Truth or dare

Republican Rep. Tom Davis released a report (pdf) a couple of weeks ago slamming the Justice Department's handling of the Sandy Berger case.

"My staff’s investigation reveals that President Clinton’s former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger compromised national security much more than originally disclosed," Davis said. "It is now also clear that Mr. Berger was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to compromise national security, apparently for his own convenience."

Well, he doesn't really come up with much new information. And at least he doesn't accuse Berger of attempting a cover-up, though he intimates such might have occurred.

His major action point (signed by every Congressional Republican): Make Berger take the polygraph test he agreed to as part of his 2005 plea bargain.

That's a fairly pointless requirement, since polygraphs are unreliable. And the failing here is the Justice Department's, not Berger's. But okay: if Berger agreed to take such a test, he must. Obviously.

The issue here is not holding Berger to the terms of the agreement; it's what will be done with the polygraph results if they are made public.

At best, such tests are only 70 percent or 80 percent reliable, and that's when administered by a skilled technician to a relatively normal subject. Knowledgable subjects can lie and get away with it; anxious subjects will generate lots of false positives. And if the technician isn't top-notch, all bets are off.

So let's say Berger flunks the test. Does that mean he stole other documents or is guilty of a cover-up? Maybe. He could just be part of the unlucky 20 percent. Or it could mean he was nervous.

If he passes the test does that mean he's innocent? No. Maybe he was a cool villain and spoofed the test. Maybe he just got lucky. Maybe the technician was incompetent.

Polygraphs can be useful tools for helping focus an investigation: if a subject routinely fails on certain topics, then those topics might be worthy of further investigative scrutiny. But a polygraph test in and of itself is too unreliable to tell us anything useful about guilt or innocence. In partisan discourse, though, such nuances will be lost. No matter what the result of the test, Berger is screwed.

He gets limited sympathy from me on that score: he stole classified documents, after all. But let's not see this particular move for more than what it is: a partisan attempt to keep a Democratic scandal alive.

security, Berger, politics, midtopia

Ain't capitalism great?

If you need a few belly laughs, check out the 2006 edition of "101 Dumbest Moments in Business" as assembled by Business 2.0.

Wal-Mart wins pride of place for 2006, grabbing 6 of the 101 spots for its snake-bitten marketing efforts.

But there are countless jaw-dropping other contenders. The first link will let you click through all 101. Some individual highlights:

Northwest Airlines providing "live cheap" advice for laid off workers, including dumpster diving.

Chevrolet sponsoring a "make your own commercial" promotion for their Tahoe SUV -- only to watch in horror as ads proliferate with taglines such as "Yesterday's technology today."

Kazakhstan's central bank misspelling "bank" on their currency.

A Comcast repairman falls asleep on a customer's couch -- and the customer turns it into a video.

The BBC invites an IT expert in for a segment -- but end up mistakenly interviewing an unknown computer technician who was waiting in the lobby for a job interview.

Great stuff.

business, humor, politics, midtopia

Another made-up scandal

I've been ignoring this one for a couple of days, but hot on the heels of the "Paul Pelosi owns Del Monte stock" fabrication, we get a twofer: accusations that Barack Obama was raised Muslim -- and that the accuser is Hillary Clinton's campaign.

The dual claims were raised in an unsigned, anonymously sourced article in Insight Magazine, a publication of the Moonie-owned Washington Times that was so unsuccessful as an actual magazine that it went online-only a couple of years ago.

An investigation of Mr. Obama by political opponents within the Democratic Party has discovered that Mr. Obama was raised as a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia. Sources close to the background check, which has not yet been released, said Mr. Obama, 45, spent at least four years in a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia.

"He was a Muslim, but he concealed it," the source said. "His opponents within the Democrats hope this will become a major issue in the campaign." Sources said the background check (was) conducted by researchers connected to Senator Clinton.

Let's note that even if the claim were true, the writer is suggesting that attending a madrassa between the ages of 6 and 10 somehow makes one a fundamentalist Islamist and terror supporter -- never mind that Obama has been a Christian for his entire adult life.

Fox News picked up the story repeatedly, first on "Fox and Friends" and later John Gibson, who had the flair to bring on a Republican strategist to discuss the issue -- who promptly said the effort could be a "despicable act by an absolutely ruthless Clinton political machine."

