The Burka
From TPM Reader DC ...
Re 'You're going to look super in a burka': I think this makes sense mainly if you consider that unilateralism is in many ways the flip side of isolationism. To an awful lot of people in places like, say, West Texas [I once lived there], the outside world is seen as a vague, threatening place, full of people who want what we've got. First it was the Nazis, then the Communists, and now the Islamists; they all blur into a single, malignant Other, who need to be stopped well short of our shores [Throw in the Trilateral Commission and the international bankers for good measure]. I recall teaching history in WTX and having to explain to a student that Nazis and Communists weren't the same people; he actually thought they were, and he was a smart guy! And Bush, despite his gestures of tolerance toward the American Islamic community, plays to this sentiment, with his "They hate our freedom" line and the threat that if we leave Iraq "They'll follow us home." To a lot of people, that doesn't mean acts of terror; that means *conquest.* It's perfectly understandable, actually; people typically interpret new problems in terms of what they've long understood already, and in terms set by the larger understandings of their communities. And this is a huge, diverse country--a fact persistently obscured by the sameness with which we experience it from the air or on the interstate. But precisely because this sort of reflexive defensive posture makes sense in a certain epistemological universe, it's extremely difficult to deal with if you're from a different one.
--Josh Marshall
The FISA 'Fix'
When Congress "revised" FISA a few weeks ago, lawmakers gave the White House the unchecked surveillance power Bush wanted -- and then some.
Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches of American citizens and the collection of their business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said. [...]
The dispute illustrates how lawmakers, in a frenetic, end-of-session scramble, passed legislation they may not have fully understood and may have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought. It also offers a case study in how changing a few words in a complex piece of legislation has the potential to fundamentally alter the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a landmark national security law. Two weeks after the legislation was signed into law, there is still heated debate over how much power Congress gave to the president.
“This may give the administration even more authority than people thought,” said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush and Clinton administrations and a co-author of “National Security Investigation and Prosecutions,” a new book on surveillance law.
Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of “electronic surveillance,” the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States.
These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches and so-called “trap and trace” operations, analyzing specific calling patterns.
--Steve Benen
National Review's Victor Davis Hanson is dismayed by the criticism of the war in Iraq from congressional Democrats. (via Steve M.)
[I]t is hard to recall of any war in our history -- the Vietnam hysteria aside -- that a sitting Senate majority leader declared it lost in the middle of hostilities. We have not previously witnessed senior opposition senators alleging that their own American servicemen were analogous to Nazis, Stalinists, Cambodian mass murders, Saddam's Baathist killers, or engaging in habitual terrorizing and killing of innocent civilians.
Now, I suspect Hanson is taking a few liberties when he suggests senior Senate Dems have said U.S. troops are comparable to Nazis, but Hanson may be surprised to go back and look at what senior congressional Republicans were saying as recently as 1999 when then-President Clinton sent American servicemen into Kosovo.
William Saletan noted one specific weekend in May 1999.
Every time the United States goes into battle, anti-war activists blame the causes and casualties of the conflict on the U.S. government. They excuse the enemy regime's aggression and insist that it can be trusted to negotiate and honor a fair resolution. While doing everything they can to hamstring the American administration's ability to wage the war, they argue that the war can never be won, that the administration's claims to the contrary are lies, and that the United States should trim its absurd demands and bug out with whatever face-saving deal it can get. In past wars, Republicans accused these domestic opponents of sabotaging American morale and aiding the enemy. But in this war, Republicans aren't bashing the anti-war movement. They're leading it.
Specifically, Saletan highlighted comments from then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, then-Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles of Oklahoma, and then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas, who, over the course of a few days, said Milosevic's atrocities are America's fault; the failure of diplomacy to avert the war is America's fault; Congress should oppose the war while troops are in harm's way; Congress should micromanage war policy instead of the Commander in Chief; and the mission is doomed to failure. If memory serves, Dems didn't question their patriotism, label them "traitors," accuse them of undermining the military, or condemn them for aiding and abetting the enemy.
I have a hunch Hanson's forgotten about the whole period of time. Come to think of it, current congressional Republicans probably have, too.
--Steve Benen
'You're going to look super in a burka'
There was a fascinating example of far-right ideology on "Hardball" yesterday, when Chris Matthews asked Melanie Morgan -- unhinged, even by contemporary far-right standards -- to respond to how right Dick Cheney was about Iraq before he became Vice President. C&L has an excerpt, which is worth watching, if for no other reason because Morgan helped highlight a twisted worldview for a national television audience.
After Matthews asked Morgan to explain why 1994 Cheney was right while 2002 Cheney was wrong, Morgan refused to engage and suggested Iraq was somehow involved with 9/11. She also attacked the host for bringing up the subject.
Matthews then asked Naomi Wolf to weigh in.
Wolf: It gets back to what I was saying earlier about the nature of lying. Let's not forget that they got us into this war on the basis of a series of lies.... This weaving out of lies was a pretext for an invasion that served their own political purposes. In the wake of the invasion, they were able to terrify the American people, subjugate the American people, drive through a series of laws that dismantled key checks and balances, allowed overreaching executive power, and completely eviscerated what the founders set in place, thus weakening America.
Morgan: Keep attacking, keep attacking Naomi, because you're going to look great in a burka. You're going to look super in a burka.
Perfect. Wolf makes a substantive point about American laws, institutions, and traditions, so Morgan insists Wolf's criticism will lead to radical Muslims seizing control of the United States, forcing women into burkas. This, in effect, encapsulates too much of the left-right debate of the last eight months.
Indeed, Glenn Greenwald explained the broader dynamic perfectly the other day.
