Abbas rolls the dice

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has given Hamas a choice: accept the idea of co-existence with Israel within 10 days, or he'll call a referendum to settle the issue.

Abbas asked Hamas to endorse a document drawn up by senior Palestinian militants imprisoned in Israel. It accepts statehood in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem — territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.

Approving the document would imply recognition of Israel — one of the three conditions imposed by Israel and the West for doing business with the Hamas-led government. The document falls short of meeting the other two conditions — renouncing violence and accepting past peace accords — so it was unclear if the international boycott would be called off even if Hamas acquiesced.

However, a referendum, which Palestinian pollsters expect to pass, could provide cover for the militants to become more moderate without appearing to succumb to Western pressure. Such a vote could also renew pressure on Israel to return to the negotiating table rather than impose borders on the Palestinians.

It's a bold move, akin to cutting the Gordian Knot. And the fact that such a plan would likely be approved by voters demonstrates that Hamas does not represent the average Palestinian on this fundamental point.

Worth a try, anyway. Along with Israel's plan to draw unilateral borders, the move puts increasing pressure on Hamas to compromise or be marginalized.

Abbas, <Hamas, <Palestine, <politics, midtopia

Just shoot them all

Okay, that's an overreaction. But the continued revelations in the Plame case can really make you want to put all the participants in a bus and drive it off a cliff.

On September 29, 2003, three days after it became known that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate who leaked the name of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, columnist Robert Novak telephoned White House senior adviser Karl Rove to assure Rove that he would protect him from being harmed by the investigation, according to people with firsthand knowledge of the federal grand jury testimony of both men....

After the September 29 call, Novak shifted his account of his July 9, 2003, conversation with Rove to show that administration officials had a passive role in leaking Plame's identity.

On July 22, 2003 -- eight days after the publication of Novak's column on Plame -- Newsday reporters Timothy Phelps and Knut Royce quoted Novak as telling them in an interview that it was White House officials who encouraged him to write about Plame. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," Newsday quoted Novak as saying about Plame. "They thought it was significant. They gave me the name, and I used it."

...Novak did not speak publicly on the matter again until September 29 -- later on the same day as his conversation with Rove in which he assured the president's chief political aide that he would protect him in the forthcoming Justice Department investigation.

"I have been beleaguered by television networks around the world, but I am reserving my say for Crossfire," Novak said on his own CNN program, which is no longer on the air. "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July, I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador [Joseph C.] Wilson's report [on his Niger trip], when [the official] told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing.

Novak is sleaze. Rove, Libby and Cheney all appear to have been actively involved in revealing Plame's identity. The question of whether that was a crime revolves around whether Plame was undercover or not -- and it now appears that she was -- and whether they knew it at the time, which will be very hard to prove even if they did. But at a minimum we have them carelessly bandying about an agent's name, and then scrambling to obscure the fact when it blew up in their face.

So put 'em all on the bus. Put Wilson on it, too, just for being irritating. Drive it up to the highest point on the Pacific Coast Highway, aim it at the ocean, tie a brick to the accelerator and release the brakes. The world will be a better place for having done so.

Novak, Libby, Rove, Plame, politics, midtopia

Fast train to irrelevancy

The state legislative session has ended, and the big news (as far as I'm concerned) is that the Central Corridor extension of the light rail system is on the front burner, and drawing strong public support.

Those who testified were asked to comment on a recently completed draft environmental impact study, and to say which transit option they want. Should light rail or bus rapid transit be the mode of transportation along University Ave.? Or do citizens want the status quo and keep the avenue the way it is, with car and bus traffic?

Overwhelmingly, those who testified said they wanted something different, and that light rail is their preferred mode.

Even more pleasant, from my point of view, is how marginalized the Taxpayers League has become on this and other issues.

The League, apparently undeterred by the unqualified success of the Hiawatha line, opposes the Central Corridor extension.

