Appeals court throws out eavesdropping lawsuit

A federal appeals court has thrown out a Detroit judge's ruling that the NSA warrantless wiretapping program was unconstitutional, saying (as expected) that the ACLU and its clients don't have standing to pursue the case.

Why do they lack standing? Because they can't prove they had been subjected to surveillance under the program.

As I've noted before, this sort of logic drives me nuts. Standing is an important legal concept, which helps ensure that someone bringing suit has a relevant interest in the case. It's a key defense against frivolous lawsuits, and keeps people, organizations and the government from intruding where they don't belong.

But in a case involving secret eavesdropping, in which the government (reasonably enough) refuses to say who or what it is monitoring, how can someone ever prove standing? By this logic, the government can have every case thrown out as long as it keeps the names of its subjects secret.

That's nonsensical. To quote my earlier rant:

It seems to me, though, that in important cases like this there should be available a broader form of standing, one that allows a court opinion to be rendered without requiring proof that the plaintiff has been specifically targeted. It would be a class-action suit of sorts, following the logic that "we're all affected by this program, either directly or indirectly, so we all have standing to question it.

That's pretty much the tack the ACLU was pursuing, so maybe they'll appeal to the Supreme Court and hope for the best. Seems like a bit of a long shot, though.

Meanwhile, a companion case out of Oregon is still alive.

Update: A detailed discussion of the case -- and the whole issue of standing -- over at Althouse.

terrorism, NSA, ACLU, politics, midtopia

You think we've got it bad....

If you think politics are corrupt in the United States, be thankful you don't live in either France or Peru.

In France, former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin faces charges that he helped forge bank documents to frame President Nicolas Sarkozy on bribery charges.

And in Peru, public school teachers walked off the job to protest a proposal that they pass competency exams in order to keep their jobs.

This might be just another brouhaha over arcane matters -- what the tests measure, what procedure is used to punish/help teachers who fail -- except for one thing: in the first round of exams, held in February, nearly half of the teachers couldn't solve basic math problems and a third had trouble with reading.

Further, the proposed rules would only fire teachers who failed the test three times. The teachers' union opposes that, saying it would lead to "arbitrary" firings.

O-o-o-o-kay.

It takes a certain brazen indifference to be confronted with evidence of widespread incompetence and still oppose efforts to fix it -- and to claim that firing anyone who can't pass the test on the third try is "arbitrary." I suppose it is, in that where exactly the line is drawn is an arbitrary decision -- why not fire them after the second failure, or the fifth? But the union is out in left field on this one.

Which may explain why only 15 percent of teachers paid any attention to them.

That last statistic provides another example of how bad Peru's teachers are at math. Half of them failed the test, and yet only 15 percent support a union that wants to protect them from any consequences for that failure. It's like they can't discern their own simple self-interest. Either that or they're nobly self-sacrificing, which strikes me as unlikely.

The U.S. has its problems, but it pays to remember that things could be far, far worse.

Villepin, education, Peru, France, politics, midtopia

D.C. madame to release client records

This is the sort of thing political bloggers sell their grandmothers for:

A woman accused of running a prostitution ring in the nation's capital is free to distribute thousands of pages of phone records after a federal judge lifted a restraining order on Thursday....

[Deborah Jean Palfrey] and her attorney have said the list contains up to 15,000 names and could shake up Washington by revealing high-profile individuals.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.... This could be like Christmas in July. A bipartisan reputation massacre of epic proportions, with extra helpings of exposed hypocrisy.

More seriously, it could prove or disprove reports that former Rep. Randy Cunningham organized escort-service parties (if Palfrey's service was used). And who knows what impact it might have on the 2008 elections?

Release the list, Deborah. Release the list.

Update: I missed a key point: the list was already partly released, as part of a "20/20" report in May. She gave the program four years worth of records, out of a total of 13 or 14 years.

The most prominent name on the list, according to ABC? Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias, who oversaw the administration's foreign aid operations. He resigned.

Also named was Washington Times columnist Harlan Ullman, author of "Shock and Awe." He denied being a client.

Others mentioned but not identified include NASA officials, military officers, a career Justice Department prosecutor, prominent CEOs, some wealthy (but private) movers and shakers, officials at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and lobbyists of all stripes.

No members of Congress, no White House officials. But we'll see who turns up in the full list.

Update II: Palfrey is making the list available to the media and like organizations on her website. But apparently she's just providing a list of phone numbers; it will be up to the recipients to match numbers to names, and then determine the significance of those names.

In other words: it could be a long while before we learn anything.

prostitution, Palfrey, politics, midtopia

NASA: Something old, something new

Now all we need is something borrowed and something blue, and NASA can get hitched!

In a bid to save money, NASA is recycling a pair of used space probes, reconfiguring them for new missions.

The Deep Impact probe fired what was essentially a large bullet into a comet named Tempel 1 in 2005 to find out what the comet's interior was made of. After that the probe was shut down to conserve energy. Now NASA plans to wake it up and use it to examine planets circling other stars, as well as visit another comet at the end of 2008.

The Stardust probe flew through the tail of another comet in 2004, collecting particle samples of the tail. It then circled back to Earth and dropped off the samples in early 2006. But the probe itself remained in space. It's new mission will be to visit Tempel 1 and take additional photographs of the impact crater left by Deep Impact's bullet.

Meanwhile, a brand-new probe is scheduled to launch this weekend. The Dawn spacecraft will fly to the asteroid belt and visit two of the largest bodies there, Vesta and Ceres. Among other cool things, the probe will be powered by an ion engine, serving as something of a test-bed for a technology that could end up being heavily used in any effort to colonize or exploit the solar system.

Let's hope NASA has worked out the kinks that led to comically disastrous mistakes in the past, so we can get on with gathering unprecedented glimpses of our solar neighborhood.

Update: The Dawn launch has now been postponed until September due to various technical problems, and a desire not to interfere with the upcoming launches of the shuttle and another rocket.

science, NASA, space, politics, midtopia

Domenici defects on Iraq

Yet another Republican, Sen. Pete Domenici, breaks ranks.

What's more, he doesn't want to wait until the progress report on the "surge" comes due this fall. He wants to pass legislation now setting a timetable for a gradual withdrawal, to be completed by March 2008 -- essentially, the Senate version of timetables that were stripped out of the most recent war-funding bill.

Sure, he's up for re-election. But that's just a sign of how opposed the public is to the war, when senators need to worry about losing their jobs because of their support for it. Assuming all the Republican defectors back up their statements with votes, Senate Democrats are getting achingly close to having the two-thirds majority they need to ram antiwar measures through.

I've said it before, but it's worth saying again. Because of the way our government is structured, any effort to rein in the president requires large majorities in Congress, particularly the Senate. That's why, if America decides to end the war in Iraq, it will not be a Democratic responsibility: it will be a bipartisan effort that reflects the will of the American people.

Domenici, Iraq, politics, midtopia

James Madison on impeachment

I came across this interesting bit of history while trolling through the Clinton impeachment archives looking for Libby parallels.

It's a discussion of how the framers dealt with the impeachment and pardon powers during the Constitutional Convention. Here's how James Madison addressed one concern:

George Mason argued that the President might use his pardoning power to "pardon crimes which were advised by himself" or, before indictment or conviction, "to stop inquiry and prevent detection." James Madison responded: "[I]f the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty...."

Hmmm....

It's a matter of opinion whether the Libby commutation is so wrongful that it deserves impeachment; after all, we probably wouldn't impeach the president for commuting a speeding ticket even if it was transparently immoral. And I believe impeachment efforts should have a high bar to get over. On a practical level, Bush is so close to the end of his term that impeachment proceedings are probably pointless anyway.

But it's worth noting that the Framers didn't think the impeachment bar was as high as we do today. They seemed to think it could be resorted to freely and that the necessity of supermajorities to convict was a sufficiently large hurdle to prevent abuse.

Madison, for example, appears to argue that pardoning an administration official is so injurious to the Constitution and the rule of law that it's an impeachable offense. Indeed, Madison argues that a president could be impeached if Congress merely suspects the President would shelter a criminal to which he is connected. That's not a very high bar at all.

Update: The Donklephant version of this post is currently a "featured post" over at Memeorandum.

impeachment, Libby, politics, midtopia

Safire on presidential pardons

Conservative columnist William Safire had his ire up over presidential pardons in 2001.

Result: the most flagrant abuse of the presidential pardon power in U.S. history. Even Clinton stalwarts are openly disgusted at their man's departing display of shamelessness. But Rich's hired guns in public relations and the law will soon claim that ''every president did it'' or that ''Rich was persecuted by evil prosecutors.''

How can Clinton's final presidential wrong be righted? A constitutional amendment to restrict the undemocratic kingly power is far off, and this unpardonable pardon can never be undone. But though justice in this case is denied, truth can be served, and the truth can hurt Rich and the perpetrators of his pardon.

Congressional hearings will begin next week to determine how the end run was made around all normal procedures. To display nonpartisanship, Dan Burton's Government Reform Committee should call a predecessor chairman, John Conyers, who held hearings a decade ago into Republican failures to bring Rich to trial.

A threshold question: Why did Clinton decide the case on a one-sided presentation by Rich's lawyer, Quinn, with no analysis from Justice's pardon attorney, Roger Adams? Why was Rich's prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, Mary Jo White, kept in the dark rather than asked for her rebuttal?

Safire was writing about Clinton's shameful pardoning of billionaire fugitive Marc Rich. But isn't it interesting how many of the same criticisms apply to President Bush's pardon of Lewis Libby.

Note the similarities:

1. The claims of "everybody does it" and that Libby was "persecuted by evil prosecutors."

2. The threshold question. Why did Bush decided the case after a one-sided consultation with a few close aides? Why was Libby's prosecutor kept in the dark rather than asked for his rebuttal?

Safire supported Congressional hearings into how the pardon was made.

I wonder two things: If Bush supporters will admit the parallels, and if Safire will call for the same treatment this time around (though that might not be a fair thing to ask for, considering he hung up his columnist hat a couple of years ago).

I'm not holding my breath.

pardons, Marc Rich, Libby, Safire, politics, midtopia

Libby goes free

Man, I shut off the computer for the night, and 30 seconds later Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence. Sometimes I think it's personal.

Here's the White House statement on the commutation. It's a pretty balanced document, but in the end it mostly pays lip service to the arguments favoring at least a short prison stay. He stripped away the 30-month jail term, leaving the $250,000 fine and a lengthy probation term.

Bush made the decision after consulting just a handful of advisors. He explicitly did not consult friends of Libby, who wanted to lobby for clemency. But neither did he consult the Justice Department or the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, as is routine in such cases.

Previously I noted that some clemency was probably warranted, but Libby needed to serve at least some jail time or else the president's political capital would all but evaporate. I still think that's true.

Here's what might have been going through Bush's head:

The White House appeared to be calculating that no matter what he did to keep Libby out of prison, Bush would not make Democrats happy, and if he did nothing, he would infuriate his strongest conservative supporters.

He's probably right about the Dems, but they now have even more reason to be even more opposed to him. Meanwhile, polls show a strong majority of voters didn't want Libby pardoned. They'll view comutation as essentially the same thing, so now Bush has lost them. A large minority felt that the jail sentence was excessive, but also feel that no jail time at all is too lenient. Further along the spectrum, many of his conservative supporters were demanding a full pardon, and consider the partial commutation too little, too late.

As well, hanging over it all is the question of whether Libby is being protected because he lied to protect his superiors in the Plame case.

Had Bush waited to commute Libby's sentence; or commuted it to even six months in jail, he would have demonstrated that actions have serious, tangible consequences -- not a fine that will be paid by well-heeled supporters and a meaningless probation. Yes, Libby has had his reputation smirched. But not in the circles that matter. He will land on his feet, in some silk-stocking law firm or lobbying outfit, and his conviction will simply be a footnote in his biography.

The only part of the sentence with real teeth was the jail term. And Bush has now made that disappear entirely.

It was a poor move, politically, legally and morally. It sends entirely the wrong message, and seems to confirm that the administration considers itself above the law, willing to let the legal system do its work only as long as it reaches a conclusion that the administration likes. This may not be a fair or accurate impression; but Bush has brought it on himself.

Update: Just as a refresher, here's a month-old excellent debunking of five common Libby myths by the Washington Post. The summary: Plame was covert; Libby did leak her identity; there's no solid evidence Rove was involved; Cheney dislikes bad press, however much he might pretend otherwise; and the White House has yet to discipline anyone involved in the leak of Plame's name. (h/t: Centrisity)

Update II: Bush's split-the-difference move has created a small legal kerfuffle. Libby was sentenced to two years of "supervised release" after his prison term, a condition Bush left intact. But in order to qualify for supervised release, a defendant must serve prison time. So what happens now? If the requirement of prison time is clear, I don't think the judge has the authority to make up something to address this situation. So look for Libby's sentence to be modified to unsupervised probation. that leaves the $250,000 fine as the only remaining part of the sentence -- and even that will likely be paid by someone other than Libby.

Libby, politics, midtopia

The roots of jihad

A former British Islamic extremist talks about what drives militants to attack civilians. The core of the article:

Though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.

If we were interested in justice, you may ask, how did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting such a (flawed) Utopian goal?

How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion?

There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.

Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.

For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.

He goes on to say that mainstream, moderate Muslims respond to extremists by trying to ignore them, which is a mistake: they must be confronted, and have the religious rug underpinning their actions yanked out from beneath them.

He even suggests one way to do so:

A handful of scholars from the Middle East have tried to put radicalism back in the box by saying that the rules of war devised so long ago by Islamic jurists were always conceived with the existence of an Islamic state in mind, a state which would supposedly regulate jihad in a responsible Islamic fashion.

In other words, individual Muslims don't have the authority to go around declaring global war in the name of Islam.

It's a start, but it will run into problems because someone will point out that such an interpretation essentially prohibits jihad entirely. But through unsatisfying sleight-of-legal-hand, not straightforward reasoning.

So rather than draw torturous limitations on jihad, how about simply renouncing the whole idea of "external" jihad? Or rather, renounce its violent expression. External jihad could be pacified into missionary work, where battles are fought in the marketplace of ideas, not with guns and bombs. And "internal" jihad -- the quest to better oneself as a Muslim -- could remain intact.

In any event, what you have here is a former militant calling for -- and suggesting a path for -- an Islamic Reformation. In passing, he also admits that violent extremists are a small minority of Muslims.

All in all, an interesting read that gives some good insight into the extremist mindset.

terrorism, religion, Islam, politics, midtopia

Tomcats go to the shredder

In a crunching coda to January's F-14 spare parts flap, The Pentagon has decided to scrap the planes entirely rather than risk even relatively innocuous parts finding their way to Iran -- the only remaining operator of F-14s.

This gets my vote for quote of the month:

"One of the ways to make sure that no one will ever use an F-14 again is to cut them into little 2-by-2-foot bits."

The decision means paying several million dollars to destroy them rather than earning millions selling the parts. But that seems a cost well-worth paying.

The only real losers, it seems, are F-14 devotees, who are finding it difficult to obtain them for museums and the like.

F-14, politics, midtopia

Kendrick Meek shoots back

Responding to revelations of shady moves by a developer he supported, Rep. Kendrick Meek defended himself Friday in an op-ed piece in the Miami Herald.

Recent Herald articles establish that the promoter of the Poinciana Biopharmaceutical project had a shady past, made promises he didn't keep, double billed for expenses and had neither tenants nor financing; that the developer hired my mother, former U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek, as a consultant and provided her with a leased car and free rent to her nonprofit foundation; and that I sought and obtained federal funds and loans for the project.

Some have interpreted this information in the worst light: that Carrie Meek sold out to a developer for her gain and that of her charitable foundation, and that I used my office to enrich my mother and the developer by funding a phony project at public expense.

Well, yeah.

Meek, though, doesn't beat around the bush:

This is utterly, totally and completely false.

A little redundant there, but we get his point. No equivocating.

My mother and I are very close. However, while her predecessors in Congress were paid consultants and lobbied her, she has never lobbied me nor asked me to support a grant, bill or other kind of funding or government decision, precisely because her congressman is also her son.

Fair enough. But if you're so close, how come she didn't tell you she was being paid by a developer you were supporting? She had to have known you were supporting the project, and she had to have known how bad it would look if the payments to her became public.

Columnist and novelist Carl Hiaasen, for one, isn't buying it.

Back to Meek:

Poinciana is in my congressional district. It is my job to support development there -- no easy task. For decades there have been no prospects, despite the fact that we have three major chambers of commerce and strong growth elsewhere in the county.

Based on all of the information available to me, the biopharmaceutical project appeared to me and to a lot of other responsible people to have a good chance for the public-private partnership we need.... I was not informed of the overdue reports, missed deadlines, pending audits and other concerns apparently known for months by other officials until just two weeks before The Miami Herald's story appeared.

Agreed. This is why so many legislators have financial connections in their district that can look very bad. Constituents give money to legislators; legislators' own businesses, if they have them, are in their district; and legislators try to bring money home to their district. The interplay -- especially in poor districts where the number of power players is few -- can look very bad indeed even if it's all aboveboard.

I also agree that actually overseeing the project was the county's job, not Meek's.

That said, Meek doesn't seem to have done any due diligence on the developer or the project. And he should take great care to avoid the appearance of impropriety in his efforts.

Because of my commitment to economic development, the former Miami-Dade mayor asked me to chair the Urban Revitalization Task Force, which approved loans for the developer's project in Opa-locka.... One lesson I have learned is not to agree to chair any entity in which I do not personally participate. Because of my duties in Washington, over the entire three years I was chairman, I attended only two Task Force meetings.

Translation: "I wasn't corrupt; I simply accepted a job I didn't have time for, overseeing a group that seemed to have suffered from.... lack of oversight."

Meek's explanations are plausible, even if they do show a representative willing to accept titles without doing the accompanying work, and one who was remarkably incurious about projects he was seeking funding for. Whether they hold up under scrutiny is another matter. And beyond that is the bigger question of "what steps is he taking to ensure this never happens again?"

P.S.: In his continuing efforts to distance himself from the matter, Meek is donating to charity a $5,500 donation from the developer in question. As the story notes, $5,500 was pocket change to Meek's campaign, so it's unlikely it bought any influence.

His mom, meanwhile, chose to attack the messenger.

Both Meeks, interestingly, say they learned about Stackhouse's misdeeds about 10 days before the Herald published its stories on him. That probably means the Herald led to their learning, either directly (the reporters called them) or indirectly (people contacted by the Herald knew the story was going to come out, and told those involved). Which raises a secondary question: Did they wait until the Herald articles came out to do something about it? And if so, why?

Meek, Florida, politics, midtopia

No delay for Libby

A federal appeals court unanimously refused to delay Lewis Libby's trip to prison while he appeals his conviction.

He'll now be given a surrender date, and will get to pursue his appeal from behind bars.

The grounds for his appeal was that he was likely to prevail on appeal, so he shouldn't be jailed in the meantime. By rejecting that argument, was the court offering a negative opinion on the strength of his case? Or simply deciding that the argument wasn't strong enough to keep him out of jail?

Separately, the court on Friday unsealed court documents in the case, giving a glimpse of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's thinking as he pursued his investigation into the leak case. There's not much new in them, apparently -- mostly a more coherent timeline of prosecutorial procedure.

It shows, as became apparent long ago, that no underlying crime could be charged because he couldn't prove that Libby or any of the other leakers knew Plame was a covert agent -- a difficult legal prerequisite for proving a crime. But he was also convinced Libby was lying. So he charged Libby with that, probably hoping Libby would cut a deal to avoid conviction and prison.

Libby didn't do that. So what remains unanswered is what Libby was lying about, and why. We probably won't know until the staff memoirs start emerging -- and maybe not even then, given the secrecy and hermeticism of the vice president's office.

Update: The linked story has updated, and it appears partisan efforts to claim that Libby is the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt -- a claim that was hard to justify to begin with -- are getting harder and harder to sustain: two of the three members of the appeals panel were appointed by Republicans.

So thus far we have Libby prosecuted by a Republican appointee, before a Republican-appointed judge (who sentenced Libby to a relatively harsh term and refused to grant him a delay), and his appeal rejected by a Republican-majority panel. Yep, definitely a witch hunt....

Libby, politics, midtopia

Iran in Iraq

The U.S. military says it has more evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraq:

Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed, an American military spokesman in Iraq said today.

Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the military spokesman, also said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has used operatives from the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah as a “proxy” to train and arm Shiite militants in Iraq.

There are three main bits of evidence pointing to Iranian involvement:

1. The sophistication of the attack itself, using English-speaking attackers wearing stolen U.S. uniforms and armed with detailed knowledge of the base's operations. It wasn't the sort of thing you'd normally expect the Shiite militias to pull off by themselves.

2. Militant testimony. Much of the additional proof is based on what the military says captured militants revealed under interrogation. According to them, the militans all report receiving aid from Iran or working on behalf of Iran. Damning stuff, but this is the weakest link in the chain, because there's no independent confirmation of the accounts and there's always the suspicion that "interrogation" actually means "torture" and thus the resulting information is suspect.

3. The fact that one of the captured militants, Ali Mussa DaqDuq, is a senior Hezbollah bombmaker. This is direct evidence of Hezbollah's involvement. However, it is only indirect evidence of Iranian involvement. It's always possible to argue that Hezbollah was acting on its own. On the other hand, several observers note that Hezbollah had little to gain from getting involved in Iraq; angering the United States would not help its efforts in Lebanon, and meddling in Iraq would make it seem more like the Iranian puppet it has long denied being.

So this is very close to a "smoking gun" of Iranian involvement -- and certainly enough to justify some blunt measures aimed at limiting Iranian influence, such as restricting the number and movements of Iranian representatives in Iraq, pressuring Iran diplomatically and economically and stationing significant forces on the Iranian border to stop cross-border smuggling.

All three have drawbacks. The first requires cooperation from the Iraqi government, which sees Iran as more ally than enemy; the second assumes we have any meaningful diplomatic or economic leverage; and the last may be unrealistic for several reasons: A lack of troops, the length and porousness of the border, and the fact that any buildup there will be taken as a sign of possible aggression by Iran.

Which points up a maddening fact about the situation: It may be difficult to mount much meaningful pressure on Iran over this. Hezbollah, likewise, is somewhat protected from retaliation, because an aggressive move against them could cause a further deterioration of the situation in Lebanon, something nobody in the region wants. Such a move would also be opposed by those European countries that have troops in the beefed-up U.N. peacekeeping force there -- troops that would become high-value targets if we turned the Hezbollah-Israel confrontation there into a Hezbollah-versus-the-West battle.

So the situation may simply call for hard-nosed forebearance: aggressively pursuing Iranian operatives in Iraq, accumulating evidence of Iranian involvement and using targeted strikes to take out clearly identified targets supporting the effort -- like, say, a Quds staging area just inside Iran or a Hezbollah training camp in Lebanon. As long as the strikes are carefully tailored and limited -- attacking a Hezbollah location implicated in Iraq operations, for example, not launching a broad attack on Hezbollah in general -- we could send some pointed messages while avoiding a broader conflict.

One other thing is crucial: support from the Iraqi government for moves against Iran. If that's not forthcoming -- and it may not be -- then there's no point in taking many of the other steps. Iraq has to decide if it wants Iran meddling in its affairs. If it doesn't, we can take vigorous steps to combat it. If they don't mind, it's just one more reason why we should pull out sooner rather than later.

Hezbollah, Iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

Falwells across the pond

And you thought only America had prominent ministers who were too dumb to live:

The floods that have devastated swathes of the country are God's judgment on the immorality and greed of modern society, according to senior Church of England bishops.

One diocesan bishop has even claimed that laws that have undermined marriage, including the introduction of pro-gay legislation, have provoked God to act by sending the storms that have left thousands of people homeless.

It's like Jerry Falwell has been reincarnated as an Anglican. At least now we can make fun of English idiots instead of enduring criticism of American ones.

Graham Dow, the Bishop of Carlisle who is the one quoted above saying tolerance of gays was part of the problem, may be socially conservative, but he also sees populist economic reasons why God is punishing us:

The West is also being punished for the way that it has exploited poorer nations in its pursuit of economic gain. "It has set up dominant economic structures that are built on greed and that keep other nations in a situation of dependence. The principle of God's judgment on nations that have exploited other nations is all there in the Bible," he said.

Conservative or liberal, the reasoning is still loopy.

To be fair, some of the bishops made a certain amount of sense not reflected in the headline:

Global warming has been caused by people's lack of care for the planet and recent environmental catastrophes are a warning over how we behave, according to the Bishop of Liverpool.

"People no longer see natural disasters as an act of God," said the Rt Rev James Jones. "However, we are now reaping what we have sown. If we live in a profligate way then there are going to be consequences," said the bishop, who has previously been seen as a future Archbishop of Canterbury or York.

That seems straightforward enough: If we don't care for the planet we will suffer the consequences. But calling such a simple bit of cause-and-effect "God's wrath" is a bit like saying if you touch a hot stove, the resulting burn is God's wrath. It kind of devalues the whole concept of both God and wrath.

They also expressed their condolences for the "innocent victims" of the floods. I'd love to see them try to explain that logic: Why is God punishing and killing innocents in order to punish us for our excesses?

Gits.

England, religion, politics, midtopia

SCOTUS to examine Guantanamo case

What a difference two months makes.

After revelations that the military's Combatant Status Review Tribunals might have been, shall we say, a bit of a farce, the Supreme Court overrode administration objections (and reversed its own April decision) and agreed to decide whether Guantanamo detainees can contest their detention in U.S. courts.

How unusual is this? Very.

The move to grant a motion for re-hearing in a previously denied case is rare. Court observers pointed to a 1968 case as the closest parallel to what happened Friday.

Back in April, three justices wanted to take the case: Breyer, Ginsburg and Souter. So this decision indicates that at least two other justices changed their minds. I'll just hazard a guess that their names are Kennedy and Stevens.

The case, which is expected to be heard in the fall, will be interesting on several levels. For one thing, it will involve the judicial branch ruling on the constitutionality of a legislative move stripping the judiciary of the power to hear detainee challenges.

Assuming the tribunal revelations were a triggering event, it could also indicate the court will take a jaundiced view of the administration's key defense: the tribunals themselves.

The detainees' attorneys want the appeals court to allow a broad inquiry questioning the accuracy and completeness of the evidence the Combatant Status Review Tribunals gathered about the detainees, most of it classified.

The Justice Department has been seeking a limited review, saying that the findings of the military tribunals are "entitled to the highest level of deference."

But the demand for deference assumes the tribunals were carried out with integrity and due regard for the rights of prisoners. Kangaroo courts deserve no deference.

Couple that with the recent reversal for the "enemy combatant" designation, as well as the dropping of charges against other detainees because they have not been designated "alien unlawful enemy combatants" as required, and it appears the whole Combatant Status Review Tribunal process could be nullified. That would require the United States to start over from scratch, proving that each detainee deserves to be detained.

Maybe this time around they'll give the detainees some basic legal protections instead of railroading them.

The administration's handling of Guantanamo has always been a practical and moral disaster; now it's becoming a legal disaster as well. Add another line to this administration's towering record of hubris and incompetence.

Update: It'll be interesting to see if the court's decision is made moot by a Congressional push to shut down Guantanamo. Probably not, as the prisoners wouldn't be released; they'd simply be transferred elsewhere.

civil liberties, Guantanamo, politics, midtopia

Fly like an eagle

Everybody of a certain age has a bald eagle story.

I spent six of the first eight years of my life in Buffalo, N.Y. Growing up there, the bald eagle had almost mythic significance to my young mind because it was a symbol in more ways than one. Not only did it represent our country; it was vanishingly rare. You never saw one except on television. It wasn't like cardinals, for instance, which are the state bird of seven states precisely because they're everywhere. The eagle's very scarcity added to its mythology, as well as providing a potent lesson in environmentalism, conservation and the fragility and interconnectedness of life.

In the summer of 1976 -- another interesting piece of symbolism, being the bicentennial year -- my family moved to Wisconsin, far closer to eagle habitat. And as my brothers and I grew older we started making annual treks to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota.

There we finally caught glimpses of eagles in the wild -- huge birds, black wings outstretched, seemingly headless because their white skulls often blended into the brightness of the sky as they circled far above us. Each encounter was a moment of awe and wonder. Merely seeing the puffy shape of an empty eagle's nest, high up in some ancient dead tree, was enough to provoke excitement. It was almost like spotting a Yeti or a Sasquatch -- finally meeting up with a legendary but seldom seen king of the wild places.

I attended college in Minnesota, in the Twin Cities. But my glimpses of eagles remained confined to the still-frequent trips to the Boundary Waters.

When I was 25, our parents took us on a trip to Alaska. One day we decided to go deep-sea fishing. We arrived at the dock and piled on to the charter boat. As it eased out into the channel leading to the ocean, I saw them: eagles, dozens of them, perched in the trees lining the channel. Juveniles, adults, pairs and singles. They were there for the same reason we were: fish. And they were there in droves.

The fishing was awful, at least for me: I caught one tiny rockfish, which appeared to have been hooked accidentally as it ignored my line. But the fishing expedition turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip, thanks to the eagles.

My career took me around the country, to places like New Jersey and Florida. The latter is another eagle-dense state, but I didn't see many there, since I spent most of my time in urban areas. Several years later, though, I landed a job back in the Twin Cities, and we returned to Minnesota.

We first lived in Minneapolis, which had lots of sparrows but no eagles. But we drove back and forth to Wisconsin a lot to visit my parents, and increasingly spotted eagles circling far above the highway. We thought that was cool, a small sign of the comeback we'd been reading about.

Then we moved to the western suburbs, pursuing a better school district and more affordable housing. We found ourselves surrounded by lakes and wetlands -- and eagles.

Now, despite living in a densely populated suburb, we see eagles every day. A nesting pair lives a couple miles from our house. Another lives somewhere in the opposite direction; I see them overhead in the morning as I drive my daughters to school and day care.

To me and my wife -- raised during a time when eagles were on the brink of extinction -- this is endlessly amazing. We never tire of seeing them, craning our necks or pulling the car over to the side of the road merely to watch.

Our daughters like eagles, too. But they don't understand our fascination, and they likely never will. They see eagles every day. When we go to the Minnesota Zoo -- a not-infrequent occurence -- we always attend the bird show, where they get to see a bald eagle up close.

They like it when I point out wildlife as we drive along. But I've lost all credibility with them as far as eagles are concerned.

"Look up there!" I'll say.

"WHAT? WHAT?" they'll ask excitedly, squirming around in their seats to get a look. "What is it?"

"A bald eagle!"

"Oh." They'll immediately stop squirming and go back to annoying each other.

So I'm very happy that the bald eagle is officially back from the brink -- removed yesterday from the federal government's list of threatened species. And I'm glad that they plan to continue managing the eagle population so that it doesn't end up back on the list -- even though that appears to means that the Minnesota man whose lawsuit prompted the action still won't be able to develop his eagle-infested property despite winning the suit.

But I'm sad that my daughters will never share our sense of wonder at their existence. They'll grow up bemused by their parents' eagle fixation, never quite understanding the experience that underlies it.

Still, it's a good problem to have. Welcome back, bald eagle. May you soar for many years more.

conservation, bald eagle, politics, midtopia

Former Alabama governor sentenced

Don Siegelman, a Democrat who was governor of Alabama from 1999 to 2003, was sentenced to seven years in prison and $230,000 in fines for taking bribes during his governorship.

If I were so inclined, I could take a cue from Republican defenders of Lewis Libby and Tom DeLay and decry the "political motivation" behind Siegelman's prosecution, given revelations of a potential Karl Rove connection, other Republican connections to his case, prosecution attempts to have his sentence calculated based on the charges on which he was acquitted, and the fact that a judge entirely threw out -- with prejudice -- the prosecution's first attempt to charge Siegelman in 2004. Or that when a Republican governor, Guy Hunt, was convicted of pocketing $200,000 in 1992, the state (indeed, the same prosecutor) sought probation, not jail time.

But I won't, because the motivation of the prosecution doesn't matter as much as the facts of the case and the conviction that resulted. The man took bribes; he deserves to go down. The fact that someone else in a similar situation got off lightly is irrelevant.

Partisans might take a lesson from that.

Hall of Shame has been updated.

Siegelman, politics, midtopia

Can Iraq meet its benchmarks?

The AP's Robert Reid has an interesting take on the push for benchmarks for the Iraqi government.

Iraqis are making some progress toward enacting legislative "benchmarks" the United States demands — but probably not fast enough to satisfy critics of Iraq's political impasse. The bigger question: Would any laws passed by a parliament at each others' throats really lead to true unity?

He notes that previous American-urged measures did little to stem violence, for one main reason: "Laws enacted by Iraqi officials holed up in the Green Zone have limited impact in a country whose institutions have all but collapsed."

He also notes that many of the current measures are American-supplied efforts to fix previous American-supplied laws.

The encouraging thing is that the Iraqi Parliament is working through the issues. The discouraging thing is that even if they meet the benchmarks it may not matter.

Reid's takeaway point is that we should recognize that Iraq is already a failed state, and fixing it will take years.

I find myself sympathetic to the analysis while disputing the conclusion, particularly as it bears on American policy.

The purpose of the benchmarks, for instance, isn't to pass some sort of "magic bullet" legislation that will fix the myriad problems facing the country. It's simply a demand that the Iraqi government stop stalling and show some seriousness about actually governing, demonstrating the will to address some of the biggest problems. I'm not expecting miracles; I just want them to start getting off their duffs.

Second, if Iraq has already failed in three short years under our watch -- under conditions far more favorable than what prevails today -- what makes him think that three or six or ten more years will help?

Third, if the Iraqi government cannot exercise meaningful control over its own institutions, then our entire strategy -- which is premised on the Iraqis holding (and effectively governing) the territory we clear of insurgents -- is meaningless. Which makes our presence aimless, rudderless and pointless.

Give me solid evidence that the surge is working and even minimal evidence that the Iraqi government is changing its ways, and I'll support us staying past September. But I insist that the Iraqi government be a partner, not a passive bystander or just one more partisan player trying to manipulate things to its own sectarian ends.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Former "gay conversion" officials apologize

Exodus International is the leading practitioner of something known as "conversion therapy" or "reparitive therapy," in which homosexuals are "healed" of their affliction through prayer, religion and counseling, becoming happy, healthy heterosexuals.

There are plenty of excellent reasons to be skeptical of this approach. For one particularly trenchant commentary, consider a Salon writer's account of his session with one such "therapist" -- who, among other things, made false claims about psychology's stance on homosexuality. He also said homosexuality was "highly correlated" with poor hand-eye coordination (you know, bad at sports), childhood loneliness (lonely kids are apparently more likely to masturbate, which somehow leads to being gay), wanting love from a distant father (thwarted filial affection turns into generalized sexual desire) and a whole lot more fluff.

Now, on the eve of Exodus' annual conference in Irvine, Calif., three former top executives at Exodus are apologizing for their actions on behalf of the group. They were sincere, they say, but they eventually came to realize the harm they were causing.

The three are Michael Bussee, a co-founder of Exodus; Jeremy Marks, former president of Exodus' European operations; and Darlene Bogle, founder and former director of an Exodus referral agency in California.

"Some who heard our message were compelled to try to change an integral part of themselves, bringing harm to themselves and their families," the three, including former Exodus co-founder Michael Bussee, said in a joint written statement presented at the news conference. "Although we acted in good faith, we have since witnessed the isolation, shame, fear and loss of faith that this message creates."...

All three said they had known people who had tried to change their sexual orientation with the help of the group but had failed, often becoming depressed or even suicidal as a result.

To his credit, Exodus president Alan Chambers acknowledges problems while defending his organization.

"Exodus is here for people who want an alternative to homosexuality," Chambers said. "There are thousands of people like me who have overcome this. I think there's room for more than one opinion on this subject, and giving people options isn't dangerous."

He added that sexual orientiation "isn't a light switch that you can switch on and off."

Well no kidding.

Things like reparative therapy will always be able to claim some "success" because of two things: the power of the human mind and the fact that sexual orientation is more of a spectrum than a pair of opposites. Let's deal with each in turn.

The adaptability of the human mind is legendary. Given time, people are able to accustom themselves to situations that, looked at from a distance, would seem completely degrading, impossible or entirely undesirable. On the negative side, it's why we have things like genital mutilation, the "untouchable" castes in India and people living in garbage dumps. On the positive side, it's the determination behind incredible feats, like the marathon monks of Japan.

Sexual orientation is a strong force, but given the range of things humans can adapt themselves to, it's not an insurmountable one. If the societal norm were homosexuality and someone really, really, really wanted to fit in, they could probably find a way to accomodate the need to take a same-sex mate.

This becomes even more true if you view sexuality as a spectrum. In that view, most humans have a mix of same- and opposite-sex attractions, with the only difference being the ratio between them. The spectrum probably looks like a lopsided, inverted bell curve, with most of the population clustered at either end of the scale. A practicing heterosexual, for example, might be 99% hetero and 1% homo.

Such people have little inclination and absolutely no need to address the 1% -- indeed, they may be entirely unaware of it. But a certain percentage of the population is more mixed, becoming increasingly bisexual: 80/20, 70/30, 60/40, 50/50 and all the way through to the other end of the scale, where the most strongly identifying homosexuals reside.

If you accept that view, then it's possible to understand how a 60/40 homosexual, for example, might be able to suppress the 60 and express the 40 in order to fit in and gain societal acceptance. Or, with far greater mental effort, a 90/10 homosexual could do the same thing.

But at that point you have to stop and ask: Why? What's the point? Is there any rational basis to the societal bias against homosexuality? And is it either fair, reasonable or humane to push gays to get "fixed"?

Then, too, consider the situation where a group points to a 60/40 who was cured, by way of increasing the pressure on a 90/10 to view himself as both "there's something wrong with me" and "I'm too weak-willed to fix it." When the situations aren't remotely parallel, and all in service of... what?

I'll grant Exodus' Chambers the philosophical point that "choice is good," and if gays think they can become nongay they have every right to make the attempt. But that facile justification ignores the source of the problem -- societal bias. Wanting to "go straight" isn't generally something that comes from within. It's most often a reaction to discrimination imposed from without.

Chambers' argument also ignores the complexity of sexual orientation, and in that area groups like Exodus are complicit. They acknowledge that change is hard, but they don't acknowledge that sexuality isn't binary, and so change is harder for some than for others.

I respect monks that can run marathons every day. I just don't see why that sort of effort is a reasonable thing to ask gays to attempt simply because society is uncomfortable with them. It's a "blame the victim" approach that fails any society-level cost-benefit analysis. On an individual level it may pass such an analysis, but only because of pervasive social bias against gays. And the analysis is warped when people are misled by bad science and false claims perpetrated by groups like Exodus.

sexual+orientation, gay rights, politics, midtopia

Lucy on tour

This is way cool:

The State Department gave final approval Wednesday for one of the world's most famous fossils — the 3.2 million-year-old Lucy skeleton unearthed in Ethiopia in 1974 — to tour the U.S. on exhibit for the first time.

Okay, the actual experience promises to be quite a bit less impressive than the idea -- a partial skeleton arranged in a box. But to actually get a chance to view real 3-million-year-old bones -- instead of a replica -- has my inner science geek excited. The fact that Lucy is thought to be one of the oldest human ancestors yet discovered is simply icing on the cake.

Lucy's first stop is Houston, where she'll stay until April 2008. Then it's on to other cities, including Washington, New York, Denver and Chicago. We've been meaning to take a family vacation to Chicago anyway, and if that's the closest Lucy comes to Minnesota it provides a good excuse to go.

LUCY RESOURCES
1. A primer on Lucy from Arizona State University. The info is pretty good, even if the Web designer was unable to spell "institute."

2. A fairly extensive review from Washington State University of what is known about her species, Australopithicus afarensis.

3. A Scientific American piece on "Lucy's baby," (a baby A. afarenis), that includes a discussion of some of the questions and controversies surrounding Lucy and her species.

Lucy, science, politics, midtopia

Okay, joke's over

Fun is fun, and it's mighty tempting to keep heaping scorn on Dick Cheney for his ill-considered "not part of the executive branch" claim.

But now Rahm Emanuel is actually wasting significant floor time in the House on it, with an amendment to defund the VP's office and residence.

Some of the quotes in the story are pretty funny, particularly the ones from the Republicans. They seem intended to ridicule the amendment, except they come off sounding like they're in on the joke. But it's still a waste of time, especially considering that Cheney's lawyers have now essentially backed off from the claim.

It wasn't explicit, like Emanuel wants. They've simply stopped making the claim; they haven't repudiated it. But that's still not worth tying up the House for even a short time.

In cases like this -- highlighting the embarassing behavior of the opposition -- pressing the issue too hard can cause it to boomerang, as your overreaction becomes embarassing in its own right. Everyone's had a good laugh at Cheney's expense, and I hope it continues to be talked about and brought up. But as far as official House business goes, it's time to drop it and move on to more important things.

Update: Emanuel's amendment failed, 217-209.

Rahm Emanuel, Cheney, politics, midtopia

DeLay update

Haven't heard from the Hammer in a while. But we have some progress in his glacially slow legal showdown with prosecutor Ronnie Earle.

Tom DeLay's lawyers prevented prosecutors from reinstating a tossed conspiracy charge, on the simple grounds that the law in question didn't exist when DeLay was accused of violating it. It's a little more complicated than that, but apparently not complicated enough for Texas' highest court to reverse earlier rulings.

Next up: resolving arguments about the validity of the two remaining charges. And then -- assuming the charges hold up -- maybe we can finally set a trial date.

Tom DeLay, politics, midtopia

Meek seeks halt to controversial project

Following up on yesterday's post about Florida Rep. Kendrick Meek and his connection to a questionable Liberty City development, Meek has now called for the project to stop using federal funds until questions are answered.

Meek sent a letter Monday to Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez, demanding that the county stop using federal funds for the troubled Poinciana Biopharmaceutical Park and recoup any money that was misspent....

"The county must act immediately to ensure that any funds improperly expended . . . be recovered," Meek's letter said.

It's good to see a newspaper article prompting such swift action. It remains to be seen, though, what the extent of Meek's involvement in -- and knowledge of -- the project was. The payments to his mom still don't look good.

Kendrick Meek, Florida, corruption, politics, midtopia

Cheney the... okay, he's no environmentalist

In the final installment of the Washington Post's series on Dick Cheney, the story focuses on his environmental record (previous commentary, including links to the rest of the series, is here and here).

We again see the same methodology: operating in secret, reaching down to the lowest levels of the bureaucracy to effect the policies he wants.

In this case, though, it's hard to discern a guiding principle at work other than "in any conflict between the environment and business, business is always right."

Actually, make that "businesses I care about."

The main example in the story focuses on the Klamath River basin in Oregon, which pitted drought-stricken farmers against the survival of two species of fish in the Klamath River, from which the farmers wanted to draw their water. The law and science supported the fish, but Cheney wanted the farmers to get their water. So he challenged the science, and based on a preliminary report, declared there was "no threat" to the fish and got the restrictions removed.

What happened next is classic Cheney. The fish died in droves, causing the collapse of commercial salmon fisheries in Oregon and Northern California. In order to protect a few farmers, Cheney destroyed an even larger -- but less politically valuable -- industry. Typically, his approach later lost in the courts, where an Interior Department fish-management plan was decisively rejected because it would essentially have managed the fish out of existence.

It's especially appalling when you consider that the Endangered Species Act has a provision for overriding environmental concerns when the economic impact is judged to be too large. Or that the farmers could have been helped out more cheaply and less controversially simply by giving them drought relief checks so they didn't need to farm.

By the way, you have to love this paragraph. It involves Robert Smith, a former Republican congressman who was a lobbyist for the Klamath farmers.

Smith had served with Cheney on the House Interior Committee in the 1980s, and the former congressman said he turned to the vice president because he knew him as a man of the West who didn't take kindly to federal bureaucrats meddling with private use of public land.

Yep, the Western spirit of rugged individualism means the federal government shouldn't regulate the private use of public land. Let's not even get into the fact that the land is usually leased at far below market rates, providing a government subsidy to the lucky recipients.

Maybe, if people are so ruggedly individualistic that they don't want federal oversight, they should buy their own land and stop sponging off the government.

The second major example involved the administration's efforts to weaken pollution-control rules for power plants, under the Orwellian-named "Clear Skies Initiative." The administration pushed through the revised rules -- drawing searing public criticism, the resignation of EPA chief Christie Whitman and, of course, eventual legal defeat.

A federal appeals court has since found that the rule change violated the Clean Air Act. In their ruling, the judges said that the administration had redefined the law in a way that could be valid "only in a Humpty-Dumpty world."

Jonah Goldberg, a columnist I usually have little respect for, actually sums it up perfectly this time:

Seemingly countless sources inside the Bush administration tell the Post that Cheney has a contempt for bureaucratic and legislative consensus-building that rivals his contempt for cultivating public support through the media. As a result, he often succeeds in bulldozing policies -- on enemy interrogations, etc. -- all the way to the president's desk. But he's isolated when it comes time to defend these policies in Congress and the public.

The biggest question now is one I asked in earlier installments. There's no doubt that Cheney is an effective bureaucratic combatant, and also effective at getting things done. In sane hands, those are admirable traits. But given the often-disastrous outcome of his meddling, why does Bush still listen to him?

I'm sure it's useful to have Cheney as a lightning rod, deflecting at least some criticism away from Bush. But that only goes so far, because the reason Cheney is able to do what he does is that Bush lets him. Further, you'd think the adverse practical effects of his approach would outweigh the convenience of having someone to take the blame. Especially when Bush already has Karl Rove for that.

The whole series also raises the question of whether Bush is/was aware of the extent to which Cheney manipulated the bureaucracy and constrained the choices that were eventually presented to the president. It's one thing to have a trusted advisor; it's another for that advisor to make sure that opposing views are rarely heard or weakly presented. Echo chambers do not produce good policy.

All in all, a fascinating, deeply reported series by the Post. This is investigative, explanatory journalism at its best, offering an authoritative inside look at the operations of government, a feat that's all the more impressive given the secretiveness of its subject.

environment, Cheney, politics, midtopia

Cheney's office responds to critics

Dismissively.

“Constitutional issues in government are generally best left for discussion when unavoidable disputes arise in a specific context instead of in theoretical discussions,” Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington, said in a letter to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).

Meanwhile -- it sounds like Henry Waxman is just getting started, outlining a whole series of reported security violations in the White House. Most of them appear aimed more at embarassing the president than correcting substantive problems, inasmuch as the rules that are said to be violated are rules that the president could change at will. And the reference to Karl Rove is just silly. That said, while the president can do stupid things with classified documents, that does not mean he should. If the White House information security operation is as sloppy as Waxman alleges, Bush deserves embarassment.

Update: The Washington Post has a more detailed piece on the response, noting that the argument being advanced by Addington doesn't appear to be supported by the language of the EO, and has thus been specifically rejected by the National Archives office charged with enforcing the EO. That said, the letter may be a signal that the VP's office won't try to push the "not part of the executive branch" defense.

Too bad. Apparently somebody with a lump of sense got ahold of Cheney's lawyers.

Cheney, politics, midtopia

Good reads

A roundup of links worth clicking on:

1. A New York Times story on an Army platoon dealing with a Baquba neighborhood that is one big booby trap. They get through without a scratch.