Every now and then, it is worth noting that substantial portions of the right-wing political movement in the United States -- the Pajamas Media/right-wing-blogosphere/Fox News/Michelle Malkin/Rush-Limbaugh-listener strain -- actually believe that Islamists are going to take over the U.S. and impose sharia law on all of us. And then we will have to be Muslims and "our women" will be forced into burkas and there will be no more music or gay bars or churches or blogs. This is an actual fear that they have -- not a theoretical fear but one that is pressing, urgent, at the forefront of their worldview.
And their key political beliefs -- from Iraq to Iran to executive power and surveillance theories at home -- are animated by the belief that all of this is going to happen. The Republican presidential primary is, for much of the "base," a search for who will be the toughest and strongest in protecting us from the Islamic invasion -- a term that is not figurative or symbolic, but literal: the formidable effort by Islamic radicals to invade the U.S. and take over our institutions and dismantle our government and force us to submit to Islamic rule or else be killed.
This description may sound hyperbolic, but a surprising number of high-profile conservative voices actually believe that we're this close to an invasion and the replacement of our constitutional system with a radical Muslim theocracy. If you disagree -- about the nature of Islam, or the war in Iraq, or the president's national security policies, etc. -- then you are necessarily helping advance the Islamists' drive for international hegemony.
It's precisely why Morgan, instead of responding to Wolf's substantive points, quickly leapt to her reflexive conclusion: criticizing the president will contribute to the downfall of the United States and the imposition of sharia law.
Morgan probably didn't intend to be helpful, but she captured the gist of this worldview surprisingly well.
--Steve Benen
The dog and pony shows
About a month ago, Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had a rather heated discussion on "Meet the Press" about Iraq. In one contentious exchange, Webb told Graham, "You know, you haven't been to Iraq." Graham snapped back, "I've been there seven times." Webb, a decorated veteran and a former Secretary of the Navy, replied, "You go see the dog and pony shows. That's what congressmen do."
Jonathan Finer explained today that Graham isn't the only one basing opinions on scripted tours.
Policymakers should be commended for refusing to blindly trust accounts from diplomats, soldiers or journalists. But it's worth remembering what these visits are and what they are not. Prescient insights rarely emerge from a few days in-country behind the blast walls. [...]
It goes without saying that everyone can, and in this country should, have an opinion about the war, no matter how much time the person has spent in Iraq, if any. But having left a year ago, I've stopped pretending to those who ask that I have a keen sense of what it's like on the ground today. Similarly, those who pass quickly through the war zone should stop ascribing their epiphanies to what are largely ceremonial visits.
The next time you hear a pol saying, "I've just returned from Iraq and I saw..." keep Finer's piece in mind.
--Steve Benen
Giuliani endorses Bush’s Social Security plan
After Bush won a second term, he entered 2005 in a relatively strong position. He boasted about having "political capital," his approval rating was around 50%, and he looked at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and saw a very friendly Republican majority in both chambers. Everything was how Bush and his team wanted it.
And then the president kicked off a campaign to privatize Social Security. The more Americans learned about the plan, the more they hated it. After a few months of seeing Bush barnstorm the nation to sell his idea, Americans supported his handling of Social Security even less than his handling of Iraq. Bush's poll numbers collapsed, and never recovered. It was, by some measures, the president's jump-the-shark moment.
Even the most sycophantic of Republicans quickly realized that Bush's Social Security policy was poison to be avoided at all costs. Given the public's response, a candidate would have to be a blithering fool to embrace a plan that everyone loathed.
And yet, here's Rudy Giuliani.
Giuliani stressed his desire to have private forces shape the country's economy in education as well as in health care and Social Security. He said he supported President Bush's unsuccessful proposal to allow people to invest some of their Social Security taxes in private accounts.
"I would have preferred, over my lifetime, if I could have invested some of that Social Security money myself," said Giuliani, 63. "I think I would have done much better than the government did. I believe young people today, a lot of them feel that way. I think people who want a private option should be entitled to have it."
Maybe Giuliani realized recently that he doesn't want to be president after all, so he's throwing the race on purpose.
--Steve Benen
Obama campaign to limit his participation in future Dem debates -- because the voters "are the ones who ask the toughest questions." That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Saturday Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
John McCain, war 'critic'
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was on CNN yesterday, positioning himself as a critic of the president's Iraq policy.
KIRAN CHETRY: It seems you've been painted as being a huge supporter of the president's Iraq strategy. Is that an inaccurate portrayal?
MCCAIN: It's entertaining, in that I was the greatest critic of the initial four years, three and a half years. I came back from my first trip to Iraq and said, "This is going to fail." We've got to change the strategy to the one we're using now. But life isn't fair.
Poor John McCain. All he did was support the current Iraq policy every step of the way for five years and, for some reason, foolish Americans have come to believe he supports the president's strategy. How terribly unfair.
Look, this notion of who qualifies as a "critic" of the White House's war policy came to a head recently when far too many news outlets falsely characterized Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack as opponents of the war. Their support for Bush's strategy was given greater weight because the media and the GOP establishment told the public they have been war "skeptics." They're not -- O'Hanlon and Pollack supported the invasion, endorsed the so-called surge, and have consistently opposed withdrawal. (Ironically, Jon Stewart, the fake newsman, was one of the few to get this right.)
Similarly, we now see McCain characterizing himself as "the greatest critic of the initial four years." Perhaps it's best if we establish some kind of criteria for who counts as a "critic" and who counts as a "supporter."
Did you:
* endorse the invasion?
* buy into the Cheney vision of a quick, easy-to-resolve conflict?
* support the administration's position on every piece of Iraq legislation since 2002?
* consistently support the status quo? ("I'm confident we're on the right course" -- McCain, March 7, 2004)
* endorse the escalation policy?
* oppose any and all measures to include timelines, scheduled withdrawals, or enforced benchmarks?