(They also oppose the Northstar Commuter Rail. Their analysis is flawed to start with -- subjecting rail lines to cost-benefit analyses that they don't direct at roads -- and their "build more roads" solution fails the history test.)

Why do they oppose the Central Corridor? They cite the cost, a negligable impact on traffic congestion and opposition by many business owners along the proposed route.

But the cost will be amortized over many years and many, many riders. And the point of light rail is to provide transportation options and slow the growth of traffic congestion; the Met Council, for instance, has never claimed that it would greatly reduce congestion.

And most business owners are concerned about business disruption during construction of the line; they're not opposed to the existence of the line itself. The loss of 660 parking spaces is a minor concern, since the line would carry far more people than that each day. It should be a boon for business, not a liability.

That might be why the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce supports the line. Apparently the Taxpayers League doesn't speak for most business owners.

But then, they never did. They've always represented a small and secretive cadre of backers. Their political influence peaked during the last gubernatorial election (with their "no new taxes" pledge). But then politicians got burned by that pledge, and the public support for mass transit projects became apparent. More directly, their credibility collapsed as their "solutions" became increasingly nonserious. Remember the transit strike, and the League's suggestion that it would be cheaper to buy every poor person a used car?

If we want the Twin Cities to grow in a sensible fashion, it needs to grow with mass transit in mind. And that means having the mass transit systems in place. It would be far more expensive and disruptive to wait another 10 or 20 years and try to graft a mass transit system on to a metro area that grew without regard for such a system. Focusing on the short-term costs is shortsighted. We're building for the future, and doing it with narrow, high-capacity rail lines instead of four-lane highways. It's smart, it's forward-looking and it exposes the pennywise nature of the Taxpayer's League.

mass transit, Central Corridor, Minnesota, taxpayers league, light rail, politics, midtopia

Newspaper apologizes for false Iran story

Canada's National Post has apologized for printing a story saying Iran was going to require Jews to wear yellow badges.

"It is now clear the story is not true," Douglas Kelly, the National Post's editor in chief, wrote in a long editorial on Page 2. "We apologize for the mistake and for the consternation it has caused not just National Post readers, but the broader public who read the story."

This was unusual in that it's a mainstream newspaper. But it comes at a time when a lot of false stories are getting circulated: the Karl Rove indictment, for instance, or the Internet movie featuring alleged Ranger Jesse Macbeth.

More than ever it pays to pay attention, and try to separate the trustworthy information sources from the trash.

National Post, Iran, Jesse Macbeth, politics, midtopia

Pelosi asks Jefferson to resign committee post

Nancy Pelosi has asked Rep. William Jefferson, D.-La., to resign from the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

Jefferson quickly refused.

bribery, corruption, Jefferson, politics, midtopia

Bush on pensions

You might not know it, but I'm not a big fan of President Bush. However, he occasionally does something right. And his proposals for pension reform are one of them.

The basic problem is this: pensions are underfunded by a staggering amount -- $450 billion or so. This puts workers' retirements at risk, but it also threatens the survival of weaker companies. And when those companies shed their pension liabilities in bankruptcy, taxpayers pick up the tab.

Why the underfunding? Some of it can be blamed on corporations promising more than they could afford, or chintzing on their contributions. But some of it results from the complexity of trying to estimate how much money you will have 30 years from now.

Such a calculation requires assumptions about what the economy as well as specific investments will do over that time span. No one really knows what will happen that far out, so all you can do is make educated guesses. Change your guess, and you change the result: a pension fund that is paid up under one set of assumptions could show up as deeply in the red under another set.

Then you have complications, like when companies make their contribution in stock instead of cash or other assets. Enron's pension fund, for instance, would have been fully funded right up until the day it collapsed.

We could simply require companies to make up the difference immediately. But there are trade-offs there, too. If United Airlines had been forced to retain its pension liabilities when it declared bankruptcy it would have been liquidated, throwing 57,000 employees out of work and sending additional shockwaves through the broader economy. Would that have been a preferable result?

