Obama in 2004
TPM Reader GB sent me in the video of a 2004 appearance by Barack Obama on the Charlie Rose show in which he talks about the same issue of rural and working class Americans and the Democratic party. It's from November 23rd, 2004, so just after Obama was first elected to the senate but a couple months before he was sworn in.
It's interesting to watch since it's in a very non-campaign setting and almost four years ago. He makes exactly the same point, but explains it differently. Some of it is likely equally demagoguable, but it does show up some of the tendentious misconstruals of what he said. I clipped out the three minutes or so of the hour segment where he addresses this issue ...
--Josh Marshall
For it, Before She Was Against It
Theda Skocpol writes in ...
I have been in meetings with the Clintons and their advisors where very clinical things were said in a very-detached tone about unwillingness of working class voters to trust government -- and Bill Clinton -- and about their unfortunate (from a Clinton perspective) proclivity to vote on life-style rather than economic issues. To see Hillary going absolutely over the top to smash Obama for making clearly more humanly sympathetic observations in this vein, is just amazing. Even more so to see her pretending to be a gun-toting non-elite. Give us a break!I wonder if she realizes that gaining a few days of lurid publicity that might reach a slice of voters is going to cost her a great deal in the regard of many Democrats, whose strong support she will need if she somehow claws her way to the nomination -- and even more so if she does not clinch the nomination. The distribution of "we're not bitter" stickers to her campaign rallies is the height of over-the-top crudity, and the reports are that very few audience members seem to have much enthusiasm for this nonsense. Not surprisingly, people cannot see the reasons for so much fuss.
Yes, she wants a big break, she desperately wants the nomination she and Bill believe is hers by right. We all know that. But where is her authenticity and her dignity and her sense of any proportion?
This has to be one of the few times in U.S. political history when a multi-millionaire has accused a much less wealthy fellow public servant, a person of the same party and views who made much less lucrative career choices, of "elitism"! (I won't say the only time, because U.S. political history is full of absurdities of this sort.) In a way, it is funny -- and it may not be long before the jokes start.
--Josh Marshall
Fear of Falling, Part II
I noted earlier that I am a recovering aerophobic. And now I see courtesy of TPM DG this New York Observer article that Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton's communications chief does not fly at all, which is an astonishing feat given the nature of modern campaigning. The whole article is dedicated to discussing how Wolfson manages to do his job without the ability to fly. Earlier in my career it occurred to me that if got a job covering the White House that I would have to deal with my fear of flying in pretty short order. I guess I wasn't thinking creatively enough.
Now here's one thing I find interesting. In the article it refers to Wolfson's "now decade-long aversion to air travel." I think Wolfson's about my age, maybe a touch older. So if it's been for a decade, that means he was well into adulthood -- probably roughly 30 -- before he developed a fear of flying. And it makes me curious what precipitated the change because this is so different from my experience.
For my part, I was basically afraid of flying from almost as early as I can remember. When I was young, it was mainly a yearly ordeal that came up every summer when we would go to Missouri to visit our family (we moved away when I was six). But I was a kid so I had no choice. Then when I was old enough to call my own shots I basically just stopped flying. That was when I was a teenager. And then I flew of my own volition I think twice in college and then that was it. I didn't fly again until I was in my mid-30s. I still don't do it very often. And it's not easy. But I do it. In fact, my last flight, which was a few months ago, turned out to be that nightmare turbulence flight I'd always dreaded. (Yes, I know turbulence doesn't make planes crash; it's not rational.) The key moment for me was when the pilot went from saying we would be hitting turbulence, to a lot of turbulence, to 'severe turbulence' to 'really severe turbulence'.
If you have no difficulty flying, the best way for me to put this into context would be to say that the moment the pilot finds the phrase 'severe turbulence' insufficient is not a good moment.
As it happens, this was a trip with my wife and son and my in-laws. And they've been flying all over the planet for forty or fifty years and they told me that was as bad as they'd ever seen. So as profoundly unpleasant as it was, I can now get on a plane with the confidence that I've experienced about as bad as it can get bumpiness-wise.
--Josh Marshall
Fear of Falling
An interesting article in the Times about airline safety and all those grounded flights, and making sense of a string of years in which the FAA's safety inspections have arguably gotten more permissive and chummy while nonetheless showing a steep reduction in crashes and fatalities.
Especially interesting for a slowly recovering aerophobic.
--Josh Marshall
Obama Responds
Obama responds to the "bitter" Pennsylvanians story that Drudge and Clinton and McCain were ginned up about ...
Here and here you can find our earlier coverage of the brouhaha at Election Central.
--Josh Marshall
Sweatshop Luvin' Congressman by Day ...
