Vitter caught in prostitute probe

Far more quickly than I expected, we have our first member of Congress to be exposed as a client of the "D.C. Madam."

It's Republican Sen. David Vitter of Lousiana. And to the delight of hypocrisy fans everywhere, he's a perfect 10 in that department. He's a rock-ribbed social conservative, a family values guy who among other things has been a chief sponsor of constitutional amendments to ban gay-marriage. He earned a 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union in 2002, when he was serving in the House -- a House seat he won in a special election in 1999 to replace House Speaker Robert Livingston, who resigned, ironically enough, after revelations that he had had an affair.

There were also rumors that Vitter had a long relationship with a French Quarter prostitute in 1999 -- a relationship he denied but which may have helped derail his prospective 2002 gubernatorial bid.

His wife, asked in March 2000 if she would be as forgiving as Hillary Clinton if her husband had an affair, replied, "I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary."

Apparently, in the event, it turned out she was as forgiving as Hillary. But of course, she did it out of love while Hillary did it out of, er, naked political ambition.

Glenn Greenwald sums it up nicely, so I'll give him the last word:

So, to recap: in Louisiana, Vitter carried on a year-long affair with a prostitute in 1999. Then he ran for the House as a hard-core social conservative family values candidate, parading around his wife and kids as props and leading the public crusade in defense of traditional marriage.

Then, in Washington, he became a client of Deborah Palfrey's. Then he announced that amending the Constitution to protect traditional marriage was the most important political priority the country faces. Rush Limbaugh, Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich supported the same amendment.

As always, it is so striking how many Defenders of Traditional Marriage have a record in their own broken lives of shattered marriages, multiple wives and serial adultery. And they never seek to protect the Sacred Institution of Traditional Marriage by banning the un-Christian and untraditional divorces they want for themselves when they are done with their wives and are ready to move on to the next, newer model. Instead, they only defend these Very Sacred Values by banning the same-sex marriages that they don't want for themselves.

Greenwald overreaches a bit -- notably, referring to the French Quarter prostitute story as if it were proven fact -- but otherwise nails the hypocrisy of it all.

I caution people about getting too partisan about all of this. As I noted in my earlier post, this is likely to be a bipartisan scandal as it develops. It's quite possible that the next name revealed will be a prominent Democrat, who will deserve pillorying in his turn, either for moral failing or hypocrisy. But this first name couldn't be more perfect if it were being written into a movie.

Update: Some further -- if uncorroborated -- details on Vitter's New Orleans paid squeeze. Take them with a grain of salt.

It also turns out that Vitter's name was uncovered by an independent investigator who is writing a book with Deborah Palfrey, the D.C. Madam. But he also works for Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, who has made an avocation out of exposing sex scandals involving (mostly Republican) politicians.

hypocrites, prostitution, Vitter, politics, midtopia

Bill O'Reilly is an idiot

You knew that, I know. But rarely are we treated to such a perfect example of it.

From Reason Magazine:

Apparently, America is under attack from roving bands of terroristic lesbian gangs. Broadly extrapolating from a few unrelated news stories, O'Reilly concluded that these butch brigades are scouring America's schools in search of young girls to rape, while launching brutal surprise attacks on unsuspecting heterosexual men. O'Reilly and Fox News "crime analyst" Rod Wheeler claimed these killer chicks pack pink pistols, and that there are over 150 lesbian gangs in the D.C. area alone!

Trouble is, none of it is true, as the Southern Poverty Law Center discovered. And Rod Wheeler, when challenged, provides no evidence to back up his claims and then essentially retracts the whole thing while pretending not to.

Even better: All the video shown on the segment, which is supposed to make you think you're watching lesbians beating down innocent bystanders? Just stock footage of girls fighting. One of the scenes, it turns out, is actually of girls fighting over a boy.

Morons. I don't usually waste blog space on drooling knuckledraggers like O'Reilly, but this one was too good to pass up.

To all O'Reilly fans out there: Please, please, please post comments defending the man.

O'Reilly, lesbians, politics, midtopia

Weekend roundup

Notable events from today and the weekend just past:

EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE
President Bush won't comply with Congressional requests for testimony from former aides, setting up a legal showdown over the extent of executive privilege. I had expected him to fold, given what I see as the weakness of his legal hand in this case. But if he doesn't, we can at least look forward to a rare judicial ruling clarifying a murky area of Constitutional law.

EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE II
Coincidentally, the New York Times has an opinion piece examining the Congressional minority report in the 1987 Iran-Contra scandal, a report produced by none other than Dick Cheney, then a representative from Wyoming, and David Addington, who is now Cheney's official counsel.

The participants in Iran-Contra lied to Congress and broke an express Congressional directive to cease funding the Contras in Nicaragua. To do it they broke several other laws in order to sell weapons illegally to Iran and then launder the money before delivering it to the Contras. Cheney's report essentially admits all that, but says it was Congress' fault for passing a law that overreached its Constitutional power to restrain the executive branch. In other words, it was perfectly fine to break the law because the law should never have been passed.

