The government wants your cash

About a year ago, I wrote about the case of a motorist who was found carrying a large sum of money. The police seized it, arguing that it just had to be drug money. They were allowed to keep it without ever bothering to prove an underlying crime, thus establishing the cherished legal principle that police can take your money anytime they like as long as the sum is large enough and the defendant is poor enough.

Now it's happened again, this time in Michigan. But there's a twist: the search that uncovered the money was illegal, which turns this into a case with broader civil-liberties implications.

No matter.

The Michigan Supreme Court on Tuesday denied the appeal of a motorist who had to forfeit nearly $181,000 that was found in a backpack during a traffic stop, even though the money was seized illegally....

Tamika Smith, who was stopped by a Michigan State Police trooper, lost the money when a judge ruled prosecutors presented enough other evidence to show it was intended to buy illicit drugs.

That evidence involved such legal activities as being poor, in possession of a large sum of money, while driving a rental car in a known drug-trafficking area.

Some details from Detroit Free Press columnist Brian Dickerson:

Five years ago, the 33-year-old Detroit woman was driving her boyfriend and her two small children to Chicago when a state trooper stopped her for speeding on I-94 outside Paw Paw. A license check revealed that the boyfriend had been arrested for cocaine possession and weapons offenses. In a subsequent (and apparently unauthorized) search of the couple's trunk, the trooper discovered a backpack containing $180,975 in cash.

Smith and her boyfriend denied the money was theirs and speculated that someone had left it in the car they had rented just a few hours earlier. But when prosecutors petitioned the state to keep the money, Smith contested the seizure, arguing that the search in which Trooper James Lass discovered the cash was illegal.

Van Buren County Circuit Judge William Buhl agreed, but eventually ruled the prosecutor's forfeiture suit could proceed, so long as the cash was never offered as evidence. When Smith, who had never earned more than $14,000 in a year, offered vague and unconvincing accounts of the money's origins, Buhl concluded that she was most likely a drug courier and ordered the money forfeited to the state.

Now I agree that Smith acted suspiciously and couldn't provide a good explanation of where the money came from. I'll even agree that she's most likely a drug courier. She also lost some standing by first denying that the money was hers.

But that's not the point. Before the government can seize private property, they should have to prove that it is tainted or ill-gotten. It's not up to the individual to prove the money is legitimately theirs; it's up to the government to prove it's not.

Question Smith about the money? Sure. Prosecute her if a crime can be established? Of course. I'd even support putting the money in the state's unclaimed funds account on the grounds that Smith denied it was hers, so she doesn't have a claim to it.

But taking property simply because, in a judge's opinion, someone is "most likely" a drug courier should offend anyone who believes in civil liberties or property rights.

You don't even have to go that far. Justice Stephen Markman, the state Supreme Court's most conservative member, wrote a stinging dissent on the narrow grounds that illegally obtained evidence cannot be used as evidence to support the seizure of said evidence. Here's the full opinion in the case (pdf); Markman's dissent begins on Page 30. In it he notes the bizarre logic used in the main opinion, which asserts that "while the cash itself was excluded from evidence, the trial court could properly consider the implications of the presence of such a large amount of cash in the vehicle." In other words, though the cash itself was excluded from evidence, the cash itself could be included as evidence.

The upshot:

Oak Park attorney Karri Mitchell, who represented Smith in her unsuccessful appeal, said the high court's ruling leaves every Michigan resident's property rights in jeopardy.

"This means that John Q. Public can be stopped for a traffic violation and, if the policeman thinks he can't afford the watch he's wearing, it becomes the property of the state unless he can prove he came by it legitimately," Mitchell said.

But Van Buren County Assistant Prosecutor Michael Bedford, who at one point offered Smith about $30,000 to drop her claim to the $180,000, called Mitchell's scenario far-fetched.

"Theoretically, a person could be forced to prove they came by an [illegally seized] asset legally," Bedford conceded.

"But hopefully, we don't have anybody out there abusing the forfeiture statute and putting people in a position where they have to do that."

Oh, I feel safer already, knowing that the state's best defense is that "hopefully, nobody will abuse the statute."

civil liberties, politics, midtopia

The rhetorical war in Iraq

Last week, the administration released an intelligence summary that warns Al-Qaeda is getting stronger.