But the story isn't true. CNN actually sent a reporter to Indonesia to visit the school. Turns out that while the student body is predominantly Muslim -- hardly a surprise, because so is Indonesia -- it's a secular, public school with a mixed population and no religious curriculum.

That didn't stop the usual right-wing suspects from spreading the fake news -- from the Freepers to, again, Rush Limbaugh.

And Insight Magazine itself? Its response to CNN's story was a classic duck -- "We didn't say it -- we simply reported that Hillary's people were saying it." Well, actually, it appears you just made it up. How morally reptilian.

For their part, the Clinton campaign denies any involvement and Obama ripped Fox and Insight a new one.

And in any case, this whole thing fails the logic test. Why would Clinton's people even be talking to a nutrag like Insight? Even if Clinton wanted to smear Obama, why would she choose a little-known partisan website to do so? Further, Clinton is presumably trying to weaken Obama in the Democratic primary. What part of this story would do so? I just don't see Democratic primary voters giving a rat's ass that Obama spent a few of hs younger years at a Muslim school.

On the other hand, it makes perfect sense for an amoral conservative publication to run such a story. Even if the specific accusation is debunked, it reminds voters that Obama has a Muslim background and quitely reinforces the idea that Hillary Clinton is evil, even if she can't actually be traced to this particular brouhaha. Tada! Both Democratic frontrunners tarred.

If Insight has any actual evidence to back up their story, now would be the time to provide it.

Coupled with the Pelosi smear, I think we're seeing a resurgence of the bad old days of conservative commentary, one marked by conspiracy theories and rumor-trafficking. Such fare occurs on both the left and the right, of course, most notably the left's fascination with Karl Rove and the belief that Bush controls oil prices. But it is usually most marked in the side that is currently out of power. What is disheartening is that it has taken just two months of minority status for the right wing's old habits to emerge.

Shame on them, and shame on conservative commentators and media outlets for their unquestioning acceptance of complete rubbish.

Update: John Gibson remains cartoonishly unrepentant. Just for example, Gibson assumes that the CNN correspondent involved is Indonesian, "probably went to the same madrassa", and thus is probably lying. Except that if he had bothered to actually read the CNN story, he would have known that CNN sent John Vause, an Australian, from their Beijing bureau. Idiot.

ethics, Clinton, Obama, politics, midtopia

While Congress fiddles....

The minimum wage bill saw a lot of action in the Senate but few actual results.

As promised, Harry Reid let the Republicans propose a line-item veto amendment on the bill. That was rejected 49-48, but could come back up again because that vote was far less than the 60 needed to invoke cloture and cut off debate.

However, the immediate debate moved on to other grounds, namely Republican insistence that the wage increase be paired with tax breaks for small businesses to help cushion the blow. Senate Democrats are amenable, but the House could force the issue on two fronts: the House bill doesn't contain tax breaks, and it's the House's prerogative to propose tax measures.

The lack of tax breaks led Senate Republicans to block the wage bill, so it's currently at an impasse.

I would have liked to see the line-item veto pass, but it had its chance and is done. If there's a reasonable opportunity to revive it, fine, but it should not be used to hold up the wage bill.

Overall, the House should compromise in this case. The proposed tax breaks are reasonable: extending a tax credit for employers that hire low-income workers, and a simplified expense deduction for small businesses. Further, as required by the new pay-as-you-go rules, the $8.3 billion cost will be offset by a cap on tax-deferred executive pay and the elimination of an array of tax shelters. That provision alone is worth the price of admission, as such tax-deferred paydays are at the root of many a tax-avoidance scheme. House Democrats would be foolish to let a fit of pique get in the way of such progress.

Negotiations continue, and the Senate will take another crack at it soon. Let's hope reason prevails.

taxes, economy, politics, midtopia

Pointless silliness

Glad to see our representatives are wasting time on stuff like this.

In a move that left Republicans crying foul, the House voted Wednesday to change its rules and grant limited and mostly ceremonial voting rights to the five delegates representing the District of Columbia and four U.S. territories.

The resolution passed 226-191, largely along party lines. The voting rights for the District of Columbia, Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are largely symbolic and the rules change is designed to make sure that the delegates' votes cannot affect the fate of legislation.

How will it work, you ask?

The rules change will allow the delegates to cast votes on amendments. However, they cannot vote on final passage of a bill, and, if the delegates tip the balance on any given amendment, the House will re-vote on that amendment without the delegates' participation.

So what's the point? There isn't one, really. Most of the delegates are Democrats, but because their votes don't count this is more feel-good symbology than anything else.

Pointless as the move was, Republican reaction was over the top:

Republicans were fuming after the vote and labeled it "a power grab."...

"The Revolutionary War was fought over the idea of 'taxation without representation,' but the Democrats are pushing forward the policy of 'representation without taxation,'" Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) said, noting that voters in the four territories do not pay federal income taxes.

They'd have a case if the delegates had any actual power. But they don't.

There's a history here. This essentially reestablishes rules first put into place in 1993 -- the last time Democrats controlled Congress. The Republicans took over in 1994 and promptly canceled the arrangement. So this could be viewed as a simple move to reassert a political principle -- or it could be viewed as the Democrats giving Republicans a poke in the eye.

Is it Constitutional? Apparently so, as ruled by the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals in Michel v. Anderson, a 1994 ruling dealing with the 1993 law. Territories cannot have Senators or full voting rights in the House, but the House is free to give territorial delegates limited power through its organizational rules. Delegates already participate in committee votes and have other privileges too, such as franking. This is an extension of that.

So it's partisan and pointless, but legal. Now that that's over with, I hope they move on to more important things.

politics, midtopia

Check 'im out

I'm not a gay atheist Republican neocon, but if I were I'd want to be The Gay Republican. It's a new blog by a political debater I've known for a couple of years now. And while I disagree with nearly everything he says, he's consistent, smart, and funny. Oh, and arrogant; very, very arrogant.

You might not agree with him, but you'll find him interesting and entertaining, if occasionally infuriating. And you'd be surprised at the places you do agree with him.

Check him out.

Update: He got tired of fighting MySpace's code, so the blog has moved to Blogger, here.

politics, midtopia

Kerry bows out

Thank God. And I say that as someone who voted for the doofus in 2004. In my defense, I stated at the time that I would vote for a trained pig if the alternative was another four years of Bush. My vote was a vote against Bush rather than vote for Kerry.

Anyway, this isn't a big surprise; nobody wants Kerry to run, and any polling he did would have confirmed that. The real story would have been if Kerry was stubborn and tin-eared enough to run anyway.

One question remains: What will Kerry do with the $13 million in his campaign war chest? That's enough money to make a difference in either the primary or general elections. The question is, would anyone want the money bad enough to accept the "supported by John Kerry" tag that goes with it?

Assuming he gives it to anybody -- as opposed to, say, using it for his own Senate re-election campaign or donating it somewhere -- I see two intriguing possibilities. He could give it John Edwards, framing it as a donation to his former running mate, which would take away some of the "Kerry supports me" stain. Or he could give it to Dennis Kucinich, who doesn't stand a chance of winning the nomination but could do some interesting things with $13 million in his pocket.

Or he could just donate it to the DNC or one of the Congressional campaign funds.

Update: Just musing here, but consider what might have been had Kerry won in 2004. We might have begun an earlier withdrawal from Iraq (although there's a good chance Kerry would have tried to show he could fight the war better than Bush). But outside of that, assume he was as terrible a president as his critics feared. His power would have been hobbled by the Republican majority in Congress, so there would be a limit to how much damage he could do. Further, Congressional Republicans would have had a good foil to work against, and not been borne down by the lead weight of Iraq. So conceivably a Kerry presidency might have left the GOP in charge of Congress in 2007, and positioned them well to recapture the White House in 2008, since Kerry would presumably run again.

Thoughts?

Kerry, politics, midtopia

Iraq war resolution gains momentum

There are now two versions of an anti-surge resolution circulating in the Senate, but unlike many such instances one is not an attempt to derail the other; sponsors on both sides expect to reconcile them into a single text that will draw bipartisan support.

One is mostly Democratic, but with key Republican co-sponsors: Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe. The other is mostly Republican, but with a key Democratic co-sponsor: Ben Nelson. You can find the text of the Democratic version on thomas.gov by searching for "S Con Res 2". The GOP version is still being drafted; I can't find a copy of the actual text.

If the resolution actually comes to a vote -- opponents have threatened a filibuster, though it will be interesting to see if they follow through and can sustain it -- I'm dying to see what the final vote total will be. If it's lopsided enough, it will speak volumes about the future of our Iraq adventure.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Libby trial opens

And the opening statements were pretty interesting on both sides.

Legally speaking, Fitzgerald has an uphill battle to fight here. He has to prove that Libby deliberately lied; Libby's attorneys say he misremembered. He also has to persuade the jury that Libby had something to hide, despite the revelation of Richard Armitage's earlier leak of Plame's identity. Otherwise he will be (fairly) criticized for prosecuting a coverup of a nonexistent crime.

In his opening statements, Fitzgerald gave it his best shot:

Mr. Fitzgerald provided his own dramatic moment of the day when he played audio tapes of Mr. Libby’s grand jury testimony in March 2004.

But before doing so, he meticulously laid the groundwork for his case that Mr. Libby had lied during those appearances. He first presented charts showing that Mr. Libby learned about Ms. Wilson in conversations with several fellow administration officials in June and early July 2003, and that he also talked to reporters and other administration officials about her identity in that same time period.

Jurors then listened intently as Mr. Libby’s voice wafted through the courtroom while he sat silently at the defense table. Mr. Libby was heard to say that he believed he first learned about Ms. Wilson in a conversation with Tim Russert of NBC on Thursday, July 10. Mr. Libby also told the grand jury that he was taken aback by Mr. Russert’s information.

“You can’t be startled about something on Thursday that you told other people about on Monday and Tuesday,” Mr. Fitzgerald said referring to conversations Mr. Libby had only days before.

Further, he said, Mr. Russert will testify that his July 10 telephone conversation with Mr. Libby did not include any mention of Ms. Wilson. Mr. Libby, he said, had telephoned instead to complain about a talk show on the network.

“The evidence will show the conversation he claims took place about Wilson’s wife never happened,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “And even if it did happen he couldn’t have been surprised.”

Then the defense weighed in:

White House officials tried to sacrifice vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to protect strategist Karl Rove from blame for leaking a CIA operative's identity during a political storm over the Iraq war, Libby's lawyer said Tuesday.

After Libby complained "they want me to be the sacrificial lamb," Vice President Dick Cheney personally intervened to get the White House press secretary to publicly clear Libby in the leak, defense attorney Theodore Wells said in his opening statement at Libby's perjury trial.

The defense also raised the expected "he was a busy man, and he misremembered" explanation.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time dissecting the blow-by-blow maneuvers in the case, because I don't expect there to be much illumination in the end. We won't find out if the Plame leak was deliberate. We might find out that there was a coverup, but not exactly of what. Or we might discover that Fitzgerald's got nothing.

So for me the most interesting aspect of the case is the glimpse it provides into internal White House workings. The picture being painted is of an administration in a bit of disarray, so anxious to discredit Joe Wilson that they engage in a bit of "ready, fire, aim," in which there wasn't a cohesive response strategy and nobody really knew who was saying what to who. It reveals tensions between the vice presidential and presidential staffs, and Cheney being bluntly protective of Libby after the scandal broke. It reveals that even senior administration staffers thought the administration would be willing to sacrifice lesser staffers to save Rove.

Stay tuned.

Plame, Libby, politics, midtopia

State of the Union, Schmate of the Union

This may be heresy for a political blogger, but I'm going to come right out and say it: I hate State of the Union speeches.

Except for the first one of each term, they rarely contain anything of monumental importance. People look at them as a description of the president's priorities -- but if they were actual priorities he would have gotten around to implementing them sometime before the seventh year of his administration.

And this SOTU speech will be even less relevant than most, coming as it does from a deeply unpopular President facing an opposition-controlled Congress, a President whose explosive borrowing and staggering spending leave little room for ambitious new initiatives, even if he had the political capital to push them.

Further, with just two years left in office, most of the things Bush will push for will have to be accomplished by his successors. Take his ethanol proposal, for example: he says we should seek to produce 35 billion gallons a year by 2017. What will or can he do to achieve that? Nothing, beyond tax breaks. It's classic bully pulpit, urging people to go do something. It's a laudable goal, but as a practical matter it's just words: cheap, easy, and meaningless.

So the speech will be interesting as a snapshot of how he will deal with the new political reality, and how he hopes to shape his legacy. But as a policy blueprint it's garbage.

So watch it, if you want. I've got it on right now in the background. So far the best thing about it is the look on Dick Cheney's face as he sits behind the president and next to Nancy Pelosi. He looks more bored than she does.

But recognize that the speech is more theatre than substance -- especially this one.

Update: Here's the speech, and here's the fact sheet that goes with it.

Update II: Here's the text of the Democratic rebuttal, delivered by Sen. Jim Webb. It's remarkably succinct and sharp, even if you don't agree with the sentiments expressed.

SOTU, State of the Union, Bush, politics, midtopia

Ann Coulter update

When last we left our sordid tale of wealth and right-wing vote fraud, Palm Beach elections official Arthur Anderson, after being stonewalled by Coulter, had referred her case to the state attorney for criminal prosecution.

Now the plot thickens!!

Anderson has been unable to find anyone willing to take the case. The Palm Beach police concluded they didn't have jurisdiction, and without a police file State Attorney Barry Krischer is uninterested. so Anderson's trying to persuade the sheriff or Florida's Department of Law Enforcement to handle it.

Meanwhile, it appears that Coulter used the fake address not only on voter registration forms but also on her driver's license application -- a second felony. So if anyone could be bothered to bring charges against her, she could face even more sanctions.

In closing, remember Midtopia's Coulter Motto: "Root for the jail term!"

politics, midtopia

Not serious about war, Part II

A month or so ago, I wrote about how the Future Tactical Truck (FTT) program shows that the Pentagon is not taking the war in Iraq seriously.

Now, we've got yet more evidence.

After nearly four years of war in Iraq, the Pentagon's effort to protect its troops against roadside bombs is in disarray, with soldiers and Marines having to swap access to scarce armored vehicles and the military unsure whether it has the money or industrial capacity to produce the safe vehicles it says the troops need....

Even if the Pentagon can find millions of dollars not currently budgeted, and even if it can find factories to produce the armored vehicles, most U.S. troops in Iraq will not have access to the best equipment available, as President Bush has often promised.

The Army acknowledged last week, for example, that it is still 22 percent short of the armored Humvees it needs in Iraq despite heated criticism in 2004 and 2005 over the lack of armored vehicles.

Army officials said it will be another eight months before that gap can be filled.

Wait, it gets better. Unable to actually protect the troops, the Army is putting a Band-aid on a gaping wound:

The Army is shipping 71,000 sets of fire-resistant uniforms to Iraq so that soldiers will have a better chance of surviving the fires that often consume Humvees that hit roadside bombs.

It's not just armored Humvees. The military plans to largely replace Humvees with V-shaped vehicles call MPVs -- a class of armored car that has been produced and used for years by other countries that are very good at surviving explosions. We're not talking about having to develop a new vehicle from scratch; we're talking about buying or modifying an existing design.

Even so, the first MPVs aren't expected to reach Iraq until March 2008.

The Pentagon says it is doing all it can. Apparently "all it can" means that even four years into this fight we haven't ramped up development, production or purchasing of vehicles everyone knows we need. Just like with the FTT, we're still on a peacetime development cycle.

As I said a month ago, if this mentality had prevailed in World War II, we would have fought the whole thing with Grant tanks and 37mm antitank guns -- and lost.

military, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Senate passes ethics bill

Second time was the charm, as Republicans (rightly) withdrew their attempt to attach a line-item veto amendment to the package, which derailed an earlier attempt at passage. The unamended bill passed 96-2.

Democrat Robert Byrd, the main obstacle to a compromise, found himself isolated.

For nearly two days, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) -- who jealously guards the Senate's prerogatives on spending matters -- single-handedly blocked efforts to come to an accord on that line-item veto vote....

But Reid found a path around Byrd, offering Republicans a chance next week to add the spending control measure to a bill to raise the minimum wage if they can find the votes. That broke the logjam, and the Senate then began debating several amendments to the bill, with an eye toward completing work late last night.

A good compromise. The minimum wage bill has plenty of momentum, too, and attaching the veto to it could actually increase support by drawing in Republicans who otherwise would oppose the wage bill. That could end up giving the bill a Byrd-proof majority (and veto-proof, too, though that's not a real risk).

The ethics bill is pretty good, but there are still some problems. For instance:

Lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, also talked to lawmakers about excluding from the measure's travel ban trips to Israel sponsored by the group's nonprofit foundation affiliate. The legislation, as written, would allow those trips to continue.

So as long as a lobbying group has a nonprofit affiliate, they can still pay for legislator travel? That's stupid.

And the story notes a big loophole related to fundraising events, which aren't mentioned at all.

It's a good sign, though, that lobbyists worked so hard to derail the bill. It's not a solution, but it's a step forward.

corruption, politics, midtopia

Gonzales pooh-poohs habeus corpus

In yesterday's Senate hearing, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales tried to argue that there is no constitutional right to habeus corpus -- that is, the right to challenge the legality of your detention.

The link is ThinkProgress; sorry about that. But they've got video and a transcript.

GONZALES: I will go back and look at it. The fact that the Constitution — again, there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is a prohibition against taking it away. But it’s never been the case, and I’m not a Supreme —

SPECTER: Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. The constitution says you can’t take it away, except in the case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus, unless there is an invasion or rebellion?

GONZALES: I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesn’t say, “Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.” It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except by —

SPECTER: You may be treading on your interdiction and violating common sense, Mr. Attorney General.

Anyone agree with Gonzales? I mean, he's right about the wording -- it doesn't positively grant the right, it says the right cannot be taken away. But he seems to read a positively lunatic significance into that distinction.

I wonder what he makes of the First Amendment, which reads "Congress shall make no law.... abridging the freedom of speech." Nope, no positive grant of the right to free speech either.

No wonder this guy was able to justify torture.

habeus corpus, civil liberties, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

New, improved -- but still flawed -- military tribunals

The Pentagon has released a manual outlining new procedures for President Bush's terrorist-trying military commissions. The manual reflects the bill passed in September by the then-GOP-led Congress.

The good news is that it's better than what Bush had originally proposed. The bad news is that it still contains needlessly troubling provisions, such as allowing hearsay evidence and coerced confessions.

Unsurprisingly, Congressional Democrats say they'll revisit the military commissions law to try to fix the worst problems. And Arlen Specter says he'll support that. It remains to be seen whether such changes would survive a Bush veto, but they should be pursued nonetheless.

As I've written before, terrorists deserve to be treated harshly; but suspected terrorists deserve rights, including a fair trial. The new tribunal rules come 90 percent of the way toward achieving that; let's take care of that last 10 percent and start putting people on trial.

Update: A list of reactions from defense lawyers and human rights groups. Among the comments:

Martin S. Pinales, president, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers:

"Hearsay, double hearsay, and coerced confessions are all admissible, including statements extracted from witnesses by torture. Given the shaky constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act, the detainees' habeas corpus right to challenge their detention -- and the validity of any conviction -- is more important than ever."


Colonel Dwight H. Sullivan, U.S. Marine Corps Reserves, Chief Defense Counsel:

"The rules appear carefully crafted to ensure than an accused can be convicted -- and possibly executed -- based on nothing but a coerced confession."

Yeah, problems remain....

terrorism, civil liberties, politics, midtopia

Pre-emptive strike on Iran

... By Democrats, aimed at the president.

Democratic leaders in Congress lobbed a warning shot Friday at the White House not to launch an attack against Iran without first seeking approval from lawmakers.

"The president does not have the authority to launch military action in Iran without first seeking congressional authorization," Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), D-Nev., told the National Press Club.

Reid's wording invokes the War Powers Act, a law that no president has ever accepted as valid -- even though they tend to obey it in order to avoid provoking a Constitutional confrontation that they might lose.

As a practical matter, Reid's words are as toothless as the upcoming resolution opposing the troop surge in Iraq, which is garnering increasing bipartisan support. Neither the Iraq resolution nor the Iran warning can effectively prevent Bush from doing whatever he wants in the short-term, in either place.

