Senate rejects "pay as you go"

The Senate yesterday rejected a "pay as you go" amendment to the 2007 budget.

The vote was 50-50. The 50 "no" votes? All Republican.

Pay as you go is a simple concept: if you want to cut taxes or increase spending, you have to find offsetting spending cuts or tax increases so that the deficit does not increase. We had it for much of the 1990s, but Congress let it lapse in 2002. It pretty much forces fiscal discipline on Congress, which has demonstrated time and again that it needs exactly this sort of cudgel in order to be fiscally responsible.

Republicans as the party of fiscal discipline? Please. The Democrats might be more willing to raise taxes, but at least they don't think it's perfectly fine to spend money we don't have.


paygo, deficit, Senate, budget, politics, midtopia

The military, present and future

Two interesting bits on military recruiting -- one examining a myth, one painting a bleak picture of the future.

In the March issue of Reason magazine, Tim Cavanaugh reports on a Heritage Foundation study that appears to explode the myth of a poor-man's military.

The largest group of new recruits in 2003—18 percent—came from neighborhoods with average annual household incomes of $35,000 to $40,000, compared to a median household income of $43,318. In all, the top two income quintiles (comprising households with incomes starting at $41,688) produced 45 percent of all recruits in 2003. A mere 5 percent came from neighborhoods with average incomes below $20,000 per household.

The study itself is available here. But interestingly enough, the National Priorities Project analyzed the same data and came to a different conclusion.

Nearly two-thirds of all recruits (64%) were from counties with median household incomes below the US median. About one-third were from counties with a higher median household income. All of the top 20 counties had a median household income below the national median household income.
* 19 out of the top 20 counties had lower median household incomes than their respective state median household incomes. (As a whole, the county-level incomes averaged 70% of the state median income levels.)
* 15 of the top 20 counties had higher poverty rates than the national average.
* 11 of the top 20 counties had higher child poverty rates than the national average.
* 16 of the top 20 counties had higher child poverty rates than the state average.
* 18 of the top 20 had higher poverty rates than the state average.

Subsequently, both organizations offered dueling arguments about who was right here and here.

So who is right?

The answer appears to be "neither." The undisputed facts are these:

1. Households with income under $20,000 are underrepresented;
2. Housholds with income of $20,000 to $25,000 are proportionally represented;
3. Households with incomes of $25,000 to $55,000 are overrepresented;
4. Households with incomes over $55,000 are underepresented.

One problem is that the same "household income" can mean widely varying standards of living, depending on family size. A single person making $30,000 is doing far better than if that same $30,000 has to provide for a family of four.

There's also the imprecision of the data. An area's median household income doesn't reveal which households that area's recruits are coming from; they may be coming from an unrepresentative sample of the area's population -- disproportionately poor or minority, for example.

That said, the above data suggests a few things:

1. It makes sense that the poorest households are underrepresented, because the very poor are less likely to meet military standards, be it because of poor schools, physical problems or a criminal record.

2. The wealthiest households are underrepresented because the wealthy have far more options, and because they're more likely to go to college than enlist.

3. In between those two extremes, the share of recruits increases as income increases -- but only to a point.

The conclusion seems clear to me. The military is primarily working poor and lower middle-class. This reflects the convergence of educational attainment and economic incentives in those income brackets. Income levels are low enough to make the military an attractive option, but high enough that potential recruits are more likely to meet military standards. Heritage's claim of a "middle-class" military is overreaching; NPP's claim of an army of the poor likewise hyperbolizes.

One other thing the studies agree on is that while rural areas are slightly overrepresented, four out of five recruits come from urban and suburban areas. That may help explain why so few of the next generation of young adults are considered potential recruits:

The military doesn't want most people in the prime recruiting age group of 17 to 24.

Of some 32 million Americans in this group, the Army deems the vast majority too overweight, too uneducated, too flawed in some way, according to its estimates for the current budget year.

The projected pool shrinks to 13.6 million when only high school graduates and those who score in the upper half on a military service aptitude test are considered.

Other reasons for exclusion: obesity, a lack of physical fitness, the use of Ritalin and other stimulants to treat attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders, other medical problems, criminal histories, and having too many dependents.

That leaves 4.3 million fully qualified potential recruits and an estimated 2.3 million more who might qualify if given waivers for certain problems. Fifteen percent of recruits received such waivers in the last federal budget year.

That's long-term bad news. From those 6.6 million potential recruits, the military has to get enough soldiers to fill its 1.2-million-soldier ranks. For the Army that means 80,000 recruits a year. That means the Army just needs to get 1.2% of the eligible recruits to sign, and they're sitting pretty. But last year the Army missed its recruiting targets.

If you ever wanted to know how few people join the military, that should tell you. The ongoing war in Iraq isn't helping, but military recruiters are getting the sort of low response rates usually reserved for spam or cold-calling. And as more and more of our population ends up in urban/suburban areas, and obesity rates increase, that pool of potential recruits will continue to shrink.

It may be hard to believe, but in a generation the world's last superpower may find it difficult to field a military as large as North Korea's.


NPP, Heritage Foundation, recruiting, military, politics, midtopia

Why an independent press is important

If you ever want an example of why we should not allow the government to regulate the press, here's one.

Douglas County Coordinator Bill Schalow last Monday sent an eight-point protocol to Echo Press reporter Erin Klegstad, requesting that she submit stories to his office for accuracy checks and go through the office to set up interviews.

"If you willfully ignore this request," it concluded, "or fail to cooperate and comply without contacting me first regarding your concerns, your actions could result in a total system 'gag' and limit your interaction with the county to the coordinator's office only."

Klegstad - who had to call Schalow to find out if he was serious (he said he was) - showed the e-mail to Al Edenloff, the paper's editor.

"I was shocked," Edenloff said. "I thought it was the most ridiculous document I'd ever read. ... We do not need our stories to be pre-authorized, prearranged or sanitized. We're the watchdogs, not them."

The Minnesota Newspaper Association's attorney, Mark Anfinson, said the protocol seemed to violate not only the First Amendment but also the state's open records law.

"This is something you would have expected to see behind the Iron Curtain," Anfinson said. "I told (Edenloff) that the best remedy for this would be a story, that it wouldn't stand the light of day."

That's what happened. When the news broke, the public was infuriated, and some county leaders who hadn't seen the policy said they didn't support it. Schalow quickly backed off.

Irritated as we can sometimes get about perceived excesses by an out-of-control press, the alternative is worse. It's quite refreshing that the citizens of Douglas County not only recognize that, but felt it was important enough to do something about it.


censorship, Minnesota, watchdog, free press, politics, midtopia

When your own rhetoric is turned against you

As a critic of the Iraq war, I get very tired of war supporters claiming that just about any criticism is akin to treason because it emboldens the enemy to keep fighting.

So I was very amused when I read this article on U.S. ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad that included the following:

MR. Khalilzad, who is known as both a strategic thinker and a skilled political operator, may have put himself in the middle of this maelstrom shortly before the Samarra shrine bombing. He had begun to sharply criticize Shiite leaders for sectarian killings carried out at the Interior Ministry, hinting that the United States might withdraw its support if Iraq's security forces were not reformed. Those remarks prompted Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Shiite alliance, to declare that Mr. Khalilzad was partly responsible for the attack, because his words had emboldened Sunni terrorists.

I'm sure war supporters will see the illogic in al-Hakim's assertion. Will they recognize the parallel illogic in their own version of the same claim?