It just keeps getting better. It appears that Colorado senate candidate Bob Schaffer (R) is pursuing a two track strategy for defusing the controversy over his efforts to bring the Mariana Islands immigration program to mainland America. As we noted before, on the one hand, he is angrily lashing out at the news organizations reporting on the story. At the same, he is craftily rebranding himself as a hard-charging anti-sweatshop crusader.
Schaffer apparently talked to Lynn Bartels of the Rocky Mountain News and ...
Former congressman Bob Schaffer says the night he landed in Saipan to review working conditions in the U.S. territory, he demanded an immediate tour of a garment factory he heard had an unsavory reputation.A welcoming committee wanted to take Schaffer to his hotel, he said, but he prevailed. He said he found women working in a "sweatshop," and demanded leaders of the Northern Mariana Islands investigate.
"I was told that shortly after I left (the Marianas) that the factory was shut down," he said Friday, stressing he never verified the information.
Now, this is a little different from what Schaffer said at the time ...
"There were some examples of problems that we found, and we raised those with the equivalent of the attorney general," Schaffer said of his visit. But in many others, "the workers were smiling; they were happy."
Seems to have changed a bit in the retelling. And it's worth reading the rest of the RMN piece to get a flavor of Schaffer Marianas 2.0. But it still doesn't quite make sense of why Schaffer kept carrying the water of the sweatshop owners in Congress and beating up on the folks who were trying to rein in the abuses (something we'll have more for you about next week.)
--Josh Marshall
Schaffer Lashes Out
As we noted earlier, sweatshop-loving senate candidate Bob Schaffer held a fundraiser today in Grand Junction with Vice President Dick Cheney. So far Schaffer has refused to answer any questions about the Mariana Islands or why he wants to bring their scandal-ridden immigration system to the states. But today ...
Asked during a press conference following Cheney's visit about Denver Post reports that link him to an effort by jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff to quash labor reform in the Mariana Islands in 1999, Schaffer was visibly angry."I am really disgusted with the tone and tenor and direction of The Denver Post stories. I have had no contact with the individuals in the story, particularly Jack Abramoff," Schaffer said. "It's a matter of fiction. That's all I'm going to say about it."
In other words, he's still apparently unwilling to answer any questions. But he's disgusted and very angry.
Not Even Late Update: You'll notice that Schaffer says he has "had no contact with the individuals in the story." Now, in the nature of things that's a pretty bold statement and one of fairly dubious accuracy. One of the key figures in the story is Benigno Fitial, now Governor of the Marianas and through Jack Abramoff's go-to guy (and vice versa) in the islands. And as TPM Reader EL points out, look at this passage from a 2001 article in the Saipan Tribune (emphasis added) ...
The Covenant Party’s gubernatorial aspirant Benigno R. Fitial disclosed the "good news" yesterday to Northern Marianas College students, faculty and staff during a forum organized by the Associated Students.Fitial said he learned from his friends in the US Congress that the CNMI will be receiving a substantial amount of financial assistance from certain departments in the federal government.
"I talked to my friend Cong. Bob Schaffer over the phone and he told me that this assistance will be coming very, very soon," said Fitial.
And a year earlier, Schaffer was one of five members of Congress that Fitial's delegation met with when they visited Washington.
Late Update: And there's more. Apparently there's no video of that exchange. Or we haven't found it yet. But another reporter from local station KREX Channel 5 got this brush off ...
--Josh Marshall
Don't Hold Your Breath
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has invited former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former CIA Director George Tenet, former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Chief of Staff to the Vice President David Addington, and former Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin to testify to his committee about those Principals meetings on torture.
Not seeing that happening without subpoenas, executive privilege claims and a few trips to court. But stay tuned.
--David Kurtz
More Straight Talk
Turns out that right-wing pariah, George Soros, also contributed money to the legal defense of McCain-Feingold.
As I said below, it makes that anti-Soros fund-raising letter from the McCain camp a bit of a trainwreck.
--David Kurtz
A Question of Academic Freedom?
Boalt Hall dean defends the continued employment of John Yoo as a law professor there.
--David Kurtz
Mums the Word
From what we can tell Colorado senate candidate Bob Schaffer (R) has gone completely to ground since word spread that he wants to replace the US immigration system with the Mariana Islands set-up which features forced abortions, child sex trafficking and various forms of enslavement. Taking a junket to hang with the sweatshop owners courtesy of Jack Abramoff hasn't helped either, of course.
In any case, we're really curious to hear about when Schaffer comes up for air, whether he gets asked about his Marianas immigration policy proposal and what his answers are. So if you're in Colorado, keep an eye out on the news and in the local papers to see what if anything he says. And then shoot us an email to let us know what you see and hear. We need you to be our eyes and ears on the ground. Dick Wadhams has him under wraps at the moment. But he's got to come up for air eventually. He is running for senate after all.
Late Update: On related lines, TPM Reader COD has a thought: "Re: the Schaffer-Mariannas interview. I hope you'll also keep the religious angle in mind, could be worth persuing. Schaffer is staunchly Catholic in a state with a very conservative Archbishop of Denver, Chaput, who probably wouldn't be amused by forced abortions. Human trafficking and the sex trade are also very hot topics with RCs these days, and any defense of a system that is tainted with that won't fly either."
--Josh Marshall
Why the FBI?
We'd be interested in hearing from readers with prosecutorial backgrounds on this one.
As you may have been following at TPMmuckraker, there was a hung jury this week in the trial of former Pittsburgh-area coroner Cyril Wecht. Because of a number of peculiarities, the case has been one of those DOJ prosecutions suspected of being politically motivated.
The government immediately declared it would retry the case, but in the meantime the FBI has been contacting jurors asking about their deliberations.
Now it's not unusual for prosecutors to try to meet with jurors after the fact. Indeed, sometimes those meetings help determine whether a retrial is viable. But dispatching the FBI to arrange these meetings?
I've never heard of such a thing, and former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, who is representing Wecht, tells TPMmuckraker that it's "unprecedented" in his experience.
So what about it? Is this standard operating procedure in U.S. Attorney offices?
Late Update: Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) issued the following statement this afternoon:
I am deeply troubled by reports of FBI agents contacting former jurors who failed to convict Dr. Wecht. Whether reckless or intended, it is simply common sense that such contacts can have a chilling effect on future juries in this and other cases. When added to the troubling conduct of this prosecution, there is the appearance of a win at all costs mentality. The committee continues to investigate this matter.
--David Kurtz
Penn Haters Unite
Not a good day for Mark Penn.
Original Clintonite Paul Begala ripped on him at a breakfast appearance this morning:
"I have nothing but contempt for Mr. Penn. And for those of us who wanted to see him out from the beginning, it became almost a Rumsfeldian thing. And he is not even fired. He has been demoted. How could this be?"
Meanwhile, the Obama camp continues to flog Penn. Obama himself said in an Indiana press conference that he would have gotten rid of Penn if he'd been his aide, and the Obama-backing union coalition Change to Win has launched an effort to get Hillary to "sever all ties" with Penn.
--David Kurtz
Bring on the Muck
TPM Reader EL just let us know that Vice President Cheney is in Grand Junction today to headline a fundraiser for Boss Schaffer.
Curious whether he's going to field any questions on his budding Marianas-Abramoff scandal.
--Josh Marshall
Straight Talk And All That Jazz
We've mentioned this before but it remains an interesting dynamic to watch.
You've got the John McCain of lore -- the maverick riding the Straight Talk Express who flirted with caucusing with the Democrats, if not running with Sen. John Kerry on the Democratic ticket in 2004 -- hitching his star to the right-wing noise machine, and the wingnuts hitching their star to him.
It makes for strange bedfellows and for trainwrecks just like this one.
McCain campaign manager Rick Davis sent out a fund-raising letter this week trying to raise money off of George Soros' funding of indy Dem groups: "He and his group of billionaire left-wing Democrats have pledged $40 million dollars of soft money to smear John McCain in a national television ad campaign," Davis wrote in the letter.
The problem for McCain is that Soros has also funded groups like the Reform Institute, an advocate of campaign-finance reform that Davis himself served as president of from 2001-05 and for which McCain was honorary co-chairman. As TPM Election Central reports, Soros gave $150,000 to the McCain-Davis outfit back in 2003.
We're hearing that McCain also benefited indirectly from Soros money that was used for litigation defending the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law.
More on that shortly.
Late Update: Apropos of this discussion, the NYT Magazine interviews Grover Norquist, who is now actively supporting McCain:
Norquist now admits that calling McCain a "gun-grabbing, tax-increasing Bolshevik" was "an overstatement." At the same 2005 College Republicans gathering he referred to McCain as "the nut-job from Arizona."
But they're buds now.
Later Update: TPM Election Central has the details now on the Soros connection to McCain-Feingold.
--David Kurtz
McCain Idol
In an American Idol benefit appearance, John McCain pokes a Dem sore spot -- the Michigan and Florida delegate disputes (via Fancy Animals):
--David Kurtz
Tough Run Of Luck
2004 was a great year for Dick Wadhams, hardball GOP campaign operative and longtime pal of Karl Rove. Four years ago he was able to pick off Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), with his candidate, former congressman and now Senator John Thune (R-SD). Not long after, my friend Alex Starr wrote that Wadhams 
might be Rove's heir apparent.
But the last two cycles not been so kind.