So it's not a simple question of forcing companies to pay up. And the administration's proposals reflect that.

They have three basic ideas:

1. Strengthen minimum funding rules. This would replace the current hodgepodge of funding methods with a single set of acceptable procedures. It would require healthy companies to fund the full normal liability, while weaker companies would have to cover "at-risk" liability -- the amount that would have to be paid out if the plan terminated early and resulted in accelerated payment of benefits. They would also set minimum payments for plans that are underfunded, and not allow underfunded plans to increase benefits. In the worst cases, benefits would be frozen until the company made up the shortfall.

Improve disclosure. Requires that plan participants be notified of any underfunding.

Raise pension insurance premiums. This is a direct effort to fix the financing of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which is $23 billion in the red after absorbing the pension liabilities of several large corporations.

The cumulative effect should be more reasonable funding of pension benefits and less exposure for taxpayers.

The one glaring hole in this proposal is that government pension plans remain exempt from the rules. There's a reason for that: it lets the government buy off its workers with ever-increasing pension benefits without having to account for the true cost of those benefits. Taxpayers 30 years from now will find themselves on the hook for huge pension costs that were never properly discussed or provided for. That's inexcusable; the government should have to abide by the same rules it imposes on the private industry.

In the end, though, this whole discussion -- and the spate of pension fund failures -- should probably convince workers that pension promises are largely worthless, a form of deferred payment that is not guaranteed. Lucrative as they can be for workers who qualify for maximum benefits -- working their entire careers at companies that last long enough to pay up -- they're much less valuable to today's workers, who move around from job to job and work for companies that likely won't survive 30 years.

With defined-contribution pensions, workers get the money now, and they can take it with them when they change jobs. Though we need protection for older workers as we transition to a system without defined-benefit plans, the new global economy makes clear that trusting your retirement to your company has become a foolish gesture indeed.

retirement, pensions, politics, midtopia

CIA officials to testify against Libby

Looks like Fitzgerald might have a case after all:

Two top CIA officials will bolster prosecutors' charge that Vice President Cheney's chief aide lied to them, court papers show.

Prosecutors say disgraced Cheney chief of staff Lewis (Scooter) Libby learned CIA spy Valerie Plame's identity from, among others, agency officials who will be called to testify at his trial for perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice....

Libby has said journalists told him about Plame - not Cheney or the six witnesses named so far by prosecutors.

Other than prematurely describing Libby as "disgraced", the article seems solidly sourced. The CIA men told Libby about Plame in response to direct inquiries from him -- so it'll be hard to use the "I can't remember" defense.

Apparently he's not going to be joined any time soon by Karl Rove, as the Truthout report to that effect remains unconfirmed by anyone else.

CIA, Rove, Plame, Libby, politics, midtopia

Stripping civil liberties one packet sniffer at a time

Speaking of Donklephant, they've got a nice analysis of Wired magazine's release of documents from the privacy lawsuit against AT&T. The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed the suit in response to the NSA phone database revelations.

What makes this whole thing especially alarming though, is that by tapping into AT&T, the NSA actually has access to much more than just AT&T customers’s data. Qwest was apparently the only major US telecom company that refused to work with the NSA on this program. So let’s say you’re a Qwest customer. You instant message a friend of yours who, unfortunately, is an AT&T customer. Because of the nature of IP routing, your traffic may very well have been routed through the NSA’s no longer very secret room even though you have no relationship with AT&T at all. According to Wired, ConXion, Verio, XO, Genuity, Qwest, PAIX, Allegiance, AboveNet, Global Crossing, C&W, UUNET, Level 3, Sprint, Telia, PSINet and Mae West were all compromised as a result of the fiber optic splitters that were installed at AT&T. The claim that this is targetted surveillance is growing much harder to believe,

More at the links. Check 'em out.

Mark Klein, civil liberties, AT&T, NSA, politics, midtopia

Incompetence in Iraq

If you want to get mad, read this.

As chaos swