DeLay PAC fined, shut down

But I'm sure it's all just a misunderstanding.

The political action committee used as a vehicle to power in Congress by Representative Tom DeLay has agreed to pay $115,000 in fines for violations of federal campaign rules and will close its doors permanently, the Federal Election Commission said Thursday.

According to an agreement with the commission, Mr. DeLay’s committee, Americans for a Republican Majority, agreed to the fines to settle accusations that it had failed to report more than $322,000 in debts and other obligations to its vendors and had misrepresented more than $240,000 in other financial activity in 2001 and 2002.

The PAC was going to close anyway, thanks to DeLay's retirement. But the fine is substantial, as is the detailing of wrongdoing. And it illustrates DeLay's habit of skating close to -- and, it appears, over -- the edge of legality.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

FEC, ethics, DeLay, politics, midtopia

Centrist Democrats convene

The Democratic Leadership Council, bastion of Clintonism, is meeting this weekend in Denver.

The Denver gathering is scheduled to hear from the putative Democratic frontrunner for 2008, Senator Clinton, as well as other possible contenders such as Senator Bayh of Indiana, Governor Vilsack of Iowa, and Governor Richardson of New Mexico.

Their main conflict is not with Republicans but with the netroots left epitomized by Howard Dean and DailyKos.

The tension dates back to the last presidential race when council officials threw cold water on the populist, Webdriven campaign of Howard Dean. Dr. Dean, who is now chairman of the Democratic National Committee, derided the council as the "Republican wing of the Democratic Party." A sharp-tongued aide for a Dean rival told the New Republic that the Vermont governor's Internet-savvy backers resembled the grotesque denizens of the "bar scene from ‘Star Wars.'"

The conflict between the two camps is so intense that when Mrs. Clinton appeared before the council last year and called for a halt to the internecine fighting, bloggers unleashed attacks on her that are still reverberating. A newspaper report in May that Mrs. Clinton hoped to create a unified Democratic agenda under the council's aegis received two reactions from a leading liberal blogger, Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos.com, "LOL," shorthand for "laugh out loud," and "DOA," meaning "dead on arrival."

I'm of a couple of minds about this.

I think the Democrats need to have a knock-down, drag-out battle for the soul of the party. But they also need to be a big-tent party. That makes defining the party's "soul", much less fighting for it, a difficult task. In an ideal world, the party would define a few broad principles and let each individual candidate decide on specific policy positions. The trouble is that such a necessarily vague appeal will be inherently less persuasive than more ideological rhetoric. So the practical often loses out to the seductive.

Then there's the practical problem of reconciling certain policies with a big-tent approach:

Mr. Sirota scoffed at the notion that, with Mrs. Clinton's prodding, the DLC can lead a "big tent" coalition. "You can't put the steelworkers, working class people, in the same tent with an organization that continues to push trade policies that sell out workers," he said. "I don't care how big a tent you have. You just can't do it."

That's another reason to stick to broad principles on the party level while working with individual candidates to craft policy. All in all, though, I like the philosophy behind the DLC -- an effort to confront the entrenched interests of the old Democratic Party. I like much of what the DLC advocates. I do wonder on occasion if they have been co-opted by the Clintonistas, but as long as they stand by their stated principles, I'm happy.

Which is good, because while I like Howard Dean, I think some of the policies he embraced in 2004 were ill-advised. And the Kossacks can be just plain nuts. I find them more palatable than fire-breathing conservatives, if only because they're generally less bloodthirsty. But I have no interest in seeing them become the dominant force within one of the major parties.

So I wish the DLC well. If they can establish firm control of the party while giving the netroots faction a place to express itself within the party, it would bode well for moderates -- and Democrats -- in the upcoming elections.

DLC, politics, midtopia

War backers finally begin confronting reality

As civilian deaths continue to mount in Iraq, even GOP lawmakers are moderating their rhetoric about the war.

Rank-and file Republicans who once adamantly backed the administration on the war are moving to a two-stage new message, according to some lawmakers. First, Republicans are making it clear to constituents they do not agree with every decision the president has made on Iraq. Then they boil the argument down to two choices: staying and fighting or conceding defeat to a vicious enemy.

The shift is subtle, but Republican lawmakers acknowledge that it is no longer tenable to say the news media are ignoring the good news in Iraq and painting an unfair picture of the war. In the first half of this year, 4,338 Iraqi civilians died violent deaths, according to a new report by the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq. Last month alone, 3,149 civilians were killed -- an average of more than 100 a day.