By early 2006, Wadhams was Chief of Staff to then-Sen. George Allen (R-VA). From that gig he took a leave of absence to run Allen's 2006 reelection campaign. And that was a choice assignment since Allen had an inside track for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. So, get Allen reelected to the senate, then get him nominated and elected president and then decamp to some innocuously titled job at the White House to pack the executive branch with political cronies and good Allens.
Of course, it was not to be. Rather than president, Allen became the iconic political roadkill of viral video on the information superhighway.
This year Wadhams has resurfaced managing the campaign of none other than Colorado's Bob Schaffer (R), the de facto nominee for the seat of retiring Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO). Schaffer is the sharpie who for no apparent reason extolled the merits of the guest labor system in the Mariana Islands in an interview about immigration policy he gave to the Denver Post.
As we've noted over the last few days, the Marianas program has a rather poor record -- what, with beatings, forced abortions, child sex trafficking and so forth. From a political perspective, though, almost as damaging is that the Marianas (aka the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands) were deeply entwined with the Jack Abramoff scandal. So it really does seem like an unforced political error of almost Macaca-like proportions.
It's even better for Schaffer since in 1999 he went on one Abramoff's infamous Marianas Islands junkets, with pictures, no less.
Now, here at TPM we've been we've been wondering, setting aside Schaffer's fondness for third-world labor practices, what could he have been thinking to have walked straight into this mess and given The Wad such a headache?
Our best guess is that Schaffer basically missed the Abramoff scandal, at least compared to how people experienced it in Washington. Schaffer was elected in 1996 and term-limited himself after the end of his third term, leaving DC in early 2003. He then tried and failed to get the Republican senate nomination in 2004. There is something called newspapers and the internet. But it just doesn't seem to have registered with him how radioactive Abramoff and his clients had become.
For now Schaffer seems to have gone to ground, refusing any interviews or comments to the press on his ties to the Marianas crew or his desire to imitate their immigration system, leaving it to Wadhams to speak for him and clean up his mess.
--Josh Marshall
Today's Must Read
With the help of ABC News and the AP, we now have a pretty good tick-tock on the Bush Administration's use of torture and the development of the dubious legal underpinnings to the torture policy.
--David Kurtz
Refinement
TPM Reader YA turns a critical eye on McCain because ... well, no one in the press will ...
So I'm trying to make sense of McCain's "refined" plan. Two weeks ago, he wondered aloud how "4 million mortgages [could] cause this much trouble for us all," and suggested that if those borrowers just took fewer vacations and managed their budgets more effectively, they wouldn't be in trouble. Today, he promised to help "every deserving American family or homeowner." So how many American families are deserving? McCain's top economic policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, places the number between 200,000 and 400,000 households; just those families "who really need help."Great. So to be clear, McCain thinks that millions of Americans are going to lose their homes, and all but a few hundred thousand are just getting what they deserve. Specifically, he's prepared to step forward and help only those who:
-Took out a subprime loan after 2005
-Can prove they were "creditworthy" at the time
-Are unable to pay that subprime loan
-But could pay a 30-year fixed rate loan
Of course, pretty much all those folks already qualify for assistance under the existing FHASecure program. McCain's proposal offers greater leverage over recalcitrant lenders, and shoulders some of the cost of restructuring the loans, but virtually everyone who meets his guidelines is already eligible for help.
So on the whole, "refined" is a fine word to apply. Two weeks ago, McCain stood up and announced that so far as he was concerned, millions of Americans were going to lose their homes because they borrowed recklessly, and that was fine with him. Today, he "refined" that, vowing action. But it's typical Republican bamboozlement. McCain says that perhaps a few hundred thousand homeowners deserve ever so slightly more help than they're already receiving, but that millions of others should lose their homes. And
it's worth pointing out that most analysts agree that the number of folks who would be helped by this plan is probably much smaller than Holtz-Eakin estimates. There's really not much difference between his initial position and his bold new plan - they both amount to inaction.So I'd suggest that right after they note that "John McCain says he'd be happy to see our troops in Iraq for another hundred years," the Democrats would do well to add, "John McCain says that millions of Americans deserve to lose their homes." All it's going to take to beat this guy is telling the public where he stands.
--Josh Marshall
McCain Lexicon Watch
When John McCain changes his position on relief for homeowners after two weeks, it's called 'refining' his plan.
Late Update: The Times does a bit better: "McCain Reverses Himself on Mortgage Position" Was that so hard?
--Josh Marshall
Shoot the Messenger
A sampling of reader emails in response to my "Real Change" post:
TPM Reader JD:
John Burns has been a consistent supporter and cheerleader of the war in Iraq. Charlie Rose ditto. What's missing from Kurtz's post are the unmentioned facts about "violence"in Iraq. When 1/3 of the entire Iraqi population has either been killed or displaced and when Baghdad has been ethnically cleansed (75% Shiite), who's left to kill? Who's left to cause violence? When the Sunni insurgents are being paid not to shoot us (for awhile) why shouldn't violence decrease? When the biggest armed militia in Iraq (the Mahdi army) has observed a shaky ceasefire during the time of the "decrease in violence" that couldn't possibly have anything to do with a reduction in violence, right? Violence is still at unacceptable levels. What if N.Y'rs were waking up to 15-30 dead bodies in the streets every day? 13 U.S. soldiers were killed in the last 10 days. Where are the graphs showing that violence has only been reduced to 2005 levels? There's a sucker born every minute and apparently David Kurtz is one of them.
TPM Reader TR:
Burns of the Times has been an active proponent of the Iraq war for five years. I would rate his credibility on the surge on a par with that of President Bush.
TPM Reader SD:
What the hell is Kurtz drinking?
--David Kurtz
The Newest New Way Forward
Speaking of the unreliable messenger, President Bush wrapped up Petraeus Week in Washington with a speech on Iraq this morning:
--David Kurtz
Real Change
Charlie Rose kept me up late last night against my will, but his interview of the NYT's John Burns and Dexter Filkins about Iraq was fascinating, largely because it shed new light, for me at least, on how much things have actually improved on the ground there.
Whether the reduction in violence changes the strategic equation remains to be seen -- and Burns and Filkins agree that the odds remain long. But coming from two men who were in Iraq during the worst of times, their astonishment at the turnaround there within a relatively short time is notable:
I certainly knew violence was down. But since the pronouncements of improvement in Iraq have come from such an unreliable messenger, the Bush Administration, they have been easy to discount. Perhaps too easy.
--David Kurtz
TPMtv: Marianas: I'm Loving It!
As we've been reporting, Colorado senate candidate Bob Schaffer (R) says we should remodel our national immigration policy on that of the Mariana Islands -- a program notorious for child prostitution, forced abortions, beatings, slavery, twelve hour days and sex trafficking. Now it turns out he went on a Jack Abramoff junket to the islands and came back saying it was A-OK! We look at the latest in today's episode of TPMtv ...
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
--Josh Marshall
Schaffer in Paradise
Overnight we brought word that Colorado senate candidate Bob Schaffer (R-CO) actually went on one of those Abramoff junkets to the Mariana Islands, funded by the islands' sweatshop owners who were Abramoff's biggest clients. This is how he came to the conclusion that we rebuild our own national immigration policy around the Marianas model even though the Marianas program is notorious around the world for forced abortion, slavery, child prostitution, beatings and having the overwhelmingly female foreign workers houses in shacks with no plumbing surrounded by barbed wire.
Well, this morning the Denver Post put out a new article on Schaffer's trip which provides a host of new details, including pictures.
Here's Schaffer and his wife doing a little parasailing ...
And here's Schaffer being conducted on a tour funded by the organized by Abramoff and the sweatshop owners.
According to the Post article, when the tanned Schaffer returned to the states he reported that everything seemed fine. "The workers were smiling; they were happy."
--Josh Marshall
McConnell & Reid Tangle on 100 Years
Yesterday on the floor of the senate, Sens. Reid and McConnell tangled on the McCain hundred years comment. Reid simply said "one of the things that will be debated this fall is ... whether our troops need to be in Iraq for another 50 or 100 years. I think that will be a pivotal part of the debate that takes place in the presidential election." Then McConnell jumps to his feet and starts lying through his teeth claiming McCain never said any such thing. Reid didn't say 'war', didn't say anything but what McCain said as clear as day. Here's what happened after that.
Saying 'war' confuses the issue. What Reid says is just the precise words that McCain said repeatedly, that he'd be happy to see American troops remain in Iraq for 50 or 100 years or more.
--Josh Marshall
Whither the 4th Amendment?
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) confronted Attorney General Michael Mukasey this morning in a Senate hearing over that other Yoo memo, the one that said the 4th Amendment bar against unreasonable search and seizure did not apply to domestic military operations.
Mukasey bobbed, dodged and weaved -- but refused to say that the 2001 memo had been withdrawn.
--David Kurtz
Lapel Pin Patriotism
We've got your Frank Luntz - Sean Hannity throwdown over whether Barack Obama is authentically "pro-American":
--David Kurtz
Today's Must Read
We preview President Bush's Iraq speech this morning: the New Newest New Way Forward.
--David Kurtz
Not a "Shred of Evidence" in Those Docs
Here at TPM we were honored this year to receive The Week magazine's "Blogger of the Year" award for our reporting on the US Attorneys scandal. One thing I wanted to make clear: I very much wanted to be at the awards ceremony in DC Tuesday night. But my wife is due to give birth to our second child in just a few weeks. And I didn't feel comfortable going out of town so close to the big day. In any case, I was reading this item in Mary Ann Akers The Sleuth blog in the Post. And apparently there was a funny, awkward moment at the ceremony since Karl Rove was there to appear on a panel. I'll pick it up from Akers ...