If you're McCain, the answer to all six questions is "yes." With that in mind, you don't get to call yourself "the greatest critic" of the president's policy.
--Steve Benen
Edwards slips on single-payer
When it comes to Democratic presidential candidates, I more or less look at single-payer healthcare the same way I look at gay marriage -- it's something the top-tier candidates should support, and probably want to support, but hold back for political reasons. The unstated position seems to be, "I like the idea, but the country's just not there yet."
At YearlyKos, Barack Obama went a little further than his most competitive rivals, acknowledging that if we were starting a healthcare system from scratch right now, he'd gladly support a single-payer system, but given the healthcare structure that currently exists, he doesn't see that kind of overhaul as feasible. It's not the ideal answer for proponents of such a plan, but at least he acknowledged the merit of the idea.
John Edwards, who, by some indications, has offered perhaps of the best healthcare plan of any candidate, has decided to take a far different approach.
Edwards is also careful to temper his progressivism with more centrist positions. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Edwards ... even demonized single-payer health care: "Do you think the American people want the same people who responded to Hurricane Katrina to run their health-care system?"
I can hope Edwards was misquoted, because that's a remarkably bad answer to an important question.
For one thing, Edwards is parroting Mitt Romney's position, almost word for word. Romney, in the midst of blasting Democratic healthcare reform measures, told a New Hampshire audience a few weeks ago, "I don't want the guys who ran the Katrina cleanup running my health care system." Edwards, apparently, agrees.
This should be obvious by now, but the problem with a breakdown like Katrina is not with government; it's with incompetent government. P. J. O'Rourke once joked, "The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work -- and then they get elected and prove it."
The point isn't that FEMA is incapable of responding to a natural disaster. Bush helped turn the agency into a joke, but FEMA used to be extremely well run and fully capable of helping areas in need of assistance. To hear Edwards and Romney tell it, government can't respond to a hurricane, so it certainly can't bring access to quality healthcare to Americans. In reality, it can do both with competent, quality leadership in positions of power.
Indeed, I wonder how far Edwards and Romney are prepared to take this little comparison. Do they want the same people who responded to Katrina running Medicare and providing healthcare to seniors? How about S-CHIP and providing access for children? How about Social Security? Should all of them be privatized because the Bush administration is incapable of governing?
Maybe Edwards was misquoted. Maybe he was kidding and was taken out of context. I'd love to hear an explanation. In the meantime, when leading Democratic candidates repeat misguided Republican talking points on healthcare reform, it's a problem.
--Steve Benen
A Modest Proposal
A thought from TPM Reader RC ...
I noticed several similarities between Rudy Guiliani's performance after the 9/11 attacks and Crandall Creek Mine owner Robert Murray's performance after his mine caved in.Rudy had the guts to go to Ground Zero and talk to the media while rescue workers dug through rubble in the background. Likewise, Murray had the guts to go right down into the bowels of his mine and talk to the media while rescue workers dug through rubble in the background. Both men came across as don't-worry-everything's-under-control-type guys. Both were very reassuring.
Here's my question: If Guiliani's performances in front of the media's cameras and microphones following 9/11 were sufficient to qualify him to be our president, then didn't Murray's recent performances in front of the media's cameras and microphones at least qualify him to be our vice-president?
How about a Guiliani/Murray ticket?
Just an idea.
--Josh Marshall
Yesterday we learned that there's a shortage of Purple Heart medals for injured veterans.
Today we learn there's a shortage on ammunition, too.
Troops training for and fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing more than 1 billion bullets a year, contributing to ammunition shortages hitting police departments nationwide and preventing some officers from training with the weapons they carry on patrol.
An Associated Press review of dozens of police and sheriff's departments found that many are struggling with delays of as long as a year for both handgun and rifle ammunition. And the shortages are resulting in prices as much as double what departments were paying just a year ago.
--Steve Benen
Mr. Sensitive
In August 2001, the president read a memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush didn't much care, telling his CIA briefer, "All right. You've covered your ass, now."
In August 2007, the president read a style article in a mid-size newspaper about the clothes he wears in Crawford. About this, Bush cared very much.
What really gets George W. Bush riled up? Calling him a fashion victim.
Last week, Marques Harper of the Austin American-Statesman wrote a short piece about the president's sartorial style on his Texas ranch, where Bush is spending a two-week vacation. The article was reprinted Tuesday in a Waco, Tex., paper, and the leader of the free world was not pleased.
Harper received a phone call that morning from White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino, who, Harper told friends, said the president read the article and was unhappy about the way he was portrayed.
First, this comes just days after Karl Rove told Rush Limbaugh about the president's healthy, above-the-fray attitude about criticism in the media. Rove boasted, "The president is very good about saying, 'Look, we came here for a reason. We have an obligation on the country,' and press on by it. I'll be hyperventilating about the latest attack on him by somebody, and he'll say, 'Don't worry. History will get it right and we'll both be dead.' So it's a good, healthy attitude about how to take it." I guess that doesn't apply to his fashion sense.
Second, the article itself was entirely benign, noting that Bush has "opted to look more like 'Walker, Texas Ranger' than a sweaty, tough ranch hand." This mild remark in a brief article was enough for the spokesperson for the President of the United States to call a style reporter for a mid-size newspaper to convey the disappointment of the leader of the free world.
And third, I've heard rumors that George W. Bush is a charming fellow who's easy to get along with. Policies aside, he's supposed to be a "great guy." I don't buy it. Incidents like this one make the president sound temperamental and immature.
Indeed, if we take the White House pitch at face value, Bush is a tough guy, hardened by war, and unconcerned about pettiness -- unless the Austin American-Statesman says something vaguely derogatory about his clothes?