Khalilzad, terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Putting Iraq's WMDs to rest

For the people who still cling to the belief that Iraq had WMDs, today's New York Times will not be welcome.

In an article about Iraq during the runup to to the war, based on a secret military history derived from captured documents and interrogations of high-level officials, we learn that Iraq didn't have WMDs, gave full access to inspectors and did its best to destroy any remnants of old programs that might exist.

In other words, "muscular inspections" -- coercing intrusive inspections backed by the credible threat of force -- worked. Or would have, if we would have let it.

The relevant bits:

In December 2002, he told his top commanders that Iraq did not possess unconventional arms, like nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, according to the Iraq Survey Group, a task force established by the C.I.A. to investigate what happened to Iraq's weapons programs. Mr. Hussein wanted his officers to know they could not rely on poison gas or germ weapons if war broke out. The disclosure that the cupboard was bare, Mr. Aziz said, sent morale plummeting.

To ensure that Iraq would pass scrutiny by United Nations arms inspectors, Mr. Hussein ordered that they be given the access that they wanted. And he ordered a crash effort to scrub the country so the inspectors would not discover any vestiges of old unconventional weapons, no small concern in a nation that had once amassed an arsenal of chemical weapons, biological agents and Scud missiles, the Iraq survey group report said.

The inspectors reported that they were getting unprecedented access, and finding nothing. All we had to do was wait a couple of months for them to finish their work, and war could have been avoided.

Instead, we ordered the inspectors out so we could invade.

Perhaps toppling Saddam was a worthwhile objective in its own right. But the cost/benefit ratio of such a move was highly questionable. In any event that should have been its own discussion, not something now used to retroactively justify an unwarranted mistake.


Saddam, WMD, iraq, politics, midtopia

Equality ride gets results

A group of college students is traveling to 19 Christian colleges that have anti-gay admission policies, in something called the Equality Ride.

The response has generally been pretty good.

Ten of the 18 schools on Equality Ride's itinerary have agreed to have riders on their campuses and are working with organizers to plan events.

More than 100 students at Christian and military schools have e-mailed their support for the ride. Some volunteered help. Others asked for T-shirts.

Professors at the schools have opened class discussions on church policies toward GLBT students.

Oklahoma Baptist University slightly altered its official policy: It still bans gay students but no longer threatens to expel straight students who support gay rights.

Twenty U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen signed a petition that they were willing to serve with gay military personnel; closeted gay students, including one midshipman, called Equality Ride asking for outside support or counseling.

The one notable exception: Jerry Falwell's Liberty University:

As he stepped from the sidewalk onto university property, Reitan, 24, read a speech saying riders had come to foster understanding. As police arrested him, the next rider picked up reading where he left off. By the time all 24 were arrested, the entire text had been read.

I like this because it's a civil approach, involving dialogue instead of mere protest. I doubt it will change many minds, but it's important to be able to talk to people with whom you have fundamental disagreements.


civil rights, religion, Christian, politics, gay, midtopia

Privacy vs. openness, continued

Following up on this post, the Star Tribune's reader representative, Kate Parry, lays out the case for preserving public access to government information.

A pitch-perfect quote from Thomas Ellington, a political science professor at Wesleyan College, turned up recently that crystalized why we've all got a stake in keeping our government -- the one we elect and pay for with our taxes -- as open to scrutiny as possible:

"It is certainly not the case that every secret hides a crook or a fool. But it is true that incompetence and corruption will always seek to cloak themselves in secrecy."

She doesn't stop there. She gives examples of the sort of stories the newspaper has done that relied on public records -- stories that might be impossible to do if Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Attorney General Mike Hatch get their way.

The privacy issue looks like it's being fast-tracked through the Legislature. If you care about holding our government responsible, call your representatives and tell them so.


Hatch, Pawlenty, privacy, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Shakeup at conservative think tank

The Center for the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis, has fired its CEO and five other top staff members.

The departures include: Annette Meeks as the center's president and CEO; Corey Miltimore as its director of media research and study; Randy Wanke as communications director; Chris Tiedeman as director of government affairs and MinnesotaVotes.org; Ryan Griffin as development director; and Jonathan Blake as research fellow.

In the two years since Meeks took over, the center became more of an advocacy group than a policy group, pushing various initiatives like a "legislative watchdog" and providing resources for conservative college students to combat "liberal bias" in academia.

Apparently the main reason for the shakeup was that the new approach was costing a lot of money. The center is a nonprofit, and donations were down, so income wasn't keeping up with expenses.

This is probably a good thing. As a pure think tank, the center is able to contribute more to political discussion that it can by pursuing a handful of high-profile partisan initiatives. We have enough partisan advocacy organizations; what we need are more thoughtful organizations developing fleshed-out ideas for dealing with the issues confronting us.

Now if only the Taxpayer's League would develop serious funding issues. That's one group that can't go belly-up fast enough for me.


Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Early 2008 Republican contenders

Republican activists in Tennessee held a straw poll to test the appeal of possible presidential candidates.

The delegates were voting in an informal straw poll to test the popularity of White House hopefuls including those in attendance — Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Sen. George Allen of Virginia, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee.

Not exactly the full selection of candidates, but it'll be interesting to see how the votes go. I'm not thrilled with most of the options. Frist is a buffoon and Brownback is too conservative. Romney and Huckabee are decent governors and Allen's resume is respectable, but I don't know enough about any of them to draw a conclusion yet.

John McCain continues to disappoint:

McCain planned to urge his backers to write in President Bush's name as a show of support.

"In the next three years, with the country at war, he's our president and the only one who needs our support today," McCain said. The pro-Bush audience applauded the senator, who went out of his way to back the president's policies on Iraq, Iran,
Social Security, the line-item veto and the controversy over port security.

So much for being a maverick.

All in all, I'm still liking Hagel among the Republicans.


Hagel, Romney, Frist, McCain, Allen, Huckabee, Brownback, politics, midtopia

Another Mars probe arrives

Another Mars probe achieved orbit around the Red Planet on Friday.

Scientists cheered after the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter emerged from the planet's shadow and signaled to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that the maneuver was a success.

The two-ton spacecraft is the most sophisticated ever to arrive at Mars and is expected to gather more data on the Red Planet than all previous Martian missions combined.

It will explore Mars in low orbit for two years and is expected to churn out the most detailed information ever about the planet. In the fall, the orbiter will begin exploring the Martian atmosphere, scan the surface for evidence of ancient water and scout for future landing sites to send robotic and possibly human explorers.

What I'm most excited about is the ground-penetrating radar that can look for underground water and ice.

And coming up:

It is expected to serve as a communication relay for the Phoenix Mars Scout, which will explore the icy north pole in 2008 and the Mars Science Laboratory, an advanced rover scheduled to launch in 2009.

Let's get it on.


science, space, Mars, NASA, midtopia

What to do about Iran

After several years of fixating on Iraq, the Bush administration is finally waking up to the nuclear ambition of Iran.

Some observers argue that a confrontation with Iran may be politically helpful to Bush, giving him a chance to demonstrate leadership and regain some of the lost luster on his security credentials. But there are a lot of little things that will probably prevent it from rescuing his reputation.

Any confrontation with Iran will point up:

1. How much of our military capability is tied up in Iraq, leaving us unable to do much more than saber-rattle against real threats;

2. How much Bush ignored Iran in the last several years;

3. How passive Bush has been even in recent months, letting the Europeans take the lead in dealing with the problem.

So what can we do?

Our policy begins with an unwavering bottom line: Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. It's not just that they've signed the nonproliferation treaty; treaty or not, we would be foolish to let unstable states get nukes, and Iran grows more unstable every year.

However, we have to recognize Iran's legitimate interest in civilian nuclear power. A lot of people scoff at the idea of an oil-rich state needing nuclear energy, but they miss three points:

1. When the oil runs out it will run out for everyone, including suppliers;

2. As the price of oil climbs, every barrel of oil not used domestically is another barrel that can be sold for hard currency;

3. There may be remote places where it's more efficient to build a nuclear plant than run a pipeline or transmission towers.

As far as options, we begin with negotiations, of course. The basic outline of the Russian offer -- providing closely-accounted-for nuclear fuel to Iran, so that Iran does not enrich any of its own -- is a good solution. Iran has some legitimate complaints about sovereignity, but they mostly lost the right to complain about that when they were caught redhanded with an illegal enrichment program. If they want civilian nuclear energy, there will be serious strings attached.

What happens if we fail to reach a diplomatic solution?

Invading Iran just isn't going to happen; it would be plain stupid. Iran doesn't pose much offensive threat, but they could shut down shipping in the Persian Gulf at least temporarily, and I wouldn't want to dig a few hundred thousand infantry out of those mountains. Never mind what China or Russia might do, or how much further we'd inflame the Middle East by knocking over yet *another* Muslim country -- this one full of Shiites, our erstwhile allies in Iraq.

Besides, we don't have enough troops to provide security in Iraq, population 27 million. How are we going to occupy Iran and its 70 million?

We can try sanctions, but sanctions alone are unlikely to solve the problem. And our experience in Iraq was that strict sanctions hurt the populace far more than it damaged Saddam.

If it comes to the last resort, the best way to deal with nuclear ambitions is through coercive, muscular inspections, backed by the *credible* threat of force:

Step 1: Establish a credible independent inspection regime under international auspices (not necessarily UN, but something that makes it clear this is not a U.S. operation).

Step 2: Get the inspectors in the country, with free access and the right to conduct unannounced surprise inspections. Part of the negotiations may well include "Let the inspectors in and give them free access or we will destroy anything we think is a nuclear facility." Then do so if they try to call our bluff.

Step 3: Once they're in, be consistent and deadly serious about enforcing their access. "Let the inspectors into this facility *right now* or we will bomb it" may be one tactic. Then do so if they try to call our bluff.

We won't necessarily find everything, and some facilities may be both hidden or buried so deeply that bombs can't reach. But that's okay. A nuclear weapon isn't something you can build in your basement. You need enrichment facilities, fabrication facilities, testing facilities... all of which leave a reasonably large footprint. Sufficiently intrusive inspections will make building a bomb prohibitively difficult and expensive.

bush, nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

A truly radical federal budget

The Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative GOP lawmakers, today released their version of the 2007 federal budget, titled "Contract with America: Renewed."

Their budget would cut the deficit by $358 billion over five years, compared with $60 billion in Bush's budget. But as you might imagine, the devil is in the details. Their proposal is a mixture of solid ideas and conservative fantasies.

NEUTRAL IDEAS

Increase defense spending to match Bush's request for 2007. Defense spending shouldn't be sacrosanct, but adequate funding is a must. Reserve judgement on this pending a detailed look at where the money goes.

Eliminate the Mars initiative and the space shuttle program. The Mars program is great, but not the way it's being funded: by gutting everything else NASA does. If the Mars mission doesn't come with extra money, it should die. The space shuttle needs to be retired, but we should have its replacement in hand before that happens.


BAD IDEAS

Gut foreign aid. This is a huge mistake. The war on terror demands *more* foreign aid spending, not less.

Dept. of Energy. Eliminate federal funding for energy conservation research, and arbitrarily cut the department's size by 35 percent. In an era of high oil prices and searches for alternatives, this makes little sense.

Interior and Agriculture. Arbitrarily cut the size of the Depts. of Interior and Agriculture by 10 percent and impose a wide variety of cuts in environment and natural resource programs, including eliminating the Energy Star program (that logo that lets you know if you're buying an energy-efficient appliance).

Transportation. Eliminate Amtrak and mass transit subsidies and transfer a whole bunch of responsibilities to the states, including railroad safety and regulation and (the biggie) highway construction spending. Eliminate the subsidies that maintain the U.S. merchant marine. Privatize the FAA.... Dumping funding on the states merely shifts responsibilities. Maintaining the merchant marine is a security issue. Privatizing the FAA would harm its regulatory function.

Deep cuts in education spending. Eliminate the Reading Is Fundamental program and programs to encourage learning a second language -- this at a time when a shortage of foreign-language speakers is hampering our security efforts. Freeze spending for Head Start. Eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities and cut the Dept. of Education by 30 percent.

Health. Cut National Institute of Health budget by 10 percent, eliminate family planning programs and turn Medicaid and SCHIP into a block-grant program -- cutting $36 billion a year from it in the process, largely by capping spending increases without regard to actual need.

Aid to the poor. Save $13 billion a year by arbitrarly restricting eligibility for Section 8 housing (cutting the number of vouchers in half) and eliminating heating-bill assistance for low-income households. Again, arbitrary cuts that evince no concern for the impact of those cuts.

Social Security. Doesn't touch Social Security at all. This may be politically expedient, but even minor tweaks -- raising the eligibility age and lowering the income limits for benefits, for example -- would save huge amounts of money.

GOOD IDEAS

Agriculture. Cut lots of subsidies and programs at the Dept. of Agriculture. The whole agricultural subsidy structure could be thrown overboard and the country would be better off for it.

Medicare. Cut $63 billion a year from Medicare, by raising premiums and means-testing benefits. This is a reasonable approach and politically courageous. But they also propose limiting cost increases to a percentage point below medical inflation. Hospitals and doctors are already reluctant to take Medicare because it pays so little; this will just make that worse.

Legislative reforms. They advocate a line-item veto, earmark reform, strict sunset provisions on most federal programs, a discretionary spending cap and restoring pay-as-you-go provisions. All of those are excellent ideas. Which raises the question: "why aren't they already in effect?"

Bad programs. One of the strengths of the document is specifically identifying a lot of wasteful or useless programs that could be eliminated. Doing so usually doesn't free up a great deal of money, but it should be done on principle. Of course, people will disagree on what's wasteful or useless. I would recommend establishing a bipartisan committee whose sole job was to eliminate bad programs. Objective criteria would be used whenever possible; a committee vote could settle more contentious cases, with a tie meaning the program lives.

Once you read the budget, you can see why they didn't trumpet the specifics. Budget cutting, of course, will require pain, and they do have some good ideas; but by ignoring defense and Social Security and heaping the cuts on social programs and other conservative pet peeves, they undermine their credibility. It's a start, but it's only a start.

Technorati tags
deficit, budget, politics, midtopia

Water found on Saturn moon

A NASA spacecraft has detected water on Saturn's moon Enceladus, raising the possibility that it could harbor life.

"Any life that existed could not be luxuriant and would have to deal with low temperatures, feeble metabolic energy and perhaps a severe chemical environment,'' said Jeffrey Kargel of the hydrology and water resources department at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "Nevertheless we cannot discount the possibility that Enceladus might be life's distant outpost.''

That makes three places in the solar system that are thought to have -- or have had -- liquid water: Mars, Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa.

I hope I live to see the day that we explore both Europa and Enceladus, and find out if life exists outside of Earth. But that requires adequate funding for NASA's space exploration program. Space probes are relatively cheap; it would be a real shame if budget concerns or the effort to mount a manned mission to Mars caused projects like this to fall by the wayside.

Technorati tags
Cassini, Mars, Saturn, space, NASA, extraterrestrial, Europa, Enceladus, politics, midtopia

Welcome to the 21st Century

The tiny island of Sark, in the English Channel, has decided to exchange feudalism for democracy.

After around 450 years of rule almost exclusively by landowners, the smallest independent state in the British commonwealth will allow each of the 600 residents to stand for election.

(snip)

Since around 1565, 40 heads of the island's farm owning families have raised taxes and decided on matters of law, part of an independence agreement brokered with Queen Elizabeth, after the English seized control of the island from France.

In 1920, 12 non-landowning deputies were appointed, voted for by all islanders over 18 -- the last concession made to democratic government.

I bet you didn't know there was an independent nation in the English Channel, much less a feudal one.

Still, the feudalism couldn't have been too bad. There were 40 landowners and 12 deputies overseeing an island of 600 people. That works out to one government official for every 12 people. Now *that's* representation!

The new system will cut that down to 28 officials, so representation will get diluted -- one representative for every 22 people. It still probably won't be too difficult to get an appointment with your elected legislator, though....

Technorati tags
Europe, feudalism, Sark, politics, midtopia

Give Bush the line-item veto

President Bush, who has yet to veto a single bill, has asked Congress for line-item veto authority.

He should get it. Though I doubt it will make much difference in his hands, given his lack of vetoes to date, it's one of the most effective ways to keep Congress from slipping bad legislation into "must pass" bills. It should be enshrined into law for the sake of future presidents who might actually use it.

Here's what Bush has proposed:

The legislation would allow the president to defer spending on items with which he disagrees, while signing the rest of a bill. Congress would then have 10 days to vote up or down on whether to fund the disputed items, without amendment or filibuster. Passage would be by majority, not the two-thirds margin traditionally required to override a veto.

It's a bit more cumbersome than most people would like, because it's trying to get around the problems with the last line-item veto, which the Supreme Court decided was unconstitutional in 1996. But it's probably the best we can do at the moment.

To *really* fix the problem would take a Constitutional amendment granting the president line-item authority. That's one of the few amendment proposals I could get behind.

Technorati tags
Bush, veto, politics, midtopia

Congress caves on NSA spying

A proposed Senate compromise would allow warrantless eavesdropping on Americans as long as the executive branch asserts it has probable cause.

The Republican proposal would give congressional approval to the eavesdropping program much as it was secretly authorized by Bush after the 2001 terrorist attacks, with limited notification to a handful of congressional leaders.

So much for holding the executive branch accountable.

The "probable cause" standard is better than the "reason to believe" standard the administration was using, but it's toothless because the administration will not have to prove "probable cause" before a court; they can just assert it.

Because the FISA court standard for issuing a warrant is also "probable cause", the only logical reason to bypass the court is because the executive branch doesn't think it's assertion of probable cause will stand up to scrutiny.

The bill does impose more Congressional oversight:

after 45 days, the attorney general would be required to drop the eavesdropping on that target, seek a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or explain under oath to two new subcommittees why it could not seek a warrant.

So what is essentially happening is that we're extending the period where the government can eavesdrop without a warrant from three days to 45. But instead of then having to prove its case before the FISA court, the administration can simply explain itself to a subcommittee. There's no indication that the subcommittee has any power to end a surveillance if the "probable cause" is found lacking. So there's really no effective limitation on government spying.

This is what impresses me the least:

the Republican senators who drafted the proposal said it represented a hard-wrung compromise with the White House, which strongly opposed any congressional interference in the eavesdropping program.

"The administration was intransigent, and this was the best we could do." Well, nonsense. Consulting the executive branch is a good idea, but Congress should be deciding for itself what the law should be and enacting it, not seeing how well they can do in negotiations with the executive branch. It's an abdication of power.

Congress should investigate the program and then have a full and open debate on how we should handle eavesdropping on Americans. This attempt to squelch the issue should be rejected.

Technorati tags
terrorism, nsa, eavesdropping, politics, midtopia

Redefining success

I found a couple of interesting takes on how we've begun defining success in Iraq: anything short of disaster.

Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune writes:

There is good news in Iraq: The chaos of recent days has not led to all-out civil war. At least not yet.

Never mind that one of the major Shiite religious shrines was blown up Feb. 22. Never mind that about 500 Iraqis have died in the ensuing frenzy of sectarian violence. Never mind that if this is not civil war, it's not very far from it. In Iraq, the Bush administration has learned to set the bar low: Avoiding the worst possible outcome now passes for success.

For nearly three years, Americans have been told that we are making progress in bringing stability and democratic government to Iraq. But that state of affairs, like the horizon, keeps receding as we approach. Lately, the carnage has been waxing, not waning. Last month, for example, Iraq suffered 39 "multiple fatality bombings." The previous February, there were 18.

But the administration feigns nonchalance about events that once would have been considered disastrous.

Some of that is human nature: as events occur, you reevaluate your objectives to account for the new reality. But only the most self-deluded continue to call a venture a "success" once you start doing that. So it's instructive to see how low the bar has fallen in the last three years.

WesPac -- Wesley Clark's political action committee -- had a similar but broader take back in December:

This President is unrivaled at using worst case scenarios to make himself look good. Here we are, three years after America invaded Iraq, and almost no Iraqis got slaughtered on their way to the polls. We have George Bush to thank for that.

(snip)

So what about Iraq? Almost everything that could possibly go wrong with our invasion of Iraq has gone wrong already. Almost yes, but not quite, which leaves George Bush plenty to still take credit for. Al Quada, essentially non-existent inside Iraq before our invasion, hasn't fully secured a theocratic terrorist free state within it's borders yet. Guess who takes credit for that?

To listen to George Bush is to enter an alternate universe in which everything that's failed so far is inconsequential, while any disaster not yet upon us is a tribute to his leadership, and a result of his steely resolve. The costs America pays for his misguided policies are always well worth it, because Bush doesn't calculate those costs against how little if anything America actually gains, he measures them against how much more we stand to lose in a worst case scenario, one that allegedly can only be averted through Bush's continuing leadership.

I'd never really thought about it in precisely those terms, but they have a point.

Technorati tags
Bush, terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Bush is channeling John Kerry

I was wondering if anyone else had noticed that Bush's current policy on Iran -- provide them with closely monitored nuclear fuel so they don't enrich it themselves -- is pretty much exactly what John Kerry suggested we do back in 2004. A suggestion, by the way, that was roundly panned by Republicans, who labeled it "appeasement."

Then I found this article in the New York Sun.

President Bush's endorsement of a plan to end the nuclear standoff with Iran by giving the Islamic republic nuclear fuel for civilian use under close monitoring has left some of his supporters baffled.

One cause for the chagrin is that the proposal, which is backed by Russia, essentially adopts a strategy advocated by Mr. Bush's Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts.

(snip)

Republican commentators accused the senator of favoring "appeasement" and warned that the Iranians could divert nuclear fuel to make bombs.

A Pentagon official under President Reagan, Frank Gaffney Jr., skewered the plan in a column entitled, "Kerry's Nuclear Nonsense." Mr. Gaffney, who did not return a call seeking comment for this story, declared, "Mr. Bush understands the folly of going that route."

Writing in National Review, a Defense Department official under President George H.W. Bush, Jed Babbin, called Mr. Kerry's proposal "ignorant" and "dangerously wrong."

Of course, now that Bush supports it, I'm sure these fine folks think it's a dandy idea.

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bush, kerry, iran, politics, midtopia

Half-mast in Minnesota

Kirby Puckett, perhaps the most beloved and well-known sports figure in Minnesota history, died yesterday of a stroke. He was 45.

He led the Twins to their World Series victories in 1987 and 1991 before glaucoma forced him to retire. He struggled a bit after that, but for many of us he will always be the smiling, hard-working example of what a baseball player should be.

RIP, Kirby.

Technorati tags
puckett, baseball, midtopia

Everyone should want the military on campus

The Supreme Court has ruled that colleges that accept federal money must allow military recruiters on campus. The case involved some law schools who had banned the recruiters because the military's policy on homosexuals violates the schools' own policies.

Justices rejected a free-speech challenge from law schools and their professors who claimed they should not be forced to associate with military recruiters or promote their campus appearances.

The ruling was unanimous, so there's not a lot of room for interpretation: if you want federal money, military recruiters come with it.

I sympathize with the schools to some extent. There's a fairness issue: Why should the military be exempt from rules that apply to every other recruiter or company that has access to a given school? In addition, there's the appearance of condoning discrimination.

But I bring another perspective to the case, having been commissioned through ROTC and witnessed the same debate and protests while I was in college in the late 1980s at the University of Minnesota.

First, let me be clear: I think the military's policy on gays is asinine, the discrimination both unfounded and unnecessary. The military has plenty of rules on conduct and fraternization that would maintain discipline even if soldiers were openly gay, just as they manage to maintain discipline in a military where heterosexual men and women serve alongside each other. And in an era when the military is having difficulty meeting recruiting goals, turning away thousands of otherwise qualified (in some cases, highly qualified) soldiers makes no sense from a national-security standpoint.

The problem, as I see it, is one of relative weight. Military access to college campuses is simply too important to be derailed by the military's gay policy. Protest? Fine. Work to change minds? Fine. Declare and demonstrate support for military gays? Of course. But banning ROTC and recruiters goes too far, doing real damage to our security and further isolating the military from mainstream society.

When I was in the military, 70 percent of officers received their commissions through ROTC -- including some of the brightest and best-educated soldiers. Simply put, that is an irreplaceable source of military leaders. If we ban ROTC and recruiters, we cripple the future of the military -- and thus our security.

A second point that opponents should consider is a bit more subversive. Soldiers recruited from college campuses tend to have a broader education and life exposure than those who are educated in the hothouses of service academies and military schools. They bring that with them into the military, forming the main part of what might be considered the "liberal" wing of the military. They help ensure that mainstream American values continue to be represented in military culture.

This is crucial, coming as it does at a time when fewer and fewer people know someone who is in the military. If military culture grows too separated from civilian culture we risk a "Prussification" of the military: turning it into an insular society led by elites that have little in common with the people whom they ostensibly serve. That would be a disaster on many levels.

The military must be given access to college students both to maintain our physical security and to save the military from itself.

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ROTC, recruiting, supreme court, military, politics, midtopia

Held for two years without trial

Amnesty International reports that of about 14,000 detainees in Iraq, nearly 4,000 have been imprisoned without charge for more than a year -- 200 of them for more than two years.

"To hold this huge number of people without basic legal safeguards is a gross dereliction of responsibility on the part of both the US and UK forces," said Amnesty UK director Kate Allen.

Many Iraqis report they were tortured or abused, often at the hands of Iraqi guards, not coalition forces.

Here's our response:

Each detainee is given a form explaining the reasons for their imprisonment and their files are reviewed every 90 to 120 days, U.S. detention command spokesman Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill told AP in an e-mail response to questions.

That seems woefully inadequate to me.

The allegations of torture are just that -- allegations. The sheer number of them indicate that the problem should be taken seriously, but allegations alone do not constitute proof of abuse.

What is undisputed is that we are holding people for years without charge. If they are prisoners of war, document it and transfer them to a POW camp where the Geneva Conventions apply. If they are not, then charge them in a timely manner or release them.

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amnesty, terrorism, iraq, politics, midtopia

The Oscars were last night?

I suspect I'm the only blogger on the Internet who didn't actually care.

After putting the kids to bed, I spent last night watching a tape of Wednesday's episode of "Lost" -- much closer to "must see" television, IMO. Then my wife got home, and we watched the tail end of the Oscars -- in between flipping over to "Scary Movie III".

My sole commentary: Reese Witherspoon blew it with that acceptance ramble.

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oscars, midtopia

More details on Gitmo detainees

Here are some excerpts from the Pentagon release showing detainee identities. What they released was not a list of names, but transcripts of "enemy combatant" hearings containing the names of the person being assessed. Apparently it only identifies 317 of the 420 or so current detainees, which undoubtedly will cause a continuing furor.

-Abdul Rahim Muslimdost was a journalist for newspapers and magazines in Pakistan. U.S. authorities accused the Afghani of belonging to a Muslim militant group. He admitted membership but said he joined to help drive the Russians out of his country. He denied the accusation he had an al-Qaida contact in the province of Herat. Unknown whether still in custody.

-Mohammed Gul, a farmer and gas station owner in his native Afghanistan, was captured and held on suspicion of links to Taliban forces about six weeks after returning home from Saudi Arabia, where he lived for three years and worked as a driver. He told the tribunal he returned to Afghanistan to take care of his sick wife, and he urged the tribunal to release him. "I don't want to spend any more time here, not one more minute," he said.

There's a lot more like that. Some are pretty interesting. There's no way to judge the validity of their claims from the excerpts, so take most of it with a grain of salt. But the circumstances of their capture appear undisputed, and the other details start to put faces to the word "detainees."

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detainees, terrorism, guantanamo, politics, midtopia

Sizable increase in secret federal court cases

The AP reports that the number of federal court cases that are either fully or partly sealed has doubled in the last two years.

And in some cases the administration is resorting to unprecedented "secret dockets", where the mere existence of the case is officially denied.

Sealing records makes sense up until the trial, and that practice draws no criticism. What is unusual -- and damaging to the justice system -- is keeping records sealed after a trial has concluded.

Prosecutors argue that plea agreements must be sealed to protect witnesses and their families from violent retaliation. But Christ said that makes no sense after the trial when the defendants know who testified.

Exactly.

It's enough to make even a moderate scream "What is it with these guys?!" Yet one more example of the Bush administration's penchant for obsessive secrecy -- an obsession that has begun leaking out of the White House and Cabinet-level positions and into the everyday workings of the government.

To repeat: Excessive secrecy damages democracy, the justice system, foreign policy, the government, and a host of other national interests. It goes against the presumption of open government and the Sixth Amendment guarantee of public trials. It serves no purpose other than to shield government operations from public scrutiny.

Technorati tags
politics, midtopia, Bush, secrecy, courts

The ACLU and religious liberty

I've always been fascinated by the full-throated hostility many social conservatives, and conservative Christians in particular, bear toward the ACLU. Yes, the ACLU supports separation of church and state. But it also defends religious groups on free speech and religious liberty grounds.

After hearing far too many assertions that the ACLU has a secular, anti-Christian agenda, I e-mailed them. I asked for a list of religious liberty cases they've undertaken. Here's what they sent me -- and remember that it is merely a *partial* list.

2004: Indiana Civil Liberties Union defends the rights of Baptist minister to preach his message on public streets: LINK
2004: After ACLU intervention on behalf of Christian valedictorian, Michigan high school agrees to stop censoring religious yearbook entries: LINK
2004: ACLU of Washington defends right of evangelical minister to preach on sidewalks: LINK
2004: ACLU of Virginia threatens lawsuit and officials agree not to prohibit baptisms on public property in Falmouth Waterside Park in Stafford County: LINK
2004: ACLU of Nevada supports free speech rights of evangelists to preach on the sidewalks of the Strip in Las Vegas: LINK
2004: ACLU of Nebraska defends church facing eviction by the City of Lincoln: LINK
2003: ACLU of Rhode Island supports rights of carolers to sing outside women's prison on Christmas Eve. Prison officials back down, agree to let the caroling take place.
2003: ACLU of Massachusetts defends students punished for distributing candy Canes with religious messages: LINK
2002: ACLU of Pennsylvania files discrimination lawsuit over denial of zoning permit for African American Baptist church: LINK
2002: ACLU of Massachusetts files brief supporting right of Church of the Good News to run ads criticizing the securalization of Christmas and promoting Christianity as the "one true religion" after the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Agency refuses to allow the ads on subways.
2002: ACLU of Iowa supports right of students to distribute Christian literature in public schools during non-instructional times. Files amicus brief in case for students barred from doing so in Davenport: LINK
2002: ACLU helps Reverend Jerry Falwell win ruling that state of Virginia must allow churches to incorporate: LINK
2002: ACLU defends Christian church's right to run "Anti-Santa" ads in Boston subways: LINK
2001: ACLU of Utah negotiates settlement enabling evangelical Christian ministry to set up booth at state fair on same terms as other vendors. Group previously had been excluded from the fair because some patrons objected to content of their message.
2000: ACLU of Maryland supports Baltimore police officer suspended for wearing his hair in locks for religious reasons.
1999: The ACLU of Maryland assists the March for Life Committee in getting a permit for an anti-abortion march in Annapolis without having to pay a $5,400 fee the city was seeking. The ACLU worked with the American Center for Law & Justice to revise a proposed city ordinance so as to keep free speech free.
1999: ACLU of West Virginia files suit on behalf of a minister who declined, for religious reasons, to have his photograph taken for a driver license.
1998: ACLU of New Jersey files a lawsuit on behalf of the right of two police officers in Newark to wear beards as a matter of religious freedom. As Muslims, the officers wore beards as part of their religious beliefs.
1998: ACLU of Eastern Missouri win job back and permission to wear pin for a nurse who lost her job because she refused to remove a cross-shaped lapel pin from her uniform. The hospital had claimed the nurse violated its employee dress code when she expressed her Christian beliefs by wearing the pin.
1997: Arizona Civil Liberties Union sues City of Phoenix to challenge an ordinance under which the City refused to allow the Children of the Rosary, an anti-abortion group, to place ads on City buses. The lawsuit was filed jointly with the American Center for Law and Justice.
1996: ACLU of Virginia files lawsuit for church in Richmond threatened with closure of its Sunday meal program by city officials because of zoning regulations.
1995: ACLU of Washington supports right of a Baptist minister to distribute religious tracts in a park in Renton after police asked him to desist because he lacked City permission. The City relented after the ACLU pointed out that the law cited against the minister applied only to commercial activities.
1995: ACLU of Vermont wins ruling from state Human Services Board waiving state Social Welfare Dept. requirement for use of Social Security numbers by students receiving Medicaid and food stamp benefits. Their parents believed that such permanent numbers represent mark of the Anti-Christ, according to the Book of Revelations. ACLU argued that their religious beliefs could be protected by use of random identifying numbers.
1995: ACLU of Massachusetts successfully defended rights of prisoners to possess and use religious articles in their cells. Worcester County Sheriff had seized rosaries, prayer beads, religious medals, books and symbols, claiming they were signs of gang membership. ACLU of MA filed suit on behalf of the prisoners' rights to practice their religion under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and the state constitution.
1995: ACLU of Massachusetts filed friend of the court brief in support of two women who were fired for refusing to work at the racetrack on Christmas Day.
1995: ACLU of Iowa successfully sued City of Waterloo to defend right of conservative Christian activist to broadcast on public access television.
1994: ACLU of Rhode Island files a federal lawsuit on behalf of the RI State Right to Life Committee, the RI State Rifle and Revolver Association and numerous other non-profit groups challenging a House of Representatives rule that bars private, but not government, lobbyists from the floor of the House while it is in session.
1994: ACLU of Pennsylvania assisted a pregnant 17-year-old whose parents wanted her to have an abortion she didn't want. She had moved away from home to continue her pregnancy, but her parents called police to have her brought home. ACLU convinced officials to let her continue her pregnancy and live away from parents.
1993: ACLU successfully defends the right of a woman to refuse, on religious grounds, to submit to a court-ordered caesarian section.
1993: ACLU of Northern California defends an 8th-grade student's right to wear a shirt saying "Real Women Love Jesus" in school by writing letters to principal. Result: School district lifts ban on shirt. LINK
1993: ACLU of New Jersey files an amicus brief on behalf of anti-abortion picketers. "Our defense of freedom of speech clearly cannot vary, and has not varied, with the views expressed." -- ACLU attorney Frank Corrado.
1993: ACLU of Florida offers legal assistance to Operation Rescue, who refused the offer.
1993: ACLU joins battle to overturn a court ruling which banned a minister from holding meetings at a public school in New York State.
1992: ACLU of Rhode Island files a friend-of-the-court brief challenging a state judge's increase of bail for anti-abortion defendants, charged with obstructing a clinic, who refused to provide their Social Security numbers.
1991: ACLU of Northern California offers support for man arrested for displaying photographs of human fetuses. "The ACLU is pro-choice, but the fact that we might disagree with their message would never dissuade us from defending their right to speak out." --Elaine Elinson, Public Information director, ACLU-Northern California.
1990: ACLU of Southern California files a brief supporting Operation Rescue's appeal of a federal judge's ruling upholding the use of "pain compliance" techniques by L.A. police.
1990: ACLU of Rhode Island files a friend-of-the-court brief in state Supreme Court in support of anti-abortion protesters challenging the constitutionality of a town ordinance limiting residential picketing.
1990: ACLU of Central Florida backs televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker's attempt to challenge to zoning laws in Orlando, claiming the law's prohibition of churches in industrial zones violates church/state separation.
1990: ACLU of Iowa supports anti-abortionists' challenge to an Iowa City picketing ordinance.
1989: ACLU of Connecticut offers assistance to Operation Rescue demonstrators subjected to pain compliance holds. ACLU state director calls for state legislature to hold hearings on the issue and consideration forbidding their use.
1988: ACLU of Rhode Island favorably settles an administrative complaint challenging the use on police applicants of a standardized psychological test which asks questions relating to fundamentalist religious beliefs.
1982: ACLU of Rhode Island mounts a successful federal challenge on behalf of an unendorsed Democratic right to life candidate, to a state law allowing only political party committees to hold raffles to raise funds for political campaigns.

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ACLU, religion, politics, midtopia

The right thing, four years late

In response to an Associated Press lawsuit, the Pentagon today released the names of all the inmates being held at Guantanamo Bay.

The names were scattered throughout more than 5,000 pages of transcripts of hearings in which detainees defended themselves against allegations that they were "enemy combatants." That classification, Bush administration lawyers say, deprives the detainees of Geneva Convention prisoner-of-war protections and allows them to be held indefinitely without charges.

Which sums up why it will be a great day for this country when the "enemy combatant" designation is retired for good.

"You can't just draw a veil of secrecy when you are locking people up," said Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. program for Human Rights Watch. "You have to do at least the minimum, which is to acknowledge who you are holding."

Precisely.

I look forward to finding out what news organizations discover after poring through the data. I also hope many of the documents make their way online so we can examine them ourselves.

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terrorism, Guantanamo, civil liberties, civil rights, politics, midtopia

Archives halts reclassifying of documents

Speaking of government openness, in a follow-up to this post, the National Archives does the right thing.

After complaints from historians, the National Archives on Thursday directed intelligence agencies to stop removing previously declassified historical documents from public access and urged them to return to the shelves as quickly as possible many of the records they had already pulled.

Allen Weinstein, the nation's chief archivist, announced what he called a "moratorium" on reclassification of documents until an audit can be completed to determine which records should be secret.

What's sad is that this is even an issue in 2006.

Technorati tags
terrorism, national archives, politics, midtopia

Government data and privacy

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has proposed removing public access to a lot of government data on individuals, on the grounds of protecting those individuals' privacy.

Pawlenty called for rewriting Minnesota's Data Practices Act to eliminate a presumption that all information governments collect is open for public inspection and replace it with a presumption that most personal information in government files is confidential.

(snip)

His plan also includes:

1. Barring the state from releasing, except in special circumstances, personal information it collects from driver's license applications.

2. Making it illegal for anyone to divulge another person's telephone records.

3. Barring private businesses from using Social Security numbers to identify patients or customers, and requiring companies to restrict employees' access to the Social Security numbers of their co-workers.

This could be a fascinating debate, turning as it does on two issues I hold dear: personal privacy and governmental openness.

Let's narrow the debate down to the important points. The three specifics above aren't very controversial, since they largely reflect current law. The biggest one is the driver's license data. It's already restricted, but the rules are interpreted to mean that media organizations can have access. That allows journalists to quickly double-check details on people in their stories, as well as do more general analyses of all sorts of demographic data. The media have a responsibility to use that access carefully -- a responsibility that could be made statutory. But completely eliminating media access to the database would be a mistake.

Rewriting the Data Practices Act is the biggie, one that could have far-reaching implications, and isn't something to be done lightly.

It can already be difficult to get public information from the government; a 2000 survey by a group of Minnesota journalists found that many governmental bodies refused to release information that was clearly public domain:

57% of county jails refused access to the names of prisoners. Itasca County charged $5 per inmate for the information -- which is supposed to be free except for a nominal copying charge.

28% of school districts refused to reveal the superintendent's salary.

2% of City Hall officials refused to allow access to the minutes of council meetings.

The survey demonstrated that despite a law that says otherwise, many public employees are reluctant to share indisputably public data with citizens. A new, more restrictive law would just provide a whole raft of new reasons to deny access to legitimately public data.

And that's *if* the law includes a very careful definition of what is public and what isn't. A vaguely written law would just compound the problem.

Why should we care? Two reasons. One, open access to government information is one of the most important ways we have to keep tabs on our government. If we allow it to operate in secrecy, oversight becomes nearly impossible.

Second, much useful research -- on health, on crime, on population growth, on infrastructure -- relies on access to government data. It may be possible to allow access to aggregate but not individual data, but in some cases even that would not be enough. Sometimes you have to know the individual data in order to make sense of the aggregate results.

I applaud the governor's concern for privacy. I just think his sledgehammer approach is a very careless one that practically guarantees massive unintended consequences. Rather than presume all data is private, a better approach would be to carve out narrow, specific exceptions for certain data -- much as driver's licenses are handled now.

Technorati tags
pawlenty, minnesota, privacy, politics, midtopia

Katrina and leadership

A nice take on the Mike Brown/Bush/Katrina fiasco at the Centrist Coalition.

The latest revelation that the President was told by Brown that there were doubts about the levies surrounding New Orleans and the ability to respond, is IMO, the smoking gun. As David Gergen put it, the fact that the President of the United States did not ask any questions in the final briefing before the disaster is most troubling and further exposes a leadership style from this President that in many ways has failed the country that put its' trust in him.

We now know the statements from the White House that Katrina was a 9/11 like surprise that couldn't be prepared for is simply untrue, and although Mike Brown's level of blame isn't clear, his failure as the head of FEMA was the least of the government's problems before the Hurricane. The President was asleep at the wheel and relied too much on a former judge with little administrative experience and Brown, whose own qualification are questionable, to get the job done.

For more, click on the link. I don't necessarily agree with their assessment that Rudy Giuliani has proven he's up to the job because he managed an ungovernable city through an unimaginable crisis -- the federal government is orders of magnitude more complex than New York City -- but there's a lot of food for thought there.

Technorati tags
katrina, bush, giuliani, fema, politics, midtopia

Where blame for Iraqi prisoner abuse belongs

An excellent article in the New York Times by a former Army interrogator who worked in several Iraqi prisons, including Abu Ghraib. I hate to quote so much of the article, but it's a compelling read.

Following orders that I believed were legal, I used military working dogs during interrogations. I terrified my interrogation subjects, but I never got intelligence (mostly because 90 percent of them were probably innocent, but that's another story).

Perhaps, I have thought for a long time, I also deserve to be prosecuted. But if that is the case, culpability goes much farther up the chain of command than the Army and the Bush administration have so far been willing to admit.

When the chief warrant officer at our interrogation site in Mosul first told me to use dogs during interrogations, it seemed well within what was allowed by our written rules and consistent with what was being done at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers.

The dogs were muzzled and held by a handler. The prisoners didn't know that, though, because they were blindfolded; if they gave me an answer I didn't like, I could cue the handler so the dog would bark and lunge toward them. Sometimes they were so terrified they'd wet their jumpsuits.

About halfway through my tour, I stopped using dogs and other "enhancements" like hypothermia that qualify as torture even under the most nonchalant readings of international law. I couldn't handle being so routinely brutal.

In training, we learned that all POWs are protected against actual and implied threats. You can never put a "knife on the table" to get someone to talk. That was clear. But our Iraqi prisoners weren't clearly classified as POWs, so I never knew what laws applied. Instead, a confusing set of verbal and written orders had supplanted the Geneva Conventions.

When an Army investigator asked Col. Thomas Pappas, the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, how intimidation with dogs could be allowed under this treaty, he gave the chilling reply, "I did not personally look at that with regard to the Geneva Convention."

Pappas later testified that he was taking his cue on the use of dogs from Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who took over detainee operations in Iraq after running them in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Miller has denied recommending the use of guard dogs to intimidate prisoners during interrogations in Iraq. He also recently said he would not testify in the courts-martial of Cardona and Smith, invoking his right to avoid self-incrimination.

As someone who voluntarily spoke at length about my actions in Iraq to investigators, without a lawyer present, I can't have a favorable opinion of Miller. By doing the military equivalent of "taking the Fifth," he's decided to protect himself, apparently happy to let two dog handlers take the fall - a stunning betrayal of his subordinates and Army values.

(snip)

In the military, orders are orders unless there is clear, uncluttered law transmitted from far above our commanders' rank and station. Instead of a clear message prohibiting torture, our top commanders gave us a deliberate muddying of the waters.

(snip)

I know, from personal experience, that any leeway given will be used to maximum effect against detainees. No slope is more slippery, I learned in Iraq, than the one that leads to torture.