Marshall won the award for his relentless coverage of the U.S. attorneys firings scandal -- and the White House's behind-the-scenes role in the firings.Since Rove himself was accused of having a role in the firings, the moment was a bit awkward.
Marshall, who also won a George Polk Award for his work on the story, posted thousands of internal Justice Department e-mails and memos on his blog, which became mandatory reading for anyone following the unfolding scandal.
Just as Marshall was being extolled Tuesday night, Rove, who was subpoenaed by the Senate during the height of the brouhaha, was overheard saying, "There wasn't a shred of evidence in those documents."
That does strike me as a very narrow and technical sort of self-exculpation, no?
--Josh Marshall
Fashhhionating
Earlier today we noted that the Republican Senate candidate from Colorado, Bob Schaffer, told the Denver Post that America should adopt an immigration and guest labor policy modeled on that of the Mariana Islands (aka the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands) -- whose guest worker program is notorious around the world for forced abortion, slavery, child prostitution, sex trafficking, beatings, female workers kept in shacks with no plumbing surrounded by barbed wire and other fun stuff.
When I first heard what a bang up job Schaffer thinks 
they're doing in the Marianas I figured he had only some casual acquaintance with the situation in the Islands.
But it turns out that's not so.
TPM Reader AK points out that the folks at ProgressNowAction have done a little digging. And it seems that that back in 1999, when Schaffer was serving in Congress, he went on one of those junkets to the Islands put together by none other than disgraced lobbyist and now-federal inmate Jack Abramoff.
Those of you with a clear recollection of the details of the Abramoff scandal will remember that one of Jack's biggest clients was the group of sharks who ran the Marianas sweat shops.
They had a great thing going because they were able to slap Made In The USA labels on clothes and other items made in Saipan by female guest workers imported from other parts of East Asia to work in sub-Third World labor conditions. That is, when the guest workers weren't busy getting beaten, raped or coerced into having abortions. Jack's job was to find politicians willing to travel with him on junkets to the Marianas, hang out at the casinos and come back to the states and say how well the labor conditions actually there seemed to be.
It was actually amazing what Abramoff could get members of Congress to do for the Marianas sweatshop owners. After his Marianas junket, Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) agreed to enter into the congressional record a series of personal attacks against a 15 year old sex slave whose ordeal had become a major source of press attention. "[S]he wanted to do nude dancing," said Rep. Hall.
In any case, it was just one of these junkets with Abramoff that then US Rep. Bob Schaffer took back in 1999, which, as it happens, was a year after the release of the Department of Labor report that confirmed the 15 year old sex slave's account.
--Josh Marshall
"History Will Not Judge This Kindly"
ABC News' Jan Crawford Greenburg reports:
In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.
Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.
The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.
The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.
At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
…
Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.
According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."
--David Kurtz
Aspire To The Best
Colorado's Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer says that he'd like to see our immigration policy remodeled to emulate that of the Mariana Islands, the US Pacific protectorate.
Remember, the Marianas guest worker program has become notorious for numerous instances of guest workers forced into prostitution, child prostitution, forced abortion, slave labor, beatings and various other forms of 13th century labor practices.
From the Denver Post ...
He pointed to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. protectorate that imports tens of thousands of foreign textile workers, as a successful model for a guest-worker program that could be adapted nationally."The concept of prequalifying foreign workers in their home country under private- sector management is a system that works very well in one place in America," he said of the islands' program. "I think members of Congress ought to be looking at that model and be considering it as a possible basis for a nationwide program."
Curious to see whether anyone raises these matters with Schaffer. This article in the Denver Post seems to have been written with little sense of the track record in the Marianas. The reporter presents Schaffer's pitch as part of the candidate's effort to take a 'moderate' stance on the immigration question.
[Special thanks to TPM Reader TR.]
--Josh Marshall
Yet More Hilarity
Permanent US occupation of Iraq just like America's permanent occupation of the American South? So says Redstate.com.
--Josh Marshall
--Josh Marshall
Keep It Simple
Why doesn't every Democrat, when saying anything about the presidential race, start their remarks by saying: John McCain says he'd be happy to see our troops in Iraq for another hundred years. I just can't agree with that.
That's really all you need to say. Keep it simple.
--Josh Marshall
Digging In
In TPM's election coverage we're generally tightly focused on congressional elections. But over the last three-plus months we turned our attention almost exclusively to the presidential contests. But with the primary season coming to a close and particularly with the hiatus in contests on the Democratic side of the ledger, we're digging back into the congressional races. And we'd like to ask for your help.