Even Rep. Gil Gutknecht, once a strong supporter of the war, is having doubts.

Congressman Gil Gutknecht found the situation in Iraq more bleak than he anticipated during a weekend visit to the war zone, and said a partial withdrawal of some American troops might be wise.

Gutknecht, a strong supporter of the war since it began in March of 2003, told reporters in a telephone conference call Tuesday that American forces appear to have no operational control of much of Baghdad.

“The condition there is worse than I expected,” he said. “... I have to be perfectly candid: Baghdad is a serious problem.”

Gutknecht went on to say that “Baghdad is worse today than it was three years ago."

Gutknecht spent most of his time inside the Green Zone. On the one hand, you might attempt to dismiss his observations because he didn't actually get out into the field to see things for himself. On the other hand, if things are noticeably bad even in the most heavily fortified part of Iraq, imagine how bad it is outside the wall.

The man who last month said "Now is not the time to get wobbly" now says "I guess I didn't understand the situation." He now supports a partial troop withdrawal to make it clear to Iraqis that they need to step up and take responsibility for their own security.

That security continues to deteriorate despite the fact that we have trained nearly 300,000 Iraqi troops. That grim fact suggests our entire strategy -- to "stand down as they stand up" -- may be flawed, especially because elements of the Shiite-dominated armed forces are thought to be associated with the militias and death squads that are helping foment sectarian violence.

Eyewitnesses at some scenes of sectarian cleansing in Sunni areas report that gunmen travel in government vehicles. Others note that attackers travel from one neighborhood to another through police checkpoints, apparently unchallenged.

Some U.S. officials acknowledge privately that their hopes that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will be able to rein in Shiite militias and persuade Sunni insurgents to negotiate may be misplaced. Many of the government's leaders, they note, are themselves linked to Shiite or Kurdish militias.

"I keep hope up -- it's misguided perhaps -- that cooler heads will prevail," said a U.S. defense official in Iraq, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "I have to believe that; otherwise all of this has been a tremendous, tremendous fiasco."

Iraq has turned into the tar baby that war opponents long worried it would. War supporters are now reduced to saying that even if we can't go forward, we can't go back -- all we can do is sit there and bleed and hope for the best.

That's not a strategy. A strategy would involve sending in enough troops to establish a certain minimal level of security. That would provide the breathing space to rebuild infrastructure and governmental authority. We've never had enough troops to do the job right, and in that sense our current predicament was entirely predictable.

Achieving our stated objective means deploying enough troops and enough rebuilding aid to secure a strategically significant portion of the country -- including Baghdad. If we are unwilling or unable to do that-- and there has long been a disconnect between our rhetoric in Iraq and the resources we have committed to the job -- then we should admit that our objective is unachievable at acceptable cost and withdraw. Half measures lead to quagmires, and those serve nobody.

Finding sufficient troops may involve going hat in hand to various countries we have been bad-mouthing up until now. It may involve unwelcome exercises in humility and admission of errors. It may involve major drawdowns of U.S. troop levels elsewhere in the world. It may involve even more deployments of reserve units, and more frequent deployments of active-duty ones. But those are the choices facing us. Either get serious about winning, or leave. Anything else is a disservice to both Americans and Iraqis.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Sheik condemns Hezbollah

In an illustration of just how many divides there are in the Mideast, a prominent Saudi Arabian cleric has issued a fatwah against Hezbollah.

This isn't what one might hope: a moderate cleric taking a stand against terrorism or Islamic extremism. The cleric in question is a Sunni Wahhabi Arab fundamentalist -- a group that is generally part of the problem rather than the solution when it comes to Islamic terrorism.

No, this is an example of a Sunni Arab deciding that Shiite Persians are worse than Israeli Jews in this particular instance.

As Israel and Hezbollah turn back the clock in Lebanon, simply listing the divides provides an idea of what the region is up against:

1. Islam/Judaism and Islam/Christianity.

2. Within Islam, Sunni/Shiite.

3. Within those two, fundamentalist sects like Wahhabism and Salafism that often consider "heretic" Muslims to be a bigger problem than non-Muslims.

4. Arabs and Iranians (Persians) both dislike Israel, but they also dislike each other. And everyone dislikes the Kurds. And never mind the dozens of other religious and ethnic splinters like the Maronite Christians and Druze in Lebanon.

5. Tribal divides within ethnic groups.

6. The usual political divides driven by regional or economic interests.

Given that level of parsing, I would venture to say that there is very little one can do in the Middle East that won't end up drawing opposition from a majority of the region's population; their interests are simply too atomized.

When there are a limited number of players and compelling mutual interest, much can be achieved -- witness the Egypt-Israeli peace accords. But as long as the region remains as divided as it is, progress will come in small steps. And it doesn't take much to backslide into a past that nobody seems to want but few have the influence and willpower to avoid.

Lebanon, Hezbollah, Israel, politics, midtopia

Off again

I'm going to be away for the next several days, taking the kids to see the grandparents. I might get in occasional posts while I'm gone, but things won't pick up again until Thursday. See you then!

politics, midtopia

Specter FISA bill looks weak

The devil is indeed in the details.

From a Washington Post editorial:

In an effort to win votes, Mr. Specter has turned the bill from a flawed accountability measure into one that rewrites the rules of domestic surveillance and gives the administration an all but blank check to spy.

The most dangerous provision of the proposal would effectively repeal the current law's requirement that all domestic wiretapping take place under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Mr. Specter's bill would amend it to read: "Nothing in this Act shall be construed to limit the constitutional authority of the President to gather foreign intelligence information or monitor the activities and communications of any person reasonably believed to be associated with a foreign enemy of the United States." The effect would be to withdraw Congress's insistence on regulating domestic spying -- and it would thereby help legitimize whatever the administration might be doing.

The bill also would allow the administration to seek permission from the FISA court system for "an electronic surveillance program," that is, surveillance of large numbers of people who aren't individually named in a warrant. Currently, the court can authorize only individual wiretaps and searches in the cases of people against whom the government presents evidence of terrorist or espionage ties. The bill, however, seems to authorize the administration to ask for a warrant for all kinds of "programs" without showing evidence against any individual, instead showing that the program is lawful and targeted at foreign intelligence collection.

Increasingly this looks like a really bad piece of law.

Why is it that Congress always get rolled by the White House in negotiations?

Bush, Specter, terrorism, NSA, FISA, politics, midtopia

Biting the hand that feeds you

South Korea, which has generally opposed harsh methods to deal with North Korea, yesterday cut off humanitarian aid to its isolated neighbor.

South Korea on Thursday suspended humanitarian aid to North Korea until it agrees to return to international nuclear-disarmament talks.

The action infuriated visiting North Korean officials, who immediately cut off high-level talks in South Korea and returned home.

The decision to postpone consideration of a North Korean request for 500,000 tons of rice marked the South's first punitive action against its impoverished communist neighbor since it defied the international community and test-fired seven missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2, on July 4.

On the one hand it's called "humanitarian aid" for a reason, and shouldn't normally be subject to the vicissitudes of politics.

On the other hand, maybe the North shouldn't be antagonizing the countries that it relies on for food.

What's amazing to me is that North Korea still talks about juche.

Korea, politics, midtopia

Wiretapping issue goes to FISA

A busy day today for the "Is it constitutional?" division of Midtopia.

Besides the Padilla case popping back up, President Bush has agreed to allow the FISA court to review the legality of his warrantless eavesdropping program.

Mr. Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who has sharply questioned the propriety of the program since it was disclosed several months ago, said the White House had agreed to a bill that provides for the highly secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to “consider the program as a whole and to make a decision on it.”

Sounds good, but the devil is in the details. For instance:

Mr. Specter said the bill would give the administration “greater flexibility” in applying for emergency eavesdropping orders and would recognize changes in technology, like cellphones, with more specific language on “roving wiretaps.” Ms. Perino agreed with the senator’s assessment, saying that the bill would modernize regulations “to meet the threats we face from an enemy who recognizes no bounds, kills with abandon, hides and masquerades as it plans attacks against us.”

"greater flexibility" could mean a lot of things. I'm all for a reasonable set of rules for determining when a warrant is needed and when it's not. But I hope Specter didn't give away the store -- especially because I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why Bush had to bypass FISA in the first place.

For instance, Specter told committee members that the bill would require government investigators to explain a wiretap's terrorism connection. That's a much looser standard of proof than FISA requires -- loose enough that oversight might prove meaningless.

The bill still has to pass the Senate and be signed by Bush. But while that may take time, it's presumably not a big problem.

We may never know if this fixes the problem or not. Because FISA court decisions are (necessarily) secret, and Specter wouldn't say whether the court would announce the results of its review.

To refresh your memory, here are a couple of summary posts I wrote back when this first came to light:

Eavesdropping primer
Eavesdropping deductions

Specter, Bush, eavesdropping, NSA, FISA, civil liberties, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Padilla gets access to classified evidence

Jose Padilla, the alleged "dirty bomber" who was held for three years as an "enemy combatant", has been given permission to personally view classified documents so he can plan a defense in his upcoming trial.

I was all set to write an interesting post about the tension between security and defendant rights in terrorism cases, until I read this:

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke's order issued July 5 allows Padilla to view 32 Defense Department documents that summarize statements Padilla made during his years in military custody. He also can examine 57 videotapes of interrogations he underwent during that same period.

That's right: the government classified summaries and videotapes of Padilla's statements and interrogations, and then used that classification to attempt to deny him access to those documents.

Uh, guys? He was there.

Am I missing something? Because this sure looks like an example of excessive government secrecy to me.

security, terrorism, Padilla, politics, midtopia

Britain considers ban on choosing baby's sex

The British health minister, Caroline Flint, included the idea among others proposed in a review of health regulations.

Health Minister Caroline Flint told MPs she was minded to introduce a "clear and specific ban" on the use of new techniques to choose one gender of baby.

Allowing parents to pick sex for reasons such as "balancing" the make-up of their family could be the start of a "slippery slope" to designer babies, she warned.

There are plenty of other things in the article that could spark a discussion, but for the moment let's focus on this.

She's talking about fertility clinics. What she proposes outlawing is any method of screening eggs or sperm for desired characteristics -- gender, hair color, whatever -- before implantation.

My question is: why? Why is this the government's business? Why should anyone care? If they're only going to implant a subset of the eggs anyway, why shouldn't they be able to pick which eggs?

And if they use a technique such as sperm washing, which occurs prior to fertilization, there's even less reason for anyone to care.

I can see one long-term concern. By allowing us to select for specific traits we could end up harming our species' genetic diversity, become something of a monoculture genetically speaking. Which could have large ramifications down the road, from susceptibility to disease to the ability of our species to survive calamities. But that would require mass selection for a small number of traits. So the concern is more theoretical than real.

Thoughts?

ethics, bioethics, reproduction, health, politics, midtopia

GAO: Iraq strategy muddled

The General Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, released a report yesterday assessing the U.S. strategy in Iraq. You can read the abstract online, and download the full report in pdf format.

Their conclusion: it's a mess, and we're still following a plan based on assumptions that haven't been true for awhile: that security would be established, for instance, and that the international community and Iraq itself would pick up a bigger share of the costs.

They give the administration credit for clearly laying out the national interest and the goals. Where the administration falls short -- as it has in so many other things -- is execution.

I'm still reading through the main report. Some key findings, as far as I'm concerned:

1. Prior to fall 2005, our effort in Iraq lacked a clear, integrated strategy. Specifically:

(1) no unified strategic plan existed that effectively integrated U.S. government political, military, and economic efforts; (2) multiple plans in Iraq and Washington have resulted in competing priorities and funding levels not proportional to the needs of overall mission objectives; (3) focused leadership and clear roles are lacking among State, DOD, and other agencies in the field and in Washington, D.C.; and (4) a more realistic assessment of the capacity limitations of Iraqi central and local government is needed.

Those findings led to the creation of the current plan, which is the subject of the new report. The GAO calls the new plan, known loosely as the NSVI, an improvement but still flawed.

In all, the administration gets terrible marks on identifying costs (and how those costs will be met), risks (and how those risks will be addressed) and integration, as well as the data-gathering needed to determine if the plan is working.

The report also illustrates how unrealistic the administration's early assessments were. The number of troops deemed necessary to achieve security has grown from 162,000 in 2003 to 326,000 in 2005 -- and still the insurgency remains, in the GAO's words, "strong and resilient."

Me, I'm stunned that we had not yet developed a coherent plan more than two years after invading Iraq. It seems like part and parcel of the whole Iraq adventure -- a carefully planned invasion, followed by "and then we fix things." From Jay Garner to the CPA to the continued security problems, we appear to be trying to emulate the British and simply "muddle through."