The report was widely criticized at the time, both for its pinched view of historical precedent and the practical effect it would have: essentially eliminating any Congressional role in foreign policy. That did not change Cheney's mind, and he now refers to that report -- however ungrounded in reality it might be -- as a good explainer of his view of executive power -- and how he can view Watergate as merely "a political ploy by the president's enemies."

YET ANOTHER ETHICS BATTLE
I've written positively several times before about Sen. Jim DeMint, a conservative Republican who has held the Democratic majority to various ethics promises they made during the November elections.

This time, though, he's wrong. Cynically or unintentionally, he's letting the perfect get in the way of the pretty good.

The Senate's lobbying reform measure includes a provision that requires members to disclose the earmarks they propose and swear they have no financial interest in them. DeMint supports this measure.

So what's the problem? This: DeMint wants Democrats to promise that the measure won't be changed in conference committee with the House. That sounds reasonable, but Democrats say granting that exception would open the door to dozens of other side deals on the bill, creating a potential mess that could delay the whole thing.

DeMint should drop his demand and let the bill pass. If the Democrats water down the provision in conference, then it will be on their heads and he can tie the Senate in knots if he wants until the problem is fixed. Which could be done pretty easily at that point, by passing a separate, Senate-only rules change.

Making sure Democrats live up to their promises is one thing; obstructing real reform because he thinks Democrats might try to renege is another. Let the bill pass, and hold Democrats responsible for any changes.

NANCY'S PLACE
Over in the House, meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi is apparently coming into her own as the Democratic leader, defying some senior committee chairmen who wanted a return to the days when such chairmen ran their committees like virtual fiefdoms, with little heed paid to party leadership. I have a philosophical sympathy for such divided power, disgusted as I am by the lockstep partisanship of modern politics. But I also recognize that central leadership is necessary in order to achieve anything resembling a national political agenda. Pelosi's challenge is to unite a fractious caucus and push through that agenda without unduly limiting the committees' independence.

Pelosi appears to be doing that, slowly freeing herself from the grip of her inner circle of advisers (Murtha in particular appears to be marginalized) while using a combination of favors, persuasion and hardnosed politicking to get her way with the wider caucus.

Pelosi, executive privilege, Iran-Contra, Cheney, ethics, DeMint, politics, midtopia

Is Bush soft on terrorism?

Anyone remember "The Path to 9/11", the ABC miniseries about events leading up to the terror attacks that day?

The film was scripted by Cyrus Nowrasteh, a screenwriter with conservative political connections, leading to charges of political bias.

(Tangent: Nowrasteh has an interesting background for a conservative, having been born in Boulder, Colo., and grown up in Madison, Wis., both notable liberal outposts. And it turns out we both graduated from the same high school, though he donned the mortarboard a good 11 years before I did).

A key scene involved the Clinton administration pulling the plug on a mission to kill Osama bin Laden out of fear that kids might get hurt, a scene portrayed in the right-wing media as evidence that the Clintonites -- in this case, Sandy Berger -- didn't have the guts to properly fight terrorism.

Surprise, surprise: it turns out Bush had has own "Path to 9/11" moment in 2005.

A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.

But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.

So does this show Bush was soft on terror? Of course not. And neither did Clinton's decision to call off a similar strike.

In Clnton's case, the problem was that shaky intelligence made a risky endeavor riskier.

In his recently published memoir, George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A. director, said the intelligence about Mr. bin Laden’s whereabouts during the Clinton years was similarly sparse. The information was usually only at the “50-60% confidence level,” he wrote, not sufficient to justify American military action.

“As much as we all wanted Bin Ladin dead, the use of force by a superpower requires information, discipline, and time,” Mr. Tenet wrote. “We rarely had the information in sufficient quantities or the time to evaluate and act on it.”

The 2005 mission was canceled for different reasons, though the principle remains the same. It's hard to argue with Rumsfeld's logic here:

Mr. Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small number of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives to several hundred, was cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk, the current and former officials said. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with Pakistan, an often reluctant ally that has barred the American military from operating in its tribal areas, the officials said.

Not wanting to cheese of Pakistan has less weight, in my mind, than the complexity of the operation itself. One need only look at what happened to Jimmy Carter's effort to rescue hostages in Iran to understand why special ops missions, while meticulously planned, need to be kept as small and simple as possible.

But the key point here is that military operations always take into account two sets of conditions: political and military. The whole purpose of military action, after all, is to achieve national political goals, and the political situation determines what military actions are acceptable. I'm not talking about partisan political goals, a separate and disreputable beast entirely. But political considerations always and properly set the context within which military action is contemplated.

The story goes on to describe the frustration of some special-ops commanders at the cancellation, just as some were frustrated by the cancellation of the Clinton-era strike. Contrary to what you might expect, though, that's a good thing.