Amen. Torture and abuse are counterproductive, immoral and unAmerican. And superiors letting subordinates take the fall for allowing such treatment betrays military values. Soldiers deserve clear bright lines of authority. Instead they got carefully ambiguous situations such as prevailed at Gitmo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib.

We can do better than that.

Technorati tags
terrorism, Iraq, torture, abu ghraib, politics, midtopia

Saudi charity alleges NSA spied on it

A defunct Saudi charity is suing the government, saying that conversations with its lawyers were illegally intercepted by the NSA.

According to a source familiar with the case, the records indicate that the National Security Agency intercepted several conversations in March and April 2004 between al-Haramain's director, who was in Saudi Arabia, and two U.S. citizens in Washington who were working as lawyers for the organization.

The charity in question isn't exactly squeaky clean:

The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control froze the foundation's U.S. assets in February 2004, pending an investigation, and designated it a terrorist organization in September 2004, citing ties to Osama bin Laden. Al-Haramain was indicted in February 2005 on charges of conspiring to defraud the United States in connection with a scheme to funnel money to Chechen fighters. The charges were later dropped because the Oregon branch of the organization had shut down.

But unproven allegations and suspicions don't justify warrantless eavesdropping or monitoring lawyer-client conversations. It's important to note that the alleged monitoring took place *before* the group was designated a terrorist organization.

I am not suggesting that we shouldn't eavesdrop on people who pose a potential threat. I merely think that the government should have to get a warrant to do so, ensuring that there is at least some evidence to justify the eavesdropping. Otherwise the government can spy on anyone it wants to, for any reason.

In a later post I will outline why you should be concerned about this, even if you feel you have nothing to hide.

Technorati tags
terrorism, nsa, civil liberties, civil rights, politics, midtopia

Warrantless eavesdropping deductions

In the post below this one, I lay out what I consider the known facts about the NSA spying program. Here's what I think those facts mean:

1. First, the government's argument in the Court of Review case that it should be granted warrants even if there was *no* foreign intelligence component was a breathtaking power grab, which would have rendered warrants meaningless in a legal sense.

2. The legality of Bush's actions turns on a few important questions:

a. Did the NSA eavesdropping involve a massive data-mining program aimed at domestic targets? If so, the legality of it is somewhat murky. NSA was specifically prohibited from turning its capabilities on domestic targets. But if all it did was listen to international communications that happened to include a lot of domestic callers, they at least have an argument. If they were monitoring purely domestic targets, however, that's clearly illegal.

One thing arguing against the program being a data-mining program is that Bush said it was aimed at "a few numbers." That implies targeted eavesdropping, not data-mining.

b. Did the eavesdropping involve only "foreign powers"? If so, it's clearly legal. One thing arguing against this explanation is that the administration has not claimed it. Since it's essentially a get-out-of-jail-free card, I would expect Bush to use this explanation if it were true.

c. Was the eavesdropping aimed at U.S. persons? Then a warrant clearly was required under FISA, even post-Patriot Act.

d. Perhaps Bush does not recognize any limits on his "inherent authority." But if that's the case, he unilaterally ignored one court decision (Truong), a law (FISA) and later another court decision (Court of Review), and is saying he has the right to spy on anybody he wants to if he thinks it's important for national security, regardless of what the other branches of government think. If he *does* think that, he will lose very, very badly. One thing that argues against him thinking that, however, is that in the government has never argued that warrants aren't required, and Bush has himself said that wiretaps require a court order.

So I'm left with the following logical conclusions:

1. It can't be only foreign persons, because Bush would have said so;

2. It can't be a data-mining operation, becaus Bush said it was aimed at only a few people;

3. It can't be an "inherent authority" dispute, because the law is very clear on that point and the administration has never argued to the contrary.

That leaves just two possibilities:

1. It was a limited operation aimed strictly at international calls to known terrorists. But there would be no reason to bypass FISA in such a case, because known terrorists overseas can be monitored without a warrant, and a showing that a domestic number was linked to an overseas terrorist would be a slam-dunk as far as getting a FISA warrant.

2. It was illegal, and Bush knew it. But he wanted to spy anyway, so he bypassed FISA.

Bush's motives might have been pure; we won't know until more details come out. But the most reasonable conclusion is that his actions were illegal. And he knew -- or should have known -- that.

Technorati tags
terrorism, nsa, fisa, bush, civil liberties, civil rights, politics, midtopia

Warrantless eavesdropping primer

I'm going to attempt, with this post, to summarize what we *know* about warrant law and the Bush spying allegations, as a base of reference for future posts.

I'm going to rely on two main sources.

One is the text of the opinion written by the FISA Court of Review. It basically outlines the history of warrant requirements, and its ruling spells out current law.

The second is the text of the FISA law.

So, here's what I consider the known, uncontestable facts:

1. The Truong case in 1978 was the first (and, until the Court of Review, only) case to address head-on the scope of the executive branch's "inherent authority" to conduct warrantless searches for "foreign intelligence" purposes.

2. The Truong case defined and thus limited that power, saying any such search must be "primarily" for "foreign intelligence" reasons, and must not have a substantial likelihood of ensnaring a "U.S. person", defined as a U.S. citizen or legal alien.

3. When FISA was passed later that year (largely in response to revelations of government spying during the Vietnam war), it incorporated the Truong standard into the law, and established the FISA court to hear warrant applications for searches aimed at U.S. persons.

4. Other laws or actions at the time banned the CIA and NSA from domestic surveillance and shut down various FBI and military monitoring programs.

5. Over time, the distinction between foreign and domestic surveillance evolved into a "wall".

6. The Patriot Act attempted to weaken that wall, allowing intelligence and law enforcement agencies to share data and downgrading the standard of evidence for a FISA warrant to foreign intelligence being merely a "significant purpose" for the search.

7. The FISA court, however, kept trying to apply what it considered the legal precedent of the "wall" -- not over sharing intelligence, which the Patriot Act directly addressed, but over the purpose of the search. So they kept insisting on procedures designed to keep an intelligence search from transforming into a criminal prosecution search.

8. The government appealed that approach to the Court of Review.

9. The Court of Review agreed with the government that such procedures were based more on tradition than on actual law. But it also reaffirmed that "foreign intelligence" must be a "significant purpose" of the search, and that a warrant was required if the search involved a U.S. person.

10. That leaves us with the current standard for "foreign intelligence" searches domestically:
a. If it involves a foreign power, no warrant is necessary and the court need not be consulted.
b. No warrant is needed for searches or monitoring overseas.
c. If a domestic search involves a U.S. person, a warrant is needed. And "foreign intelligence" must be a "significant purpose" of the search.

11. During the Court of Review appeal, the government didn't argue that warrants weren't needed; rather they argued about what standards of evidence were required for granting a warrant.

12. In that context, however, the administration argued that it must be granted a warrant even if the search contained *no* foreign intelligence component. In other words, it was arguing that the court was obligated to approve any warrant for any purpose, including a purely criminal investigation. The Court of Review rejected that reasoning.

13. The Bush administration has admitted that it authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on "a few numbers" without seeking FISA warrants. The New York Times says that number was up to 500 people at a time.

Technorati tags
terrorism, nsa, fisa, bush, civil liberties, civil rights, politics, midtopia

The upside to civil war

I don't know the context of this piece on Fox News, but it's pretty hilarious no matter how you slice it.

A segment about escalating sectarian violence in Iraq on the February 23 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto featured onscreen captions that read: " 'Upside' To Civil War?" and "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?"