--Steve Benen
By this point, we know all about the partisan, political briefings the White House conducted in government buildings for government employees, despite clear prohibitions by the Hatch Act. The defense from the Bush gang is that the briefings had nothing to do with political corruption; they were just informal meetings about key congressional races for the Republican Party, intended as "team building" and "morale boosting" exercises.
To hear the White House tell it, administration officials who received the briefings were never encouraged to do anything with the information; Rove & Co. just wanted officials at agencies -- ranging from HHS to the State Department to NASA -- to be aware of vulnerable Republican and Democratic incumbents. It was an extravagant "FYI," intended to improve bureaucrats' self-esteem. ("I was feeling kind of discouraged about being stuck in an ineffective and incompetent bureaucracy, but now I know that the White House is focused on Michigan's 9th congressional district. Wow, I feel better already!")
The reality, of course, is that these briefings were part of a legally-dubious scheme that not only violated the Hatch Act, but also led to fairly obvious abuse of federal tax dollars.
Top Commerce and Treasury Departments officials appeared with Republican candidates and doled out millions in federal money in battleground congressional districts and states after receiving White House political briefings detailing GOP election strategy.
Political appointees in the Treasury Department received at least 10 political briefings from July 2001 to August 2006, officials familiar with the meetings said. Their counterparts at the Commerce Department received at least four briefings -- all in the election years of 2002, 2004 and 2006. [...]
During the briefings at Treasury and Commerce, then-Bush administration political director Ken Mehlman and other White House aides detailed competitive congressional districts, battleground election states and key media markets and outlined GOP strategy for getting out the vote.
Commerce and Treasury political appointees later made numerous public appearances and grant announcements that often correlated with GOP interests, according to a review of the events by McClatchy Newspapers. The pattern raises the possibility that the events were arranged with the White House's political guidance in mind.
Ya think?
It all ties into the Bush gang's Kremlin-like abuses -- using the power of the state as a tool of the ruling party.
--Steve Benen
Buying the Thompson Hype
The lede in a Politico article yesterday really shows the extent to which some people have bought into the Fred Thompson hype:
When Fred Thompson finally announces his candidacy next month, it will be the closest thing to a successful draft of a presidential candidate in more than a half-century.
There are two big problems here:
1) The Thompson draft, with the image of a reluctant candidate being drawn in, was pretty much fake. And Thompson admitted as much to USA Today a few months ago:
"I can't remember exactly the point that I said, 'I'm going to do this,'" Thompson says, his 6-foot, 6-inch frame sprawled comfortably across a couch in a hotel suite. "But when I did, the thing that occurred to me: 'I'm going to tell people that I am thinking about it and see what kind of reaction I get to it.'"
2) It's not the first successful draft since Eisenhower — and we don't have to go far back to find another. Are our attention spans and long-term recall so short that nobody remembers the Draft Clark movement? It was only four years ago.
--Eric Kleefeld
Awesome!
Just this afternoon we were on Rudy Giuliani's case for suggesting that his flipflop on the endability of illegal immigration was not a flipflop but merely a response to the breakthrough technologies that have been developed over the last decade. But is it possible Rudy's cronyism may be a mightier sword than his bamboozlement.
It turns out that not only does Rudy have a 'technology' in mind but he's been cut in on some equity in the company that makes it and by an odd coincidence he thinks the federal government should buy a whole lot of it.
TPM Reader JN pointed me to this nugget in Peter Boyer's profile of Rudy in the current issue of The New Yorker ...
As for securing the border, Giuliani proposes the construction of what he calls “a technological fence,” which he insists would be much more effective than a simple physical barrier. Giuliani’s security division is a part owner of a company that is developing such technology with the defense contractor Raytheon. The innovation is a sensor-based platform that can be launched aloft and will “see” a twenty-kilometre area, in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree panorama. “It will be able to conduct a surveillance, actually,” a person familiar with the project told me. “It can follow an individual, or follow a car, at very far distances.” Giuliani emphasized to me, “It doesn’t have to be that technology. We have no desire to have Raytheon benefit or whatever. There are a hundred other technologies similar to that, with the ability to process data and communicate.”
So to review, in 1994, Giuliani believed that with America's ethnic diversity and long borders it simply wasn't possible to end illegal immigration without turning the country into a police state. But now thanks to the onward march of technology that's no longer a problem because Rudy's company can install this ultra fence which appears to constantly spawn mini-Predator drones which will keep the illegals under active surveillance until they show up for work at your local restaurant before vaporizing them with a missile or something.
--Josh Marshall
No End of Fun
A few days ago we posted ten year old video of Rudy Giuliani admitting that there's no way we can end illegal immigration in a country like ours without destroying our civil liberties and probably destroying the economy too. That has proved a bit difficult to reconcile with his latter-day pledge to "end illegal immigration" once and for all.
So faced with this awkward contradiction the Giuliani campaign is grasping for an explanation even more laughable and ridiculous than the original contradiction.
According to the Giuliani campaign, all Giuliani meant was that back in 1994 the technology did not yet exist to hermetically seal the gazillion mile border of the United States and end illegal immigration once and for all.
Like I said, some answers amount to such transparently ridiculous bamboozlement that they absolutely guarantee future hilarity.
What technology would it be that Rudy is talking about? The dramatic breakthroughs in electronic fence design? Google maps? Apparently he says it's new breakthroughs in surveillance technology.
What breakthrough technology do you think Rudy's talking about that will allow the United States to "end" illegal immigration once and for all without damaging our civil liberties or affecting our economy, which is what Rudy said it would do back in 1994?
--Josh Marshall
We Interrupt This Blog
We interrupt this blog to bring you a few moments of straight talk from His Straightness, Sen. Fred Thomspon (R-TN) ...
“We are going to be getting in if we get in, and of course, we are in the testing the waters phase. We’re going to be making a statement shortly that will cure all of that. But yeah, we’ll be in traditionally when people get in this race."
