "sympathetic to the notion that the [1983] jury verdict should have settled the matter," Mr. Conyers said. But, he said, during the course of impeachment proceedings this summer, "I heard some evidence that forced me to re-evaluate my position."
As I said before, there may not have been enough evidence to convict Hastings in his criminal trial. But Conyers had little doubt that Hastings was a corrupt judge.
A separate note: I've researched this a bit now and found various fragments of Conyers statements before the senate during Hastings trial. But I have not been able to find a complete transcript. Not even at Thomas.gov. If anyone knows where one is available on the web, please let me know.
--Josh Marshall
Marshall Wittman signs on to be Communications Director for Joe Lieberman, the job he used to have with John McCain.
--Josh Marshall
Justin Rood has the background on the impeachment of then-federal judge Alcee Hastings, now a Democratic congressman from Florida and Nancy Pelosi's possible choice to chair the House Intelligence Committee.
--David Kurtz
Pretty amazing stuff. And it seems like it's being treated with a near total media blackout. Stung by the voters' rebuke, the out-going Republican Congress has decided to close its doors without doing it's mandated job, finishing the budget bills for next year. By all rights they should send back their paychecks too.
From the AP ...
Republicans vacating the Capitol are dumping a big spring cleaning job on Democrats moving in. GOP leaders have opted to leave behind almost a half-trillion-dollar clutter of unfinished spending bills.There's also no guarantee that Republicans will pass a multibillion-dollar measure to prevent a cut in fees to doctors treating Medicare patients.
The bulging workload that a Republican-led Congress was supposed to complete this year but is instead punting to 2007 promises to consume time and energy that Democrats had hoped to devote to their own agenda upon taking control of Congress in January for the first time in a dozen years.
We're their employers. Shouldn't there be some sort of garnishment?
Let me know if you see mentions of this elsewhere in the news media or on the shows.
--Josh Marshall
Let me say a few more words about the House intel committee chair issue. From what I hear Alcee Hastings (D-FL) has done a decent job at the intel committee in the various ways one evaluates committee work. And he seems well-liked by colleagues. I've always had a good impression of him when I've seen him on the chat shows. But there is no ignoring this fact: when he was on a federal bench he was charged with taking bribes. He was acquitted at trial. But a then-Democratic Congress subsequently impeached and convicted him, tossing him off the bench.
I don't know enough yet about the particulars of the case against him. (We're going to have a full run-down of the issues later this afternoon on TPMmuckraker.com.) But the conviction in the senate tells me the charges must at least have been pretty serious, if not enough to win a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal trial.
Given the centrality of intelligence work in our national policy debates today, the importance of secrecy in handling classified information and how politicized and contentious intel debates have become, I don't see how you can have the chairman of the intel committee be someone about whom there is any serious question whether or not they accepted bribes as judges to subvert justice.
Yes, I'm going to reserve final judgment until I see Justin's summary of the charges. But can anyone really disagree with this? How can making Hastings chairman of that committee make any sense?
--Josh Marshall
The next big question for the House leadership (i.e., Speaker Pelosi): who gets to be chairman of the House intel committee. Justin Rood has a run-down of the issue.
--Josh Marshall
Since I've been on a semi-leave for the last ten days or so, I've been able to watch and listen to the news a bit more like most people do. From a bit of distance, focused mainly on the headlines and without the time to read too deeply down into the details. From that vantage point, the two legislative agenda items I've heard the most about in the last few days are Charlie Rangel's idea of instituting a draft and Marty Meehan's and Barney Frank's idea of starting off in January with hearing on the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy.
Now, we could quickly get into an internecine fight over the priorities of the next Congress. For what it's worth, I think we should ditch the 'don't ask, don't tell'. And I understand that Rangel's proposal is in the manner of a Modest Proposal. If more political and opinion elites had close relatives in uniform we'd probably be a lot less eager to sign on to new wars for frivolous or inane reasons.
On the draft issue, I get the concept behind Rangel's call for a draft. I understand the separate argument for a draft on national service grounds, though I think that's a bit different from where Rangel is coming from. But this isn't the way people hear this proposal on first contact. We've just had a national election that became a massive repudiation of the Iraq War. If you're a casual news consumer who went to polls to say, enough! on Iraq, I think a vote on reinstituting the draft has got to come off to you, at best, really out of the blue. At worst, I imagine it registers with a big 'What the hell are they thinking?'