Military commanders are tasked with carrying out whatever missions are required of them, and you don't get to be a special-ops leader without being very motivated and gung-ho to do your job. The best are clear-eyed realists, of course, but their realism tends to be restricted to addressing the military problem at hand.

That is what makes them such superb military tools. But that is also precisely why the final say rests with the civilian leadership. The leadership's job is to bring careful, deliberate consideration to a decision to use force, weighing the political and diplomatic factors that the ground commanders don't. It does not make the civilians weak or wrong if they decide that the mission isn't worth it.

Nor does it automatically make them right. Politicians can be quite risk-averse, especially when the problem is something as amorphous as terrorism, something that doesn't actually threaten our existence. We have a well-developed special operations capacity that is well-suited to fighting terrorists. We should be willing to both develop it further and to use it when necessary.

But now that Bush has his own example of freezing with his hand on the trigger, perhaps we can get past simplistic arguments over who is softer on terror, and acknowledge the complex realities of bringing effective fire to bear on elusive targets in remote areas of the world. And seek to find a workable balance between excessive risk and excessive timidity.

terrorism, politics, midtopia

Ellison, conspiracies and overreaction

Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison -- the Minneapolis Democrat who is the nation's first Muslim congressman -- said something stupid Sunday.

On comparing Sept. 11 to the burning of the Reichstag building in Nazi Germany: "It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that. After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it and it put the leader of that country [Hitler] in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted. The fact is that I'm not saying [Sept. 11] was a [U.S.] plan, or anything like that because, you know, that's how they put you in the nut-ball box -- dismiss you."

Sorry, Keith. Saying something and then trying to disclaim it is not only intellectually discreditable -- it's not enough to keep you from being labeled a nutball on this point.

And what he was saying was dumb in and of itself. The Reichstag fire is an obvious parallel if you believe 9/11 was an inside job -- even if it's a parallel that fails on some key details. But it's irresponsible to give political and intellectual comfort to 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

Ellison could argue that he wasn't saying 9/11 was an inside job, only noting that the political effect of the WTC attack was similar to the effect of the Reichstag fire. Even if you accept that explanation, his words were inexcusably unclear on that point. A casual reading would lead a reasonable observer to conclude he does, indeed, think 9/11 was an inside job.

But reaction to Ellison's words demonstrate that nutballs on the other side of the ledger can actually make their own side come off worse for the encounter, even when dealing with such an easy target as the above.

Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring (LFR), for example -- a semi-prominent member of the conservative blogosphere, with an average of 175 hits a day or so.

Gross' post notes the "scary" similarity between Ellison's use of the Reichstag metaphor and an earlier reference by Abdul Alim Musa, an American black Muslim who supports the Iranian government and is fairly radical, albeit in a nonviolent way.

Except that the use of the Reichstag metaphor is not even remotely surprising. As I noted above, it's an obvious historical reference to make if you want to suggest that the WTC was an inside job perpetrated for political reasons. The fact that two disparate sources refer to it is no more scary than any other mention of common referents. If Alim Musa said "It's raining cats and dogs", would anyone remark on the "scary" fact that many other Americans have used the exact same words?

Gross then segues into his second logical flaw, a comparison of Musa and CAIR's views on Osama bin Laden's role in 9/11. Musa flatly denied bin Laden's role. CAIR (a Muslim advocacy group) simply said (immediately after 9/11) that "if bin Laden was behind it, we condemn him." In Gross' world, that constitutes a "denial" by CAIR that bin Laden was involved -- at least until they were "shamed" into admitting it a couple of months later.

For logical flaw #3, Gross quotes Musa defending Hamas, then quotes CAIR criticizing the closing of a Muslim charity that the administration said supported Hamas. Except that CAIR does not express support for Hamas; it disputes the allegation that the charity supports Hamas militants.

Having made three flawed comparisons, Gross then uses logical flaw #4 to tie it all together with what he apparently thinks is a political version of the transitive property in mathematics:

1. Ellison (remember Ellison? This is a post about Ellison) equals Musa;

2. Musa equals CAIR;

3. Ergo, Ellison equals CAIR.

Except that his definition of "equal to" works something like this:

1. I don't like Bush;

2. Osama bin Laden doesn't like Bush.

3. Therefore, I agree with everything OBL does and says.

That's stupid enough; but Gross takes it one ludicrous degree further, akin to this:

4. OBL speaks Arabic;

5. Lots of Arabs speak Arabic;

6. Therefore, I speak Arabic (because of my connection to them through my supposed total agreement with OBL)

I assure you, I do not speak Arabic. And Gross' post reflects a disregard for facts and logic more breathtaking than anything Ellison said.

That doesn't excuse Ellison, who has a greater responsibility to reason thanks to his seat in Congress. He should make a clear statement on his position regarding 9/11, and stop giving aid and comfort to conspiracy theorists.

Reichstag, terrorism, 9-11, Ellison, politics, midtopia

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