Got that?
--Josh Marshall
Once, Twice, Six Times a Liar
You know Alberto Gonzales the liar. But do you know the lies? Here's our rundown of the top six untruths (or grossly misleading half-truths) that have fallen from our attorney general's mouth.
--Paul Kiel
Patrick Syring, Diplomat
Last night we brought you the news of Patrick Syring, the 20-year career Foreign Service officer, who has been indicted for harassing the staff of the Arab Institute with a string of phone messages and emails saying among other things that the "only good Arab is a dead Arab", that various members of the staff were "wicked evil Hezbollah-supporting Arabs [who] should burn in the fires of hell for eternity and beyond" and lauding the Israelis for "bombing Lebanon back to the Stone Age where it belongs."
Turns out the AP story left a fair amount of Syring's tirades out of their story.
Here's the indictment with all the details.
Late Update: For the record, the folks at the Arab American Institute, the ones on the receiving end of Syring's abuse, released this statement ...
Yesterday afternoon we were notified that the grand jury has returned two indictments charging a long-time State Department employee with Threatening Communication in Interstate Commerce and violating the civil rights of the employees of the Arab American Institute.James Zogby, the president of AAI, said, “We are pleased with word that the grand jury has returned two indictments. This has been a matter of concern to me and my entire office. The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice has been responsive, and we feel protected. The threats were both intimidating and frightening – and the fact that the defendant was a 20-year career officer at the Department of State made it of even greater concern.”
--Josh Marshall
Minding the Store
Wow, that's great news. CNN is running as a breaking news headline that President Putin says that Russia will resume regular long-range flights of its 'strategic' bombers. To decode what that means, during the Cold War the US and the USSR both keep a fleet of bombers packed with nuclear weapons in the air at all times. That's one third of the trident -- ballistic missiles in the ground, strategic bombers in the air and nuclear submarines hidden in the vast depths of the sea, together making each sides' nuclear arsenal impervious to a first strike knock out blow.
That was the theory at least.
If memory serves both sides stopped regular flights of their strategic bomber fleets during the first Bush administration.
Obviously, having them in the air doesn't mean they're going to be used. And they can be scrambled at any time. But unlike 'targeting' of nuclear missiles, which is I think literally a matter of keying in a few numbers to a computer, not having these jets permanently in the air is more than a symbolic sign of having the finger a bit off the nuclear trigger.
And it raises an important point. Not everything that happens these days is uniquely President Bush's fault. Vladimir Putin is no great shakes either. And you can debate whether this is more a reaction to the White House's aggressive push for missile defense shields and military deals with countries on Russia's border or more part of Putin's own growing authoritarianism, trying to stoke xenophobia and increased militarism.
What is not debatable however is that there is more going on in the world -- more opportunities and more threats -- than what happens in the few hundred mile radius around the ancient capital of Baghdad. There is, as we can see, Russia, which still has a few thousand nuclear warheads which could cause some serious headaches. There's China, a vast economic and potential military power that will bulk larger and larger in our lives over the course of this century. There's Pakistan, India, half a billion people to our south speaking Spanish and Portuguese. The list goes on and on.
But our whole national dialog, hundreds of billions of dollars and a lot more are going to Iraq. And more generally the fantasy 450 year long-war epic battle with the Islamofascists. We're close to breaking the US Army and Marine Corps with over-extended deployments. And in hotspots around the world, there's a vacuum, as the world sort of rushes past us. In many ways this is the greatest danger in Iraq, not that our future as a nation is at stake in staying (as the right would have it) or even that it's necessarily at stake in leaving but that our engagement with the country has fixed us with a dangerous national myopia which is letting many other problems fester unattended for going on a decade.
--Josh Marshall
New polls find Edwards grabbing a lead in Iowa, while Hillary is well ahead in Nevada and California. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Today's Must Read
How much did John Ashcroft really know about the warrantless surveillance program? As Alberto Gonzales (repeatedly) said on July 24 in testimony, it's "complicated."
--Spencer_Ackerman
Didn't Get the Whole 'Diplomacy' Idea
It seems that 20-year career Foreign Service officer Patrick Syring wasn't cut out for bringing America's message of tolerance, peace and democracy to the Middle East.
Last summer, while the bloody but inconclusive war between Israel and Hezbollah raged over the skies of Israel and Lebanon, Syring reached out to James Zogby, the highly-respected head of the Arab-American Institute to let him know that "The only good Lebanese is a dead Lebanese. The only good Arab is a dead Arab."
That was in a phone message left on Mr. Zogby's voice mail.
Later he followed up in an email, noting that "You wicked evil Hezbollah-supporting Arabs should burn in the fires of hell for eternity and beyond. The United States would be safer without you." And while Zogby does not represent the Israelis, Syring made a point of praising them for "bombing Lebanon back to the Stone Age where it belongs."
And if all Syring's other shortcomings weren't enough it seems he's also a little lacking in brainpower since he identified himself in his voice mails and sent the emails from his personal email account.
Syring retired from the Foreign Service last month and was indicted on Wednesday for sending threatening messages by phone and email.
Late Update: It seems Syring sort of made a habit of this. In a letter to the editor in response to Robert Schmuhl's 'Going our Way: A New Foreign Policy', a foreign policy think piece published in the Notre Dame alumni magazine, Syring wrote, "Professor Schmuhl's implicit defense of the wicked regime of Saddam Hussein, and his sympathy for Arab terror, is abhorrent and despicable. His evil brings shame to American scholarship and to the University. He should burn in hell for eternity for the terrorism he advocates."
Also nice to know, back in 1994, Syring was working out of the US Embassy in Lebanon.