The president pointed to this as proof that Iraq is central to fighting AQ. Asked if the report actually demonstrates that Bush's efforts to defeat AQ aren't working, he replied that things would be far worse if he hadn't invaded Iraq.

Mull that over for a second. It's a rhetorical get-out-of-jail-free card. You're Bush, and six years later things are getting worse, not better. No problem! Just claim that things would really be dire if not for your brilliant leadership. It's a completely unrefutable claim, because you can't rewind history and try again.

Unfortunately for Bush, such a bald assertion relies heavily on his credibility on security matters. And he has (charitably) almost none left. He's made so many blithe assertions that have turned out to be flat wrong that nobody believes him anymore.

This ties in with Bush's continuing efforts to tie our opponents in Iraq to 9/11. During a speech at the end of June, he noted that the people we're fighting in Iraq "are the people that attacked us on September the 11th."

Except that for the most part, they aren't. Al Qaeda in Iraq is a mostly local group that arose in 2003 in response to our invasion of Iraq. It has established some contacts with AQ Central and pledged it's loyalty to AQ. But they are at best a local franchisee using the AQ brand name. They are not the people, or even the same group, that attacked us in 2001. Further, they represent only a small portion of the combatants in Iraq.

No matter how you slice it, painting Iraq as a war on Al-Qaeda is a flat lie. "War on Islamic extremism" might be closer to the truth, and even that doesn't encompass the growing, unrelated sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni.

As far as AQ goes, invading Iraq did nothing but help them. Sure, we're killing a few insurgents and jihadists, and some of them are truly bad people. But we haven't hurt AQ at all. Instead, we've given them a major recruiting tool and a place for jihadists of all stripes to hone their tactics -- tactics that are starting to show up in Afghanistan. AQ itself sits fat, happy and generally safe in the tribal regions of Pakistan.

Speaking of which, it was a hopeful sign when Pakistani troops stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad. Any government that wants to be taken seriously simply cannot allow armed groups to challenge them, and the extremists in Pakistan have simply gotten bolder and louder in the absence of government pressure. Gen. Pervez Musharraf's born-of-necessity truce with extremists bought temporary stability in Pakistan, but it gave extremists a safe haven that has helped destabilize Afghanistan.

Now tribal leaders have renounced the truce, with accompanying violence, and Musharraf is moving thousands of troops into the region to try to keep order. Sucky as it is for him, it's good for us. Fighting with Pakistani troops diverts resources the Taliban would otherwise focus on Afghanistan; the military incursion disrupts their rest and training operations; and Musharraf's survival is increasingly tied to defeating the insurgents. All these things should help -- assuming Musharraf both survives and doesn't cut another deal.

On the downside, the fighting could spur more tribal members to join the fight against either us or Musharraf. But at least we're attacking a known insurgent stronghold, not galavanting off on a distracting adventure in, say, Iraq.

A fight like this -- against known extremists in known extremist areas -- is the kind of fight I and many others can support. It may be hard, it may be bloody, but there's no doubt about who the enemy is or why we're fighting them.

Which puts the lie to one final Bush rationalization. On Thursday he referred to the American people's "war fatigue", as if we're all wrung out by four years of fighting.

Maybe he just means people are tired of the war. But the "war fatigue" locution rings strongly of a paternalistic displacement of blame. The war's fine; people are just (understandably, but wrongly) getting "fatigued" by it.

Framed as such, the idea of "war fatigue" is nonsense. The term calls to mind a society stretched by privation, the way the French were wrung out by the end of World War I -- economy in shambles, bled white by the carnage at the front. But as far as Iraq goes, what's there to be fatigued about? The war simply doesn't impact your average citizen except as headlines and images on TV. Bush has borrowed the money to fight it; the war has been accompanied by tax cuts, not tax hikes. It's being fought with a volunteer military, and most Americans don't actually know anybody who has served, much less anyone who was killed or wounded. The military death toll, while the highest since Vietnam, is still pretty small measured by population or even a percentage of soldiers in theater.

People aren't tired of the war on terror; they are tired of the war in Iraq. But it's not because of the strain it has put on society. It's because the war has been shown to be a misbegotten idea badly executed, a mind-bogglingly expensive waste of resources, lives and national prestige.

While Al-Qaeda recovered and grew stronger. Nice work, Mr. President.

Iraq, terrorism, politics, midtopia

D.C Madam update

Two new names have supposedly popped up in the D.C. Madam phone records, but both have problems.

One is Jack Burkman, a GOP lobbyist and conservative pundit who once worked for Focus on the Family. This wouldn't be particularly surprising, given a reported history of propositioning young women. Thus far, though, the claim is limited to a single somewhat obscure web site -- though one that appears to have a copy of the Madam's phone log in its possession. Burkman denies it.

The other is Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the legendary Senate Democrat. His number was found by online journalist David Corn. The problem is that the number match is tenuous -- appearing only on a single brochure put out by an environmental group in 1999. One would expect a number associated with the senator to leave more footprints. Even if the number did belong to Moynihan's office, the client could have been an aide or a visitor -- or it could have been Palfrey calling up to complain about her taxes or something.

Corn goes on to provide a good rundown of the difficulties in finding unambiguous links in the phone records.

Palfrey, Burkman, Moynihan, politics, midtopia

Vitter roundup

In today's Vitter news (shown above with Rudy Giuliani during a visit to New Orleans):

E.J. Dionne, of all people offers a limited defense of Vitter. I heartily agree, except for the part about giving conservative hypocrites a complete pass. Don't go overboard, but point out the hypocrisy.

Best line in the piece comes courtesy of a conservative:

Kate O'Beirne, the conservative writer, deserves a place in the annals of political commentary for her remark on the divorce rate among the top Republican presidential contenders. She noted that the only one with "only one wife would be the Mormon," Mitt Romney.

Ignoring Dionne's advice, Lousiana Democrats plan to call for Vitter's resignation. That's a mistake that will come back to bite them in the long run -- particularly because this is Louisiana.

Meanwhile, Sen. Jim DeMint says he's talked to Vitter, who is apparently at home with his family, and the senator plans to return to work on Tuesday.

Vitter, politics, midtopia

Christian intolerance

It's not quite the same thing as detonating car bombs in crowded marketplaces, but this week has been a reminder that religious intolerance isn't restricted to certain religions or countries.

From Dyre Portents:

Did somebody make this International Religious Intolerance Week and forget to notify the calender makers?

I opened on the fifth with Of Paganism and Pundits,followed that with a post about Christians trying to firebomb another Christian church, then two days ago the Pope declared that all other churches weren't true churches, and today we have this:

"This" being members of a Christian anti-abortion group heckling a Hindu priest delivering the invocation in the Senate chamber on Thursday, saying it was a "false prayer" and asking Jesus' forgiveness for "allowing a prayer of the wicked." Here's the video:


Their group, Operation Save America, then issued a press release:

The Senate was opened with a Hindu prayer placing the false god of Hinduism on a level playing field with the One True God, Jesus Christ. This would never have been allowed by our Founding Fathers.

Not one Senator had the backbone to stand as our Founding Fathers stood.

Yeah, because the Founding Fathers, as we all know, were flaming religious zealots who expressed nothing but contempt for nonChristian beliefs....

I'm sure this display of stupidity and intolerance will do wonders for this group's cause, not to mention their eventual disposition in the afterlife.

religion, politics, midtopia

WIlson/Plame open thread

For JP5 to discuss Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame.

Some links for reference:

The column Nicholas Kristof wrote after meeting with Wilson and Plame in May 2003.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report from July 2004.

The letter Wilson wrote in response to the Senate report.

A transcript of the first half of Valerie Plame's testimony before the House Oversight Committee in March 2007. It's in two parts. (Part I, Part II), as well as overall highlights and her opening statement.

A Washington Post story that clarifies what the CIA spokesman told Robert Novak about Plame.

politics, midtopia

The perils of victimhood

Over at BlogCritics, an American English teacher in Japan has an interesting post about the similar ways in which Japan and America selectively embrace their history.

Many Japanese, she says, "tend to talk as if World War II started in August 1945." By this she means they focus on the harm they suffered in the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, not what their country did to others in the years before that. "It is the rare Japanese who brings up Pearl Harbor," she notes.