But they do serve a handful of useful purposes. They put Congress on record as opposing the president's actions; they serve notice that funding for such actions will be closely scrutinized and debated; and they raise the political cost to the president for pursuing such actions, because they essentially isolate Bush. In order to attack Iran, for instance, he would have to acknowledge that he was doing so entirely on his own initiative, without the backing of the people's representatives. In normal political calculations, that makes it less likely that such an attack will occur.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Will Bush simply ignore Congress? He can do that for a little while, but not forever. Will he call their presumed bluff? Risky, if they're not actually bluffing. Will he try to co-opt them? I can imagine him going to Congress in a classified briefing and saying "Iran is about to develop nuclear weapons. Here are the production sites; we need to bomb them." What will Congress do then?

The answer to that last question isn't that important from a constitutional viewpoint; the consultation is the important thing. I expect Bush to play political hardball in pursuit of what he thinks is right; but he should get Congress on board for his plans if he wants those plans to have any staying power after the dust settles.

Tangent: My second link leads with the White House calling Pelosi's attack on the "surge" plan "poison" and not in the spirit of bipartisanship. For my money, Congress is supposed to have a somewhat adversarial relationship with the executive branch; that's what "checks and balances" mean. I expect Pelosi to work cordially with Congressional Republicans; they are her colleagues. And I expect her to seek common ground and compromise with the president where possible and necessary. But the White House complaining that Congress has tired of being a doormat for the president misses the point. Congress is a private club, and the president is not a member; get used to it. Republican deference helped the pendulum of power swing way over to the executive side of the ledger in the last six years; a correction is not only to be expected, but desired.

Iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

Ney gets 30 months

... in prison, plus two years probation and a tiny $6,000 fine. If he completes an alcohol treatment program, it'll cut a year off of his sentence.

A pretty mild punishment, especially the fine -- he could have been forced to pay up to $500,000 -- but still harsher than the 27 months or so that prosecutors recommended.

Hall of Shame has been updated.

politics, midtopia

That sinking feeling

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales went way out of his way to avoid saying anything useful about the administration's agreement with the FISA court on wiretapping.

He said he might not be able to provide Congress with details of the presidential order authorizing the new program. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said there might be "separation of powers" issues over such disclosure, as well as disclosing anything about individual court orders.

Gonzales also refused to say whether the new program involved individual warrants or blanket warrants that could conceivably cover dozens of people.

Got that? An executive branch agreement with the judicial branch might have to be kept from Congress because.... well, because.

This even though the court in question has no problem sharing the information.

In a letter released at the Senate hearing, FISA Court Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, said she has no objection to giving lawmakers copies of orders and opinions relating to the secret panel's oversight of the spy program.

"However, the court's practice is to refer any requests for classified information to the Department of Justice. In this instance, the documents that are responsive to your request contain classified information and, therefore, I would ask you to discuss the matter with the attorney general or his representatives," Kollar-Kotelly wrote in the Jan. 17 letter.

If allowed, the Court will, of course, cooperate with the agreement," she wrote.

The administration is once again demanding that we just trust it, despite plenty of past experience demonstrating that such trust is misplaced. I understand keeping sensitive operational details out of public view; but Congress has to be in the loop for "oversight" to have any meaning whatsoever.

To quote Han Solo: "I've got a bad feeling about this."

terrorism, civil liberties, politics, midtopia

Manufacturing a scandal

A few days ago I slammed Democrats for hypocritically exempted American Samoa from the new minimum wage law. In passing, I noted that one of the beneficiaries of low wages on the island is Starkist, a subsidiary of Del Monte, which is based in Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district.

Partisans have now taken that basic data and run with it, providing a fascinating look at how a scandal can be ginned up out of, literally, nothing.

It started on Jan. 12, when somebody modified the Wikipedia entry on Del Monte to add a sentence claiming that Pelosi's husband, Paul, owns $17 million worth of Del Monte shares -- suggesting, of course, that personal financial interest drove the Samoan exception. The right-wing site Newsbusters picked it up that same day, and it started spreading through the right-wing blogosphere. It gained momentum on Jan. 15, with an unsourced allegation by Rush Limbaugh. Along with the buzz came the usual smug and knowing comments of "I wonder why the mainstream media is ignoring this?"

Perhaps because it isn't true. Setting aside the wisdom of relying entirely on an unsourced Wikipedia edit, Wikipedia erased the edit a few hours after it was posted on Jan. 12.