2. The former chief judge of the FISA court, Royce C. Lambeth, reveals some details of the court's workings. His anecdotes are interesting, and provide yet another rebuke to the White House's contention that the court functions too slowly to combat modern terrorists.

3. The CIA continues to release once-secret documents detailing their most controversial activities from 1959 to the mid-1970s, including assassination plots and domestic surveillance. They serve as a reminder of why civil liberties and governmental openness are such crucial foundations of democracy. You can dig through the documents themselves at the CIA's Freedom of Information page.

4. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank writes a somewhat sardonic column about everything Cheney.

5. A few Democrats, going a bridge too far, aren't satisfied with leaving Iraq; they want us out of Afghanistan, too. They're wrong. Afghanistan has its problems, and the conflict is fueled by the Taliban safe haven in Pakistan. But our invasion was justified, the government legitimate, the enemy beatable, and we're not stuck in the middle of an ethnic and regional cauldron. As well, the troop demands and casualty rates are much lower, so our presence there is far more sustainable. And most importantly, Afghanistan is far more likely than Iraq to return to being a terror haven if we withdraw.


FISA, Cheney, CIA, Iraq, Afghanistan, politics, midtopia

Surge update: bad news edition

The surge is still proceeding fairly well, but it's running into a major problem that has implications far beyond the success of the current operation.

The Iraqi forces, which have been sidelined for much of the actual fighting, are still not ready for their most basic task: holding the territory once U.S. troops clear it of insurgents.

Several senior American officers have warned in recent days that Iraqi soldiers and police are still incapable of maintaining security on their own in the most crucial areas, including Baghdad and the recently reclaimed districts around Baqouba to the north.

It's a pattern that has emerged elsewhere: provinces are turned over to the Iraqi military with great fanfare -- and within months U.S. or British troops have to return because the Iraqi troops aren't up to the job or are actively making it worse.

The problem is one that I've discussed before, and it affects both the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police (scroll down a bit to find the relevant part, or go here to read the New York Times story the post is based on).

Although some Iraqi units appear competent, U.S. officials privately complain that many others still lack ammunition, weapons and an adequate supply network to operate on their own. Leadership in many units is weak, and the force has yet to develop the professional spirit to cope with adversity.... [There are] high rates of absenteeism in the Iraqi military — including desertions, vacations and AWOLS — which Dempsey said average about 25 percent among Iraqi units at any given time.

Iraqi troops manning checkpoints often wave through cars carrying women or children without proper searches, U.S. troops complain. Some residents of a contested area south of Baghdad say Iraqi police and soldiers turn a blind eye to insurgents as long as they don't attack their checkpoints.

It's an open question whether the mostly Shiite military will ever be able to maintain order in Sunni areas. The obvious solution -- patrol those areas with Sunni units -- has its own risks, notably what happens when those units are shot through with insurgent sympathizers.

If this problem doesn't get straightened out soon, it won't matter how well our part of the surge goes. In the end, the performance of Iraqi forces will decide the fate of our misadventure in Iraq.

Which is why more and more Republicans are coming out in opposition to the war -- a harbinger of things to come this fall, when the next funding bill comes up for debate. Today it was two GOP Senators -- Richard Lugar and George Voinovich -- that jumped ship.

"We must not abandon our mission, but we must begin a transition where the Iraqi government and its neighbors play a larger role in stabilizing Iraq," Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, wrote in a letter to Bush....

"The longer we delay the planning for a redeployment, the less likely it is to be successful," said Lugar, who plans to meet later this week with Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security adviser.

It remains to be seen whether either would actually vote to end the war if it came to that. But the trend line is clear. If America decides to bring the troops home, it will be a bipartisan effort.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Fun with interns

Today I got an e-mail from Kristen, an intern at MSNBC. Based solely on the fact that I have posted about Ann Coulter in the past, she wanted to alert me to upcoming appearances by the banshee on her network.

I realize that semi-personalized spam is what PR interns are for, so I do not blame Kristen for the failings of her employer. However, I felt I needed to respond rather than simply ignore the message. Perhaps a young mind could be reached while it was not yet too late.

Here's what I wrote.

Kristen,

Thanks for the note. Unfortunately, I consider Ann Coulter a vile slug of a human being, and I fail to understand why your network persists in giving national exposure to such a vituperative and shallow worm. So I won't be helping you publicize your latest bit of pandering.

If you were to announce that Coulter would no longer be appearing on your shows.... now *that* I would help publicize. Keep me in mind if your employer ever reaches that level of intellectual credibility.

Sean

I somehow doubt the message will find its way to her higher-ups.

media, Coulter, politics, midtopia

Democratic corruption in Miami

The Miami Herald has written an expose of fraud and corruption in the poor neighborhood known as Liberty City, and tangled up in the center of it is three-term Democratic Congressman Kendrick Meek.

While Meek was seeking federal funds for a massive development project, the developer was diverting money for personal use and giving Meek's mom -- former Congresswoman Carrie Meek -- $40,000 and a car as payment for consulting services related to the project.

Some details to make you pull your hair out:

• After the county spent millions preparing one of its last open stretches of public land for development, the trust gave Stackhouse's company control over half of it for 75 years -- then allowed him to use the land as collateral for a $4.2 million private loan while paying just $1,500 a month in rent.

• A year later, the trust provided Stackhouse's company with a $3 million interest-free county loan despite the developer's financial record, which is marred by foreclosures, liens, and a bankruptcy totaling more than $20 million.

• Once he had access to the county's money, Stackhouse diverted more than $500,000 from the project by submitting more than 40 bills to the trust that had already been paid with the private loan, including construction expenses, architectural fees and property taxes.

In one case, he turned in the same $26,000 invoice three times -- collecting a total of $78,000 from the trust.

• Stackhouse pitched the project to local leaders by claiming multinational companies and world-class universities would lease thousands of square feet and employ hundreds of people.

But most of the tenants touted by Stackhouse told The Miami Herald they have no plans to lease space at the park. Two of the companies said they had no knowledge of the project at all.

• In fact, the only biotech firm committed to moving into the park is a Massachusetts company called MediVector, which Stackhouse said will serve as the anchor tenant, creating 150 biotech jobs while leasing thousands of square feet to test and manufacture drugs.

But MediVector is little more than a small consulting firm run by one of Stackhouse's longtime business partners from a 300-square-foot office in Cambridge.

It's clear the developer duped a lot of people, and county officials and both Meeks are claiming they are among the victims. Kendrick Meek, for example, says he had no idea his mom was being paid, and said she never lobbied him about the project.

That stretches credibility. But even if you believe them, then you're talking about extremely poor oversight and incredibly bad financial judgement by county officials, a failure by Meek to do even minimal due diligence, and a failure by his mom -- who should have known better -- to disclose an obvious conflict of interest.

Here's hoping this investigation gets more national attention. Meanwhile, Meek is a prospective candidate for the Hall of Shame.

(h/t: Debate Link)

corruption, politics, midtopia