Three years in, that's simply not good enough.

GAO, terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

One worry addressed

Answering one of my worries about the sudden embrace of the Geneva Conventions by the Bush administration, there's some good news.

But first, some context.

The detainees are not being afforded the full protection that a uniformed soldier would get from the Conventions. What they do get is Article 3, which mandates certain minimum standards that must be applied to everyone, not just signatories or regular soldiers. Detainees shall:

in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever:

* violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
* taking of hostages;
* outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
* the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

That's it. The last two items are the most important, prohibiting most forms of torture and speaking to the potential legality of Bush's proposed tribunals.

So with that caveat, we have the following details from the story:

President George W. Bush declared in 2002 that Article 3 did not apply to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, but ordered that they be treated humanely "subject to military necessity."

It turned out that "military necessity" left the door open for some of the interrogation techniques observed by FBI agents. Which really spells out the difference between voluntarily following the Conventions and being required to follow them.

The Supreme Court ruling overrides that declaration. But there was some ambiguity, as I noted in my initial post on the ruling -- notably, whether this would apply to prisoners in nonmilitary facilities.

It does.

The Bush administration said all detainees in its war on terrorism are covered by Article 3, without making any distinction between those in military custody and those in custody of agencies such as the
CIA.

Good. Next step: establishing a fair and reasonably transparent method for detainees to challenge their detention, and coming up with a system for determining how long each will be held. In that way we can move them out of the deservedly embarrassing legal limbo they've been living in and back under the rule of law.

geneva convention, civil liberties, Bush, Gitmo, Guantanamo, terrorism, politics, midtopia

An ongoing car crash

The top staffers for Rep. Katherine Harris' troubled Senate campaign will resign this week, continuing an ongoing exodus of help from the campaign.

The departing staff includes Glen Hodas, Harris's campaign manager, her spokesperson, Chris Ingram, and Pat Thomas, her field director. The status of Harris's chief fundraiser, Erin Delullo, is not clear.

Harris, the former Florida Secretary of State who helped put Florida in the Bush column, has been in trouble for a while, exhibiting increasingly bizarre behavior. She trails her opponent, incumbent Bill Nelson, by a mile.

One person involved in the campaign said there was no single precipitating factor. "She's just very difficult to work with. It's all the same stuff. The more than we put her out there, the more she shot herself in the foot," this person said.

This slate of staff lasted just three and a half months; in April, Harris lost her campaign manager, Jamie Miller, and strategist Ed Rollins. Both have since become outspoken critics of Harris's.

As of this post only Ingram, the communication's director, had officially quit. We'll see if the rest of the story proves true in the coming week.

Update: Still no official word, but a second report that Five staffers did, indeed, leave.

Florida, Harris, politics, midtopia

Iran punishment?

As Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas go at it hammer-and-tongs next door, Hezbollah's main backer, Iran, is being hauled back before the U.N. Security Council because it has refused to respond to a European offer over its nuclear program.

"The Iranians have given no indication at all that they are ready to engage seriously on the substance of our proposals," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said on behalf the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China, the five permanent Security Council members, plus Germany and the
European Union.

Don't expect quick action:

Any real punishment or coercion at the Security Council is a long way off, but the group said it will seek an initial resolution requiring Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment. Debate could begin as soon as next week.

If Iran does not comply, the group said it would then seek harsher action. The group's short statement did not give any specifics, but it cited a section of the world body's charter that could open the door to economic or other sanctions.

Though Russia and China agreed to bring the matter back before the Council, they oppose strong measures against Iran. Still its heartening to see them at least this much on board with the rest of the Council. They could have chosen to let Iran buy a lot more time.

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

A victory for the American Way

Superman might not be willing to say it for fear of alienating overseas audiences (the market at work, by the way), but I will.

Bowing to the inevitable, the Bush administration today said all detainees at military facilities, including Guantanamo and other overseas locations, are entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions.

The Bush administration, called to account by Congress after the Supreme Court blocked military tribunals, said Tuesday all detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in U.S. military custody everywhere are entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the policy, outlined in a new Defense Department memo, reflects the recent 5-3 Supreme Court decision blocking military tribunals set up by
President Bush. That decision struck down the tribunals because they did not obey international law and had not been authorized by Congress.

This is a victory for the true American Way: the one that values civil liberties and individual freedom, and doesn't abandon our principles the instant we feel that our security is threatened. It's a brave America, one that has the courage to live in a free and open society, even when we think we might be physically safer in a more closed and paranoid society.

This doesn't make everything okay overnight. For one thing, this refers to military facilities, leaving open the possibility -- nay, likelihood -- that it will not be applied to CIA facilities.

And it will take time to heal the damage done to our cause, damage that could have been avoided if we had simply declared this policy from the beginning.

But at least we're here.

How this plays out in practice could become complex. If detainees are covered by Geneva, that implies they are prisoners of war, without recourse to civilian courts. That's fine, as long as the prisoners have the right to challenge their combatant status. And as I've argued before, we really need to start defining which "war" they are being held in, because the generic "war on terror" will go on for a long time and span multiple conflicts. We should recognize the injustice of holding a Taliban foot soldier long after any recognizable conflict in Afghanistan has ended, simply because we're still fighting our "war on terror" in Iraq or Iran or Yemen or wherever.

If they are terrorists, they are criminals and should be charged as such. If they are soldiers, they are POWs, and deserve a clear and precise definition of just which war they can be held until the end of.

Snow gets the unenviable job of trying to cover his bosses' backsides:

"It's not really a reversal of policy," Snow asserted, calling the Supreme Court decision "complex."

Yuh-huh. I understand what he means -- he's saying that we've generally been following the Conventions even while claiming we didn't have to. But "generally following" is far different from being required to faithfully obey the whole thing. It's a reversal of policy, even if the practical effect on the ground is less than a 180-degree turn.

The argument is not over. The Senate began hearings today on the Gitmo military tribunals, and the administration still wants legislation making them legal. But there are also upcoming inquiries into our strategy in Iraq and the various secret surveillance programs that have come to light in recent months. All in all it looks like we're finally going to get a much-needed conversation on just how we wish to fight terror. If you have any interest in the outcome at all, let your elected representatives know. Because what is decided in the upcoming months, against the backdrop of a looming election, will likely determine our country's security/freedom tradeoff for years to come.

Geneva Convention, civil liberties, Guantanamo, Gitmo, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Congress not above the law

A judge has ruled that the FBI did nothing wrong when it searched the Congressional offices of Rep. William Jefferson, who is under suspicion of soliciting bribes.

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan, in an anxiously awaited 28-page opinion, said politicians were not above the law, and he rejected arguments from the Louisiana Democrat that the search violated the Constitution's "speech or debate" clause, which protects speech and documents related to legislative activity.

"Congressman Jefferson's interpretation of the Speech or Debate privilege would have the effect of converting every congressional office into a taxpayer-subsidized sanctuary for crime," Hogan wrote, rejecting the request to return the seized materials.

Ya think? It kind of boggles my mind that anyone would think Jefferson's defense could hold water. There is a legitimate debate about which documents the FBI can seize, but if criminality is suspected, the fact that the documents are "related to legislative activity" should not be an absolute protection.

The battle isn't over, of course:

Robert P. Trout, Jefferson's lawyer, vowed to appeal the ruling. He said he also planned to request a stay to keep the seized documents under seal pending appeal. If granted, the stay could further delay FBI investigators, who have been waiting to examine the potential evidence in the 15-month probe.

"The raid on Congressman Jefferson's office was unprecedented, unnecessary and unconstitutional," Trout said in a statement, adding that "we respectfully disagree" with the judge's ruling.

Good luck with that.

Jefferson has yet to be charged with anything, so we shouldn't jump to hasty conclusions. But things sure don't look good for him.

FBI, bribery, William Jefferson, politics, midtopia

Coulter syndicate rejects plagiarism charges

Oh, fooey.

The syndicator of Ann Coulter's newspaper columns rejected allegations that she had lifted material from other sources, saying a review of the work in question turned up nothing that merited concern.

"There are only so many ways you can rewrite a fact and minimal matching text is not plagiarism," Lee Salem, editor and president of Universal Press Syndicate, said Monday in a statement.

This isn't all that surprising; the examples from her column were pretty weak. The examples from her book were more compelling, but her publisher there is a partisan publishing house, and they've already rejected the plagiarism accusations -- without serious investigation, IMO.

Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted. And we've still got the vote-fraud allegations to look forward to.

plagiarism, Coulter, politics, midtopia

The name of the game is escalation

Oh, goody. Japan is considering whether it should launch pre-emptive strikes against North Korean missile sites.