Then the story morphed to say Pelosi owned $17 million of Heinz stock, and since Heinz owns 75 percent of Del Monte, the Pelosis still have a substantial financial interest.

First, consider that Heinz has 332 million shares outstanding, at a current stock price of $46.56, for a total market cap of about $15.5 billion.

So if Paul Pelosi actually does own $17 million worth of Heinz stock, that means he owns approximately 0.1 percent of the outstanding shares.

Further, this accusation appears to represent a misunderstanding of who owns what. The Del Monte transaction was completed in 2002. But it was Heinz shareholders received shares of the new Del Monte based on their share of ownership in Heinz. Thus Heinz shareholders -- not Heinz itself -- owned 75 percent of Del Monte as of 2002, through separate, non-Heinz stock. Heinz the company has no ongoing interest in Del Monte.

So assuming Pelosi owned 0.1 percent of Heinz in 2002, he would have received a 0.1 percent share of the 75 percent of Del Monte owned by Heinz shareholders. Del Monte is much smaller than Heinz -- $3 billion in annual sales, market value of $2.2 billion. So Paul Pelosi's share of Del Monte would be worth about $1.6 million.

Then consider that Starkist represents just part of Del Monte's portfolio, generating annual sales of about $565 million (you'll have to get the 2005 Del Monte annual report and turn to page 54 to verify this). That's 18.8 percent of Del Monte. So Pelosi's direct interest in Starkist would be about $300,000.

But that all assumes Pelosi owns $17 million of stock somewhere. And he doesn't. If you check out the Pelosi's financial disclosure statement for 2005 (click on the link under Nancy's picture), you discover that not only do they not own any stock in Del Monte or Heinz, but they have only one asset worth anywhere near $17 million -- a vineyard valued at between $5 million and $25 million.

So to sum up: the right-wing blogosphere, up to and including the venerable Rush, fell for and helped spread a completely false slander about the Pelosis -- even though rudimentary logic and standards of evidence should have set off alarm bells, and a few basic fact checks could have shown the whole thing to be bunk.

To their credit, Newsbusters and a few other sites were quick to post updates that at least partially backed away from their initial claims. But Rush remains unrepentant, and the goofballs over at Free Republic took it on faith, as did Red State News and Right Wing News -- even three days after the fact.

I don't know who to slam most -- the sleazebag that made stuff up in the first place, or the willingly gullible partisans who jumped all over it.

Starkist, Pelosi, stupidity, politics, midtopia

To arm or not to arm

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has a solution for keeping U.S. troops out of Iraq: adequately equip Iraqi government forces.

"If we succeed in implementing the agreement between us to speed up the equipping and providing weapons to our military forces, I think that within three to six months our need for the American troops will dramatically go down. That's on the condition that there are real strong efforts to support our military forces and equipping them and arming them," Maliki said.

He's right as far as he goes. The United States has been reluctant to provide the latest gear to the Iraqis, including heavy weapons and high-tech equipment. And that has definitely hampered the Iraqi ability and will to fight.

But there's a good reason for that reluctance: we don't trust the Iraqi government to maintain decent control of those weapons, and not simply let them slip into the hands of militias, death squads, Iran or the insurgency itself -- or simply become major tools for the Shiite side of an outright civil war.

It's a classic Catch-22: Iraq can't defend itself and stop the sectarian violence until we give them weapons, and we don't want to give them weapons until they demonstrate they can control the sectarian violence. And Maliki's words don't change that equation: is he asking for weapons in his role as Prime Minister, or in his role as a prominent Shiite with militia and Iranian ties?

Maliki is trying to demonstrate he's serious, most recently by arresting 400 members of the Mahdi Army, Muqtada al-Sadr's militia. But it remains to be seen whether that's a serious effort or mere windowdressing, the sacrifice of a few scapegoats.

While I understand the Iraqi government's dilemma, I see no reason to start shipping them heavy weaponry. Heavy weapons don't win counterinsurgency campaigns; boots on the ground do. Give them armored Humvees and decent APCs, plus plenty of good small arms; those are the kinds of things that are helpful and not particularly sensitive. But a large-scale weapons program should be viewed with skepticism, especially if it involves items like tanks and artillery that have limited application in a guerrilla war but can prove highly useful in ethnic cleansing.

Iraq, politics, midtopia