--Josh Marshall
Following the Rules to Kill Fewer People
At Huffington Post, Arianna and her crew have been following this angle of the Utah mine story. And it really deserves a lot more attention. We've seen a series of these mine tragedies in recent years. And pretty much every time it ends up being a mine -- not surprisingly -- with a terrible record of safety violations.
Again, that's not exactly a shocking correlation. But it does throw into sharper relief the essential fact that these are not random lightning bolts of tragedy visited on small towns in middle America. These are guys who got killed because they worked for companies that routinely broke the rules put in place to keep their employees alive.
And there's more. It turns out that the guy in charge of mine safety for the federal government, Assistant Secretary of Labor Richard Stickler, couldn't even get approved by the Senate back when it was under Republican control because his own record on safety issues was so questionable. President Bush had to put him in with a recess appointment.
Perhaps it's not time to assign fault while active rescue operations are underway. But once that's over, maybe it would be worth the networks taking a tenth of the time they use milking ratings from these mine sagas and cast a little light on how a lot of this is preventable if the mine owners would stop breaking the rules and the federal government stopped looking the other way.
Deal?
--Josh Marshall
Looks like the voting in the 2008 Presidential election just might start in 2007 after all. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Droppin' Like Flies
Roll Call (sub.req.): Rep. Chip Pickering (R-MS) expected to retire.
--Josh Marshall
Black Enough
For about two centuries it was widely understood that being black at all was a disqualifying qualification for being elected president. So why don't more people see it at as more than vaguely nauseating that the first black candidate for president with a realistic chance of getting the job is continually asked if he's black enough?
--Josh Marshall
In sum, I shall Kick Global Ass
Fred Kaplan offers a comprehensive analysis of Rudy's ridiculous Foreign Affairs article.
--Josh Marshall
Ignorance Is Strength!
You know that Mitt Romney is a huge phony. What's more concrete and troubling is that he seems remarkably ignorant of anything beyond America's shores. His new kick is demanding an apology from Barack Obama for saying something that the President of Afghanistan, the Ambassador from Afghanistan, US Commanders on the ground in Afghanistan and even President Bush thinks is true. Learn about Mitt's unparalleled ignorance in today's episode of TPMtv ...
--Josh Marshall
Dem Presidential candidates go on the attack -- against China. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Morning Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Today's Must Read
A panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals all but laughs at the Justice Department's pleas to throw warrantless-surveillance lawsuits out of court.
--Spencer_Ackerman
Petraeus Report (TM)
This weekend we learned that Gen. Petraeus' Report will actually be written by the White House. Now it turns out that the White House is pushing to have the general's increasingly nominal report delivered by Condi Rice and Bob Gates, with Petraeus relegated to a "private congressional briefing."
The Democrats on the Hill appear to be saying, No, this isn't going to be like a has-been 60s band touring under its founders name twenty years after the guy dropped out and went to live in an Ashram. We actually want to hear from Gen. Petraeus.
And the oddest part of the article in the Post reporting this is that the authors claim, "The skirmishing is an indication of the rising anxiety on all sides in the remaining few weeks before the presentation of what is widely considered a make-or-break assessment of Bush's war strategy." (emphasis added)
Perhaps I'm missing something. But doesn't this sound like the anxiety is a little more pronounced on the White House side since they're the ones trying to bag on the report that has been the building focus of our Iraq policy for months now?
--Josh Marshall
New "Gays for Giuliani" pseudo-ad to actually hit the airwaves in South Carolina. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Sane Rudy of Yesteryear Comes Back to Haunt Nutso Rudy of Today
Yesterday in South Carolina, Rudy Giuliani promised he could and would "end illegal immigration." But we got video of him back in 1996 saying that's just not possible and you've just got to accept that.
It's a pretty big flip-flop. But it's also a pretty good example of a case where the problem isn't what Rudy said ten years ago, it's what he's saying today.
If you look at what he said up at the Kennedy School ten years ago, it's eminently reasonable and even eloquent. He says that you simply cannot completely control immigration in this country if you want to have the kind of America we have now, which is to say, an America which is not a police state. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have an immigration policy. You should. But with borders as big as ours, a population as diverse as ours and civil liberties as robust as ours it's just not possible to put an end to illegal immigration. Not to mention the fact that you'd create pretty massive dislocations in the service economy.
What's completely ridiculous is what Rudy's saying now.
--Josh Marshall
Don Young v. The Constitution
Okay, so here we are. For two centuries or more, once a bill passes Congress, only Congress can change it. The president can veto it or not. The Supreme Court can rule a law unconstitutional. But that's it.
But it turns out that back in 2005, to guarantee an earmark payoff to one of his political contributors, Rep. Don Young (R-AK) actually went in and rewrote the text of a transportation spending bill after the thing had been passed by Congress and it was waiting to be signed by the president.
We explain what happened in today's episode of TPMtv ...
(ed.note: There was a case back a couple years ago when a bill went through Congress but a transcription error led to the bill appearing with slightly different text in the House and Senate versions. Frist and Hastert got together and decided to send the House version on to the president since that was what the conference committee agreed to. A court has since ruled the judiciary won't second-guess this decision. That, I would say, is pretty iffy itself. But at least the leaders of both bodies speak in some fashion for each House. And it was basically setting right a technical error. So even though it was pretty bad, it's simply not comparable to one member -- with no standing -- sneaking a new pay-off into the bill after final passage through Congress.)
--Josh Marshall
Run It By Tom
We've known for a while that the administration briefed the so-called Gang of Eight on the warrantless wiretap program back in 2004. That Gang is composed of the both parties' senior leaders in each house as well as both parties' senior leaders in each house's intelligence committee.
But the day after the notorious Ashcroft hospital room showdown, the White House gave a special briefing to then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX).