It would be one thing if a draft would materially change our present options. But it won't. The US military has been all-volunteer for three decades. Whatever is on paper, it would take a really, really long time for a draft to actually start putting real soldiers on the ground anywhere.
But these are both highly divisive issues, ones tailor made for Republicans hoping to trip up the new Democratic congress right out of the gate.
You start with broadly popular and critically needed changes. That allows you to build up the electorate's confidence in your governance and gains you political capital to tackle more difficult problems. This isn't about following a timorous legislative agenda that will offend no one. There is a war going on. Two actually. Our military faces a readiness crisis in the very near future. We are in a soldier-slaughtering drift in Iraq. These are complicated questions requiring bold solutions.
I don't want to make too big a deal about this. We're in a bit of a news lull. And the press jumps on stories like this. But that is the point. What's happening here is that there's a vacuum at the top. The incoming Speaker needs to starting laying out the Democrats out-of-the-box legislative agenda, explaining what it is, who it will help and what it will produce. Nature abhors a vacuum. And if nature abhors it, journalists frigging slash and kill a vacuum. Remain silent and the field goes to every legislative baron's bright idea. And the country has too much to deal with to drift.
--Josh Marshall
I couldn't help but return to yesterday's Washington Post article that had the darkly humorous discussion of whether our new policy on Iraq should be to go long, go short, go big, go wide or perhaps just give it to the running back and have him try to run it up the middle. I don't grab at humor lightly here. It's a grim set of choices we have before us. And the cost in lives is immense, whichever course we take. But what our Iraq policy needs as much as anything is a pull-no-punches injection of candor. And calling mumbojumbo for what it is is part of that.
Consider this passage from the Ricks piece in the Post ...
The purpose of the temporary but notable increase, they said, would be twofold: To do as much as possible to curtail sectarian violence, and also to signal to the Iraqi government and public that the shift to a "Go Long" option that aims to eventually cut the U.S. presence is not a disguised form of withdrawal.Even so, there is concern that such a radical shift in the U.S. posture in Iraq could further damage the standing of its government, which U.S. officials worry is already shaky. Under the hybrid plan, the short increase in U.S. troop levels would be followed by a long-term plan to radically cut the presence, perhaps to 60,000 troops.
That combination plan, which one defense official called "Go Big but Short While Transitioning to Go Long," could backfire if Iraqis suspect it is really a way for the United States to moonwalk out of Iraq -- that is, to imitate singer Michael Jackson's trademark move of appearing to move forward while actually sliding backward. "If we commit to that concept, we have to accept upfront that it might result in the opposite of what we want," the official said.
Let's start with the first paragraph. And reason one for temporary build-up of forces. To say that we are building up "to do as much as possible to curtail sectarian violence" sounds to me like there is no clear strategic rationale or plan behind the build up. Of course, we want to do as much as possible to curtail sectarian violence. We want to do that with the current numbers. We'd want to do it with half the number of troops there. And the same goes for if we had twenty times the number.
It would be different if they were saying, for instance, that we were going to put in 50,000 more troops to seal the borders with Syria and Iran and that that would measurably change the stituation inside Iraq and allow our current number of troops on the ground to stabilize the situation inside the country. I'm not saying that's a good idea or that I would support it. But at least there would be a strategic rationale, a theory of what a short term deployment of more troops would do and how it would help and change the situaiton. This just sounds like, put in 20,000 or 30,000 more troops and, heck, it can't hurt to have a few more of our guys there since we're already having such a hard time getting a handle on the situation.
Read the rationale closely and rationale one seems like argumentative padding for rationale two: "to signal to the Iraqi government and public that the shift to a "Go Long" option that aims to eventually cut the U.S. presence is not a disguised form of withdrawal."
But cutting the US presence by whatever number is a withdrawal. It doesn't have to be 'defeat' or 'cutting and running' or whatever charged phrased you want to use. But it definitely is a withdrawal. And the whole danger of the policy is that Iraqis might realize that what our policy actually is: i.e., withdrawal from Iraq. Or in this memorably new use of the phrase, that we're 'moonwalking' out of Iraq.
Work it out like ten different ways but what it comes down to is that the policy is largely, perhaps exclusively, an excercise in either fooling ourselves or the Iraqis about what it is we're actually doing. That tells me we haven't grasped the heart of the issue and taken the first step in dealing with this situation -- which is to stop lying to ourselves about what we've gotten ourselves into, how we got ourselves into it and what bad options we can choose to start the long process getting ourselves out of this mess.