But America (and most nations and people) suffers from the same myopia. In America's case its a myopia about our modern Pearl Harbor, 9/11. While we (rhetorically) ask "why do they hate us?" we apparently aren't all that interested in the answer, preferring to think (in Japanese fashion) that world history began anew on September 11.

When libertarian Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul suggested in a debate that 9/11 didn’t happen in a vacuum and that we would do well to consider the consequences of U.S. actions overseas, he was pounced on by the other candidates.... Apparently, considering the causes of terrorism is not a possibility.

This isn't a new argument, of course. But the comparison with Japanese historical amnesia is an interesting twist that may lend some clarity. That comparison is not perfect -- Japan's role in its own demise was clear and within the established understanding of a conventional war, while our role in the causes of 9/11 are more indirect, subjective and murky. But the root point is the same: A general disinterest in what came before, especially any attempt to turn the camera on ourselves.

Such self-examination does not excuse the atrocity -- nothing does. But it would help explain how those 19 hijackers came to be aboard airplanes in the United States -- as opposed to, say, France or Britain -- on that brilliant fall day. Understanding the logic is the key to combating it; we cannot be assured of preventing another 9/11 until we understand what led to the first one.

terrorism, 9-11, Japan, politics, midtopia

It's the hypocrisy, stupid

A group blog I recently added to my blogroll, Buck Naked Politics, has a lengthy and thoughtful post on the Vitter scandal, noting that it's the hypocrisy, not the act, that people criticize the most.

A taste:

I don't actually care what people get up to in the privacy of their own marriages or elsewhere with one or more consenting adults, and am prepared to feel sympathetic if they overstep, get caught out, and suffer public humiliation.

But when someone tries to impose religious and ethical values on me by writing them into law, they should expect me to assume that they at least have those values themselves.

The moment for David Vitter to stop pushing his religious/marriage agenda was the moment, whenever it was, that he himself acted in a manner that violated the sanctity of marriage, an institution he claims to consider sacred.

One reason people were willing to forgive Bill Clinton for his Oval Office assignation is that he never tried to lecture others about sex and infidelity. That didn't make his infidelity okay, but it meant he wasn't a hypocrite. And it helped that he compartmentalized well: his private failings didn't seem to have much effect on his ability to execute his public duties.

Many social conservatives actually live their values. But a distressing number of them publicly profess one thing while living another. Another (small-bore) example emerged yesterday: The arrest of Florida State Rep. Bob Allen (and state co-chairman for the McCain campaign) for soliciting a sex act from a male undercover officer. Allen received an "A" from the Christian Coalition in 2005-06, based in part on votes in favor of interfering in the Schiavo case and making "In God we Trust" the state motto.

Anyway, give the link a read.

Vitter, Bob Allen, politics, midtopia

Science bits, dead animal edition

Some notable stories for science fans:

A Siberian reindeer herder discovered the frozen body of a 10,000-year-old baby mammoth, with trunk, eyes, organs and fur intact. Scientists estimate the female was six months old when she died. They plan to take DNA samples, part of an effort to map the mammoth genome. This could eventually lead to cloning a mammoth, resurrecting them from the dead.


Further south and several millennium later, a rare giant squid washed up on a beach in Australia. 26 feet long and weighing 550 pounds, It's one of the largest specimens ever found. Giant squid are deepwater creatures, so they're very hard to observe. It wasn't until 2005 that a live one was photographed, and 2006 before a squid was captured (photo, above) -- but it died from injuries sustained in the process.

And while this doesn't involve a dead animal (unless you want to metaphorically refer to NASA's creaking manned space program), here's a cool tale of a lone inventor, Peter Homer, who created a better space glove in his garage -- besting NASA's own design and winning $200,000.

Peter Homer, NASA, squid, mammoth, science, midtopia

Libby v. Rich

There's a hue and a cry in certain parts of the polity over the Congressional interest in President Bush's commutation of Lewis Libby's jail sentence. The basic theme: Libby deserved a pardon, not just a commutation, and Bush's action was clearly on the up-and-up. So Congress shouldn't investigate the matter, and if they do Bush should claim executive privilege and tell them to sod off.

Oh, and there are the claims of hypocrisy, seeing as how Clinton's rash of last-minute pardons barely raised any Democratic eyebrows.

That last charge has a ring of truth to it. Democrats often are loath to criticize a Democratic president, just as Republicans often are loath to criticize a Republican. They tend to express their opposition through lack of support, not active criticism. It's why divided government is a generally a good thing: neither party can be trusted to police itself.

That said, Clinton's pardons drew bipartisan criticism -- particularly his pardon of Marc Rich, which hardly anybody defended. Likewise, even many Libby sympathizers think Bush was wrong to completely eliminate his jail term.

Starting with that similarity, let's compare the Libby case with the Rich case and see where we end up.

Bush: Commuted the sentence of a man convicted of lying to investigators looking into possible illegal actions in the White House, raising suspicions of a coverup and a commutation based on connections, not the facts of the case.
Clinton: Pardoned a fugitive whose wife was a major Democratic donor, raising suspicions of a "pardons for cash" deal and pardon based on connections, not the facts of the case.

Bush: Commuted Libby's sentence without consulting the Justice Department, the prosecutor in the case or going through normal channels.
Clinton: Pardoned Rich without consulting the Justice Department, the prosecutor in the case or going through normal channels.

Bush: Has claimed executive privilege to prevent subpoenaing of aides and documents.
Clinton: Waived executive privilege, allowing Congressional investigators to subpoena aides and documents.

Bush: Nearly silent on his reasoning for the commutation.
Clinton: Wrote a New York Times op-ed piece defending his pardon.

Bush: Faces the prospect of multiple hearings and press conferences from Congress over the commutation.
Clinton: Endured multiple Congressional hearings and press conferences over the pardon, culminating in a lengthy report from the House subcommittee chaired by Rep. Dan Burton.

Bush: No special prosecutor -- yet.
Clinton: Endured an investigation from a special prosecutor, first Mary Jo White and then the ubiquitous James Comey, who eventually closed all the probes without seeking an indictment.

So what we have today is a Democratic Congress acting almost exactly like a Republican Congress did in 2001.

I had and have no problem with the Republican investigations of the Rich pardon. The special prosecutor was a little over the top, but the hearings and criticism were well-deserved. It was yet another personal low point for Clinton in an administration that had many of them. It was yet one more example of Clinton's split personality -- so questionable personally, but so successful and popular on a policy and political level.

Similarly, though, I have no problem with the Democratic investigations of the Libby commutation. And I think Bush should follow Clinton's example and waive privilege in this case.

Bush himself, by the way, is laudably (if wrongly) consistent in this matter. He criticized the pardon in 2001, but didn't call for an investigation, saying Clinton had the right to do it. He later said it was "time to move on" -- partly out of fear that the continuing probes would hamper passage of his own political agenda. Bush's other main motive: a desire to preserve and expand the power of the executive branch, something not helped by a Congress questioning an enumerated Constitutional power.

Bush, Clinton, Marc Rich, Libby, politics, midtopia

Vitter goes missing

A day after acknowledging he had patronized an escort service, Sen. David Vitter is keeping a low profile. Invisible, actually. Not at his D.C. apartment, not at his office, and not on the Senate floor.

I'd hide out, too, if I was him. But he's still being paid by the taxpayers, so he'll need to show up for work at some point.

Also, remote as the possibility may be, I hope nothing has happened to him. He doesn't sound crazy enough to harm himself over something like this, and the criticism and laughter are well deserved. But I'll feel better when he's back in public view.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post has the details on how Vitter was exposed, with Larry Flynt confirming his role. More interesting to me is that the process is so laborious that going through the entire list of phone numbers is going to take a good long time unless someone throws some serious computing power at it. Expect revelations to dribble out over many months, with long waits in between.

ABC News delves into the psychology of hypocrisy, that special mental talent that lets powerful public figures say one thing while doing another. My favorite quote? "Often the people who speak loudest about something are trying to protect themselves from their own urges. They act out one way on the public stage, but inside they have this urge. They feel it's wrong, and outwardly, they're telling themselves it's wrong. It's as if they're having a conversation with themselves."

Let's apply that to the gay marriage debate, shall we?

Update: Vitter's office says he's "with his family" and will return to work soon.


hypocrisy, Vitter, politics, midtopia

White House muzzled Surgeon General

Stop me if this sounds familiar:

Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional committee today that top officials in the Bush administration repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

Dr. Carmona, who served as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, said White House officials would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues because of political concerns. Top administration officials delayed for years and attempted to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand tobacco smoke, he said in sworn testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

You have to sympathize with the administration when, as Stephen Colbert once put it, "the facts have an anti-Bush bias."

It gets better.

He was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of every speech he gave, Dr. Carmona said. He was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings, at least one of which included Karl Rove, the president’s senior political adviser, he said.

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to the Kennedy family.

“I was specifically told by a senior person, ‘Why would you want to help those people?’ ” Dr. Carmona said.

The full text of Carmona's opening statement (as well as video of the hearing and statements from two other former surgeon generals (C. Everett Koop and David Satcher) is available here. Some highlights are picked out in the committee's blog.

Can we just ignore everything said by this administration for the next 18 months? Pretend they're not in the room? Sell their stuff on eBay? Maybe a good shunning is what the White House needs in order for them to understand how sick we are of them politicizing everything.

surgeon general, Carmona, politics, midtopia

Did Gonzales lie to Congress again?

Let's take a look.

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Gonzales' defense? Well, he doesn't make one personally. But Justice officials laid out two main arguments:

He might not have read the reports. Setting aside whether that reflects poorly on his management of the agency, we get to a more germaine criticism: Maybe he shouldn't be making sweeping assertions to Congress if he hasn't actually examined the data in question.

The reported violations weren't "real" violations. By this, officials mean that the violations were more technicalities than actual abuses. And in some cases, this appears to be true: a mistyped phone number in a National Security Letter, for example, which led FBI agents to eavesdrop on the wrong phone line.

Considering Gonzales talked about "abuses" to Congress at the 2005 hearing (he doesn't mention them in his opening statement (pdf), but gets into it a little bit in the full testimony) it appears that he didn't actually lie -- assuming he actually read the reports, and they didn't contain any "verified" instances of abuse. Mistakes and good-faith misjudgments don't really qualify as abuse, though they can be problematic in and of themselves: One reason not to give government sweeping powers is because of the damage such mistakes can cause, and a claim of "it was a mistake" can be used to cover up actual abuses.

Should Gonzales have acknowledged some bureaucratic mishaps? Arguably, yes. But that's not what he was being asked about, and a certain number of mistakes are to be expected in any human endeavor. So unless better evidence emerges about what Gonzales knew at the time of his testimony, accusing him of lying simply isn't supported by the known facts.

Update: A pair of senior Justice Department officials, James Baker and Kenneth Wainstein, said they routinely informed Gonzales about problems with FBI surveillance efforts. But they did not cite instances of "abuse" of the Patriot Act powers. However careful Gonzales may have been with his language, there's still no evidence he lied, or that at the time he knew about anything more than routine bureaucratic slipups that were not the kind of problems Congress was concerned about.

Patriot Act, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Democrats move to defund Cheney

I thought Rep. Rahm Emmanuel was just engaging in political rhetoric when he suggested cutting off money for the Office of the Vice President because Dick Cheney had declared that the office wasn't part of the executive branch. His amendment to do so was handily defeated.

But over in the Senate, Democrats apparently took him seriously.

A Senate appropriations panel chaired by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., refused to fund $4.8 million in the vice president's budget until Cheney's office complies with parts of an executive order governing its handling of classified information.

While amusing, this is wrong on several levels.

First, Congress really has no business trying to force an executive agency to follow an executive order -- which, after all, is an order issued at the sole discretion of the president, to be enforced if and as he sees fit (or, as in this case, to be ignored, by pretending the plain language in the EO doesn't include the White House or vice president, even though it clearly does). Congress can use its investigative authority to embarrass the administration, but has no power to compel action. And it shouldn't use its funding powers in an attempt to get around that.

Second, the vice presidency is a Constitutional office, not a statutory one. While that does not entitle Cheney to whatever funding he wants, Congress has an obligation to provide sufficient funding for such an office to do its job.

Third, it's a waste of time.

The Democrats get points for style, but this is bad policy. Put the funding back in.

Durbin, Cheney, politics, midtopia

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