--Josh Marshall
For those of you interested in the US constitution, we've got a special report coming up later this morning on Rep. Don Young's (R-AK) plot to overthrow the constitution. Find out more about his insidious plans and what he's already done.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read
Homegrown U.S. jihadism? The New York Police Department warns that it's found two dozen "clusters" of U.S. Muslims in the northeast on a "path" to terrorism.
--Spencer_Ackerman
Ghost Written
From the LAT ...
Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.
--Josh Marshall
Time Warner Destroys America and a Political Mag Near You
I haven't had time to look far enough into this to know all the details. But even in its outlines I can tell it's a pretty big deal -- and one that doesn't seem likely to get a lot of attention. The short and sweet of it is that Time Warner has proposed and postal regulators have accepted a proposal which is actually reducing postage costs for mega-mags like Time and Newsweek while dramatically raising them for small independent publishers. From small mags on the right and left I've been deluged in recent weeks by letters saying the new rates are tipping them into financial crisis.
Here for instance is a passage from a blast email I got this morning from the Nation's David Corn ...
Teresa Stack, The Nation's president, explains the crisis this way: Postal regulators have accepted a scheme designed in part by lobbyists for the Time-Warner media conglomerate. In short, mailing costs for mega-magazines like Time-Warner's own Time, People and Sports Illustrated will go up less than other magazines or even decrease. But smaller publications like The Nation will be hit by an enormous rate increase of half a million dollars a year.
To be clear, I'm not pitching for contributions to The Nation, a publication we have no ties to. I reprint that passage only by way of example and because the email was in my inbox this morning. I've gotten similar messages from other publications on the left and right and in recent weeks.
Anyway, since TPM mails nothing but an occasional utility bill, I can tell you without reservation that it's not a matter of self-interest for us as a business. But it is a matter of self-interest for every consumer of independent media. And that certainly includes us and I suspect you as well. It's one thing to rail against the MSM and say you get your information from the internet. But still today and I suspect for some time into the future a lot of the independent news you read on the web still comes from reporting sustained by independent print-based publications that are going to be heavily affected by these changes.
For two hundred years US postal rate has been geared to support independent media and political discourse. It's something small magazine publishes and press theory types understand very well but it's not that widely understood in the general public. If that comes to an end it will be a very big deal. Here's a link to where you can find out more.
--Josh Marshall
Rudymania
It will certainly be amusing to watch the press barons and sundry journo worthies ignore all this stuff ...
Your "Clinton's sexual impulse control" crack got me thinking. It's not easy to choose Giuliani's most outrageous sexual escapade, but I think from the standpoint of evaluating his fitness for public office, his fling with Cristyne Lategano takes the cake.Let me refresh your memory, in case the details are a little hazy. Lategano was working as Giuliani's Press Secretary when their affair began, and was later elevated to Communications Director. When the affair ended in May of 1999, he installed her at the helm of the city's tourism bureau, a $150k/year plum. Lategano, now married, denies that anything improper took place, but Rudy himself has issued a series of artful non-denial denials. His ex-wife, Donna Hanover, has blamed Lategano in public statements and court papers for the demise of her marriage. Wayne Barrett, a sort of dark Boswell to Rudy's Johnson, assembled a vast amount of circumstantial evidence backing the allegation. And no one who moved in those circles bothers doubting it for a second; the affair was, by its conclusion, common knowledge in the city - what would once have been termed 'open and notorious adultery.'
I raise this because, this evening, I performed a Lexis-Nexis search for news references to 'Lategano' in the last year. I found a dozen references - every one of them in the New York City media. (The Voice, the Observer, the News, the Post - not even the Paper of Record.) In other words, since Rudy has emerged as a serious national candidate, his relationship with Lategano has received zero scrutiny. Even voters who've learned of his tempestuous marriages know nothing of this affair.
And that's not right. Because the Lategano affair embodies the very worst of Rudy - his penchant for mixing private relationships with public business, his duplicity, and his cronyism. Giuliani had an affair with a (much younger) subordinate, and then pensioned her off on the public dime.
At least Lewinsky was an *unpaid* intern.
I raise it because, unlike so many moral issues that intrude into campaigns, this one actually has a direct bearing upon the crucial issues. And from the press, utter silence. Sure, nothing was ever proven, and Lategano's subsequent denials make this an awkward subject. It's a sad, tawdry story. But the NYC media hasn't had any problem covering it. So what's up with the national press?
Of course, if that doesn't pan out, they can look into why his main activity at the NYC terror command headquarters prior to 9/11 seems to have been cheating on his wife.
--Josh Marshall
Martin Kramer
Meet Martin Kramer, Rudy Giuliani's "Senior Middle East Advisor". The link is to Kramer's website.
--Josh Marshall
Don't Say He's Lost the Old Gingrich Charm
From the Cox News Service ...
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Tuesday he is "sickened" that President Bush and Congress went on vacation "while young Americans in our cities are massacred" by illegal immigrants.Gingrich, who is considering a run for the White House, was referring to a recent crime in Newark, N.J., where three college students were murdered execution style in a school playground.
One of the suspects -- Jose Lachira Carranza -- is an illegal immigrant from Peru who was on bail on charges of raping a child when the murders occurred.
--Josh Marshall
Dream Candidate
As TPM Reader DC puts it, Giuliani combines Bush's foreign policy genius with Clinton's sexual impulse control.
(ed.note: Look, I love Bill. But this one was too good to pass up.)
Then there's TPM Reader TP who notes that had the Captain of the Titanic survived we probably wouldn't have feted him as the go-to guy on iceberg defense.
--Josh Marshall
Summa Brownnosica
Jon Chait finds the one remaining member of the Rove personality cult: Fred Barnes.
Barnes on Rove: "Rove is the greatest political mind of his generation and probably of any generation."
Actually the whole quote is even better: "Rove is the greatest political mind of his generation and probably of any generation. He not only is a breathtakingly smart strategist but also a clever tactician. He knows history, understands the moods of the public, and is a visionary on matters of public policy. But he is not a magician."