Japan was badly rattled by North Korea's missile tests last week and several government officials openly discussed whether the country ought to take steps to better defend itself, including setting up the legal framework to allow Tokyo to launch a pre-emptive strike against Northern missile sites.

"If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an attack ... there is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defense. We need to deepen discussion," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said.

Japan's constitution currently bars the use of military force in settling international disputes and prohibits Japan from maintaining a military for warfare. Tokyo has interpreted that to mean it can have armed troops to protect itself, allowing the existence of its 240,000-strong Self-Defense Forces.

A complicating factor is that Japan doesn't have much in the way of weapons to conduct such a strike. But that's not going to deter them if they really, really feel they have to take out the sites.

Japan certainly has a right to feel threatened, and they can plausibly make a case that they are no longer the most dangerous long-term threat in Asia (neither is North Korea; from a military standpoint, neither is going to be able to touch China in the long-term).

But the specter of a remilitarized Japan is a diplomatic nightmare in a region where the U.S. has many strategic interests and where memories of Japanese atrocities are still fresh. And if that remilitarized Japan's first action is a pre-emptive strike, that will go over very poorly in the region.

Which is why South Korea, arguably the other country most threatened by North Korea, told Japan to cool it -- though they withdrew the statement the next day.

"There is no reason to fuss over this from the break of dawn like Japan, but every reason to do the opposite," a statement from President Roh Moo-hyun's office said, suggesting that Tokyo was contributing to tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Abe said Monday it was "regrettable" that South Korea had accused Japan of overreacting.

"There is no mistake that the missile launch ... is a threat to Japan and the region. It is only natural for Japan to take measures of risk management against such a threat," Abe said.

For the sake of regional stability, we should do what we can to resolve the issue without Japan having to take action on its own. Otherwise we risk an escalation of tensions in the region that helps nobody not named Kim Jong-il.

Japan's saber-rattling could have a diplomatic purpose. The Security Council is considering a resolution to impose sanctions on North Korea. In an acknowledgement of the limited effect such sanctions would have, they've delayed the vote in order to give China time to convince North Korea to give up missile tests and return to the six-party talks they walked away from in November. But Japan could be trying to put pressure on the UN to take action of some sort and not just let the issue die.

China, North Korea, Japan, politics, midtopia

Congress kept in dark on intel programs

Rep. Pete Hoekstra wrote an angry letter (pdf) to President Bush, complaining that he had just found out about various intelligence programs that the administration hadn't bothered briefing Congress about.

"There was at least one major -- what I consider significant -- activity that we had not been briefed on that we have now been briefed on," Hoekstra said on "Fox News Sunday." "Some people within the intelligence community brought to my attention some programs that they believed we had not been briefed on. They were right."

Hoekstra said the briefings took place after he complained in a May 18 letter to President Bush of hearing about "alleged Intelligence Community activities" not described to committee members in classified briefings. "If these allegations are true," he wrote to Bush, "they may represent a breach of responsibility by the Administration, a violation of law and . . . a direct affront to me and the Members of this committee."

Two things are interesting about this:

1. He's clearly referring to programs other than the ones we already know about. It shouldn't surprise anyone that such programs exist, but it's worth keeping in mind.

2. The administration appears to ignore its duty to inform Congress about intelligence activities on a fairly regular basis. That may be a generalized executive branch habit, not just one peculiar to this administration. But that doesn't make it acceptable.

Congress should not have to find out about briefable activities and then demand briefings; that undermines the whole idea of Congressional oversight. And it's not like this is resolved. Even after receiving the briefings he sought, Hoekstra said he still thinks the administration is not fulfilling its legal obligations to inform Congress.

I agree. But I'm forced to take this with a grain of salt, seeing as how Hoekstra has been acting a bit idiotic of late.

Hoekstra, terrorism, Bush, politics, midtopia

Coulter plagiarism, continued

It's a bit of a slow news day, so we'll spend some time updating the Coulter case.

TPMmuckraker has gathered as many alleged plagiarism examples as they could find, so you can compare for yourself.

Some of the column examples are unconvincing, although overall they demonstrate that Coulter has a problem with attribution. The book examples are more damning.

Somewhat gleefully fanning the flames, Media Matters has asked Random House, Coulter's publisher, to investigate the book-related charges.

plagiarism, Coulter, politics, midtopia