One of the reasons I'm so keen on our congressional coverage is that it's in our coverage of hundreds of races around the country that our model -- relying on tips and leads from readers around the country -- really shines.
So keep us posted on what you're seeing in the local press, local candidate events and what you're hearing in your area. Just by way of example, during the Social Security battle in early 2005, I think TPM had political intelligence as good as anyone in the country -- in terms of what was happening in the field, I think better than all the pols and political committees. And it was entirely because a piece couldn't appear in a local paper or in constituent mailings or be heard at a townhall without one of our readers tipping us to it. Google and Nexis are great levelers of the investigative playing field. But as they say in the intel world, there's no substitute for robust human intelligence.
Whether you're just a close reader of the election news or involved in a campaign or reporting on one for a newspaper in your area, it is simply invaluable to us if you can keep us up on the details of the races in your state and district.
--Josh Marshall
TPMtv: "Progress" Report
Seven months after the start of the "surge," General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker returned to Capitol Hill Tuesday to update senators on the "fragile and reversible" progress in Iraq. We have the highlights ...
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
--Ben Craw
AP Photog Ordered Freed
From AP:
An Iraqi judicial committee has dismissed terrorism-related allegations against AP photographer Bilal Hussein and ordered him freed after nearly two years in U.S. military custody.
--David Kurtz
Gallup: Obama Up 10 Nationally
Gallup's national tracking poll has ebbed and flowed quite a bit in recent weeks, but for frame of reference, Obama's 10-point lead today matches the biggest he has held, which came on March 29:
Click on the graph for a larger version.
--David Kurtz
A Shoulder To Cry On
Larry Craig feels David Vitter's pain:
Craig said he has told Vitter he regretted the fact that his own case seemed to cause the media to dredge up and rehash Vitter’s situation. He also said he sympathizes with Vitter’s treatment by the media.“My story became a situation where my wife and I watched it almost as if it were caricatures out there being talked about,” Craig said. “It certainly wasn’t me, but that was quite typical in a 24/7 news cycle like we have today.”
--David Kurtz
I'm Still Standing
Hillary will pull in $2.5 million at tonight's big fund-raiser with Elton John, TPM Election Central reports.
--David Kurtz
Today's Must Read
When is a cover-up of a cover-up not a cover-up?
When the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement orders pics of an office Halloween party destroyed because they show her with a white employee in blackface.
At least that's what Julie Myers says.
--David Kurtz
Oops, Part XXIV
Gosh, darn! It happened again!
Another McCain supporter gets so worked up about their candidate that in the heat of the moment nonsense like this just innocently bubbles up.
It's Masters Week, but what does Tiger Woods have to do with this?
Late Update: Good news. This guy, David Bellavia, is running for Congress, seeking the GOP nomination for Rep. Tom Reynolds' open seat in New York.
--David Kurtz
Seems Like Old Times
It seems like only a few months ago we were celebrating David Horowitz's Islamofascism Awareness Week with heavily subsidized and poorly attended events on campuses around the country. But the October's IAW was such a good fundraising tool he's decided to make this week Islamofascism Awareness Week too.
--Josh Marshall
D'oh!
From the Stamford Advocate ...
A federal investigation has concluded that U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's 2006 re-election campaign was to blame for the crash of its Web site the day before Connecticut's heated Aug. 8 Democratic primary.The FBI office in New Haven found no evidence supporting the Lieberman campaign's allegations that supporters of primary challenger Ned Lamont of Greenwich were to blame for the Web site crash.
Lieberman, who was fighting for his political life against the anti-Iraq war candidate Lamont, implied that joe2006.com was hacked by Lamont supporters.
"The server that hosted the joe2006.com Web site failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured. There was no evidence of (an) attack," according to the e-mail.
As I've said before, next time we have server difficulties, The New York Times is going to pay a price for trying to take down TPM with a malicious server attack.
--Josh Marshall
So Much Money
Karen Tumulty remembers how Mark Penn almost sank Gore too. Before Gore canned him.
--Josh Marshall
Hertzberg
To get a feel for what McCain was saying, about the best account I've seen is Rick Hertzberg's in The New Yorker. He was there at the townhall meeting and wrote up his account shortly thereafter.
Read the whole thing; but here's Rick's conclusion and response to those who even then were already saying McCain was being taken out of context ...
You have to hand it to McCain. It's impossible to imagine any of the other Republicans engaging in this kind of extended conversation with a citizen. There was more real debate in this exchange than in any of the so-called real debates.But what the context shows, I think, is that yanking that sound bite out of context isn’t really all that unfair. McCain's wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal—that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay.
--Josh Marshall
This What Worries Them?