In other words, celebrate him as an intellectual giant among men. Don't fault him for not being God. Is it not enough that he walked among us?
Sadder than reading this stuff is realizing that Barnes probably means every word of it.
--Josh Marshall
Giuliani: Catastrophe Waiting to Happen, pt. II
As I noted yesterday, beyond all the high-button issues about Rudy Giuliani's record as Mayor, colorful personality and open-minded approach to marriage, what doesn't get discussed very often is that a Giuliani presidency would be a foreign policy catastrophe from which the nation might simply not recover. As Eric Kleefeld explains in this post, Giuliani's new ghost-written article in Foreign Affairs shows that a Giuliani foreign policy would best be described as Bush-plus and premised on the idea that President Bush has not pursued his terrible ideas aggressively enough.
What seems apparent about Giuliani is that he's not kidding when he says that being Mayor of New York City is a lot like being president and running American foreign policy. And reading through not just his emphasis on the War on Terror but the particular way he describes it shows that he believes that being on the receiving end of a mass casualty terrorist attack -- even though his record of preparing for it is at best mixed -- gives him a unique understanding of how to combat the threat. And into this general ignorance is poured a group of extremist advisors who would likely have us blowing up various other countries in no time.
In other words, he's the Bush pattern all over again -- only this time starting not from a period of relatively high American standing in the world but into the mess Bush has already gotten us.
As with Bush, the agenda Giuliani sets forth is covered with a patina of enlightened foreign policy internationalism, with emphases on nation-building, investing money in helping destabilized countries build rule-of-law based societies. But just as with Bush even a cursory look at the people slated to implement the policies shows a cadre rooted in militarism and ideological escapism.
Republicans looking for a non-insane candidate and Democrats interested in preventing the Rudy disaster should really look into this stuff.
--Josh Marshall
Hillary says she's "struck a nerve" in the White House with her Iowa ad blasting the President. That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.
--Greg Sargent
Frum on Rovism
David Frum, conservative writer and one-time Bush speech writer, has a column the New York Times evaluating the legacy of Rovism. The verdict, which I hinted at in my post last night, is that Rovism was not only a disaster in terms of public policy and governance. It was also a disaster in political terms -- the latter fact just took longer to reveal itself.
The only specific point of disagreement I have with David is that he says that strictly speaking the only wedge issue Rove ever used was immigration. Even by the somewhat narrow definition he employs, I don't see how this can be true. Gays were clearly Rove's wedge issue of choice when the going got rough in recent years. And the biggest wedge issue may not appear to be one at first glance because it wasn't a social issue, at least not in the old-fashioned sense: namely, the War on Terror. There are of course numerous other examples of lesser magnitude one could cite. The difference with the 1980s variant, Lee Atwater wedge issue menagerie is that Rove did not so often or as explicitly target African-Americans as a wedge issue. Attention to them was reserved for keeping them away from the polls.
The point on which I think Frum is correct is when he says that Rove reminded him "of a miner extracting the last nuggets from an exhausted seam." That is right on the mark and it suggests that people should go back to re-reading Judis and Teixeira's The Emerging Democratic Majority, a book which seems now not to have been dead but only asleep.
Having said all this, I think there is one other issue about Rove that could use a little more saying. Everyone knows that Rove's popularity in the Republican party has dropped dramatically as President Bush's popularity went into free fall and took much of the GOP with him. But it's more than just that and more than just Iraq, which of course the congressional Republican party supported more or less to a man. There's a distinct and additional level of unpopularity tied to the fact that even as the president's popularity has dropped -- which obviously he and Rove didn't plan or want -- they've basically been indifferent to the fate of the congressional GOP, even the future of the GOP as a whole. Again and again over the last year the White House has had chances to take some of the heat off congressional Republicans -- to ease back on Iraq, to can Alberto Gonzales, to let go or punish this or that crook. And they haven't done one. And that's spawned a level of rage -- though seldom openly expressed -- that in some respects almost rivals that felt by Democrats.
As with the country going back seven years now, they've shown little interest in the future fate of the GOP after they leave or even at present unless it bears directly on their ability to protect themselves.
In other words, they are now treating the Republican party much as they've treated the country for the last six years.
--Josh Marshall
Thank God!
Alberto Gonzales given special new powers over imposition of the death penalty.
--Josh Marshall
Decider
Does President Bush need a primer on the US Constitution from Gen. Petraeus?
From the Times ...
His view, he says, is that he is “on a very important mission that derives from a policy made by folks at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, with the advice and consent and resources provided by folks at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. And in September, that’s how I’m going to approach it.” Whether to fight on here, he says, is a “big, big decision, a national decision,” one that belongs to elected officials, not a field general.
--Josh Marshall
Ames Straw Poll, the Shocking Truth
As we get deeper into the election cycle this year, we're going to be involving readers more and more in TPMtv. We're going to be up in New Hampshire in a few months reporting from on location about the primary. We'll be at the conventions. And we'll probably make a few other trips too. But we're a tiny operation. So there's just no way we're going to be able to be in all the places where events are happening.
As I noted a while back, we're particularly interested in verite footage of campaign events on the ground. How do the candidates look, what's their presentation when the national TV cameras aren't rolling. Of course, if you get footage of Tom Tancredo slipping and calling for summary execution of illegal aliens caught on American soil, yeah, we'd like that video. But that's not mainly what we're interested in. We want to bring readers a sense of the retail politics of how the campaign is unfolding around the country. So take your handcams, keep them running and send us in the results.
Today, we have a short video that TPM Reader Greg Hauenstein shot at this weekend's Ames Straw Poll. I didn't have much of a sense of what the event was actually like until I watched ...
--Josh Marshall