--Josh Marshall
I don't want to let pass the reinstatement of security clearances for House Intelligence Committee staffer Larry Hanauer without commenting on what an ugly incident this was.
Here you have a mid-level Democratic staffer stripped of his ability to do his job by the committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) as political payback against Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), the ranking member who publicly released a report of an internal committee investigation of whether and how convicted felon Duke Cunningham used his position on the committee to advance his corrupt schemes.
Poor Hanauer was caught in the middle. His security clearances were suspended not because of anything he had to do with the Cunningham report but because in the course of doing his job he had requested and received a copy of the National Intelligence Estimatee on Iraq, another classified report that was later leaked to the New York Times.
There was no evidence that Hanauer was in any way connected to the leak. None. There was only the coincidence of timing. Bear in mind that numerous people inside government had access to the report, and Hanauer was only one of them. But look, Rep. Ray Lahood (R-IL) has admitted that this was payback, a shot across Harman's bow. Walter Pincus walks us through the all details again in a piece today in the WaPo.
Hoekstra's tenure has committee chairman has been one long decline into politicization of intelligence and of the oversight process. He hit rock bottom with the Hanauer incident. He was sitting on the Cunningham report because of its embarrassing findings: his fellow GOP committee member was running amok engaged in criminal conduct right under Hoekstra's nose. He and the Administration had been sitting on the politically explosive NIE on Iraq, which mysteriously didn't get distributed to members of the Intel Committee as it normally would have.
In one last spasm of coverup and denial, Hoekstra--and the rest of the GOP leadership--lashed out at a mid-level staffer. It's a disgrace.
--David Kurtz
Another Gemayel assassinated in Lebanon, this time the minister of industry Pierre Gemayel.
I don't know why I have such a clear memory of when his uncle, Bashir, was assassinated in 1982 before taking office as Lebanon's newly elected president. Maybe it was because it was the same day Grace Kelly died in Monaco. A strange association. All hell broke loose in Lebanon shortly thereafter, and things are similarly tenuous there now.
--David Kurtz
House Democrats to serve up ethics reform a la carte. ("I'd like the lobbyist gift ban -- no earmark transparency, thank you.") That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
CQ: House Ethics Committee investigation of the Mark Foley matter "may end with a whimper, not a bang"--but not until mid-December.
--David Kurtz
Don't feel like the Iraq War proponents who have finally turned against the war are being beat up enough for their hypocrisy? Then go read as Ken Silverstein pounds Ken Adelman into pulp. In a dignified Harper's kind of way, of course.
--David Kurtz
Been there, done that?
November 2006: "President Bush said Monday that he has made no decisions about altering the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, and he refused to discuss the pros and cons that would accompany such a decision."
August 2005: President Bush said Thursday no decision has been made on increasing or decreasing U.S. troop levels in Iraq, saying that as "Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" and that only conditions on the ground will dictate when it is time for a reduction in U.S. forces.
April 2004: "Gen. John P. Abizaid, the senior commander in the Middle East, has asked for contingency plans for increasing the number of troops in Iraq. No decision has been made to supplement the 134,000 troops now there, and White House officials said it was unclear whether such a move would help the situation."
November 2003: "The President is going to do what is most effective in Iraq, and he gets recommendations from his commanders on troop levels and what is needed. No decisions have been made about future troops levels," said National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice.
--David Kurtz
This could get rather interesting. The decision on who won the race to represent Florida's 13th Congressional District could wind up in the House itself.
--David Kurtz
TPM Reader RF on George W. Bush finally showing up in Vietnam ...
Reading the news accounts of Bush's visit to Vietnam--and having studied the conflict and culture my whole life, and speaking the language, two things leaped to mind:1) The incident is certainly a measure of the nerve or rather stupidity of George W. Bush. To invert historical reality while actually standing on Vietnamese soil is an irony, perhaps an obscenity, but it hardly shows even the minimal respect expected of the rudest guest. I'm sure Bush was oblivious to any reaaction by his hosts--and I'm equally sure their reaction wasn't obvious, either.
It was intended to maintain the always-erroneous claim that Congress "lost" Vietnam by reducing funding, or criticizing the military, or losing it's political will. None of that's true.
2) I wonder just how much the Vietnamese