You probably remember that a month ago today Democrat Bill Foster won a special election to fill Denny Hastert's old seat in Illinois 14, what had been a reliably Republican district. Foster beat dairy kingpin Jim Oberweis and it seems one of the statements that helped Foster pull this seat out of Republican hands was Oberweis's declaration that we need to stay in Iraq for another ten years. (Think about it: in McCain terms, that's practically cut and run.) Here's the ad the Foster campaign ran about Oberweis and his pledge of ten more years in Iraq ...
--Josh Marshall
100 Excuses
Following up on the post below, I'd like to ask your assistance. The word has clearly gone out to every Republican elected official and campaign committee to hit back against anybody pushing John McCain's 100 years in Iraq claims. So if you've seen press releases or statements from politicians or explanations of what he meant or whatever, send me the links. And let me know in the subject line what you're writing in about.
--Josh Marshall
Full Court Press
Republicans can see how John McCain's 100 years comments (remember, he said it repeatedly) can be made into an albatross around his neck. So they're going for the full court press. Here's a press release just out from the head of the NRCC, the Republican House campaign committee (one among many over the last couple days) ...
Chairman Cole Comments on Issuance of False Democratic Talking PointsDespite Being Widely Discredited, Democrats Level False “100 Years” Accusation at Senator John McCain in Desperate Election Year Ploy
Washington– Today, Chairman Tom Cole made the following statement in regards to the dissemination of talking points issued by the House Democratic Caucus in advance of Gen. Petraeus’ report before Congress, which included a statement falsely accusing Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) of “promising” 100 years of war in Iraq:
“With a long and protracted primary battle brewing in the presidential contest, Democrats are justifiably worried that a John McCain candidacy could hurt their chances from the top of the ticket on down. Unfortunately for the American people, when the facts don’t meet the political goals of some Democratic leaders in the House, they resort to desperate tactics such as undermining the testimony of a widely regarded military General or distorting the words of the Republican presidential nominee. Intentionally disseminating falsehoods as ‘talking points’ in order to stem the perceived political fallout of positive news coming out of Iraq, just goes show how worried Democrats are about the upcoming elections.”
Note what he says below at .20 seconds. And then again at 1:20 when he says 1000 or 10,000 years is okay.
Here's why Republicans are scared to death of this. No one wants to be in Iraq 100 years from now, even if McCain stipulates to the fantasy that Iraqis will be happy having us occupy their country forever and that the place will become like Finland. And none of our soldiers will ever get killed there and it won't cost any money. If that's the explanation for why we shouldn't be concerned that he's happy to stay in Iraq for a century, that just tells people that McCain is living in a fantasy world.
They need to stop people from talking about it at all because their explanation for what he meant is at least as bad as what he really said.
--Josh Marshall
Obama: Define Success
Late in the day, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) got his chance to query Petraeus and Crocker.
We've broken the video into two segments:
and
--David Kurtz
Still Can't Identify the Enemy
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) this morning called AQI our "primary enemy" in Iraq. TPM Reader JH objects:
Why is it that all we're are hearing from these "hearings" is " al-Qaeda in Iraq"? This is bullshit and should be pointed out as such. Al Qaeda in Iraq is about 2% of the problem at most, yet that is all we are hearing.
Estimates vary on what percentage AQI represents of the insurgent/sectarian/militia forces, but JH is right. AQI is a fraction of the insurgency, five percent at most, probably less. In the words of one analyst, it is a "microscopic terrorist organization."
Yet, since the White House last year took to lumping all non-governmental armed groups under the AQI umbrella, the debate has subtly shifted from whether we're stuck in the midst of a civil war in Iraq to whether our efforts to stamp out terrorism (AQI) is worth the cost. In other words, the bamboozlement largely worked.
Meanwhile, even those who have signed on to the AQI myth can't keep it straight. Is it Shiite? Sunni? Oh, whatever:
MCCAIN: There are numerous threats to security in Iraq and the future of Iraq. Do you still view Al Qaida in Iraq as a major threat?PETRAEUS: It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was, say, 15 months ago.
MCCAIN: Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shiites overall...
PETRAEUS: No.
MCCAIN: ... or Sunnis or anybody else.
It's Sunni.
--David Kurtz
Conyers: I Need to Talk to Yoo
House Judiciary Chair John Conyer (D-MI) would like to have a little visit with John Yoo about all those torture memos.
He's set the visit for May 6, and everyone is invited, though Yoo finds himself reluctant to attend.
--David Kurtz
The Most Exclusive Club
If, like me, you're increasingly pessimistic about the Dems' chances of retaking the White House in November, then take heart: Things are looking much better for the Dems in the '08 Senate races.
Eric Kleefeld has the rundown.
--David Kurtz
Spin Control
Wonder whose idea it was to schedule a Medal of Honor award ceremony at the White House at the same time as the Petraeus hearings?
All three cable nets broke away from hearings coverage to carry the ceremony live.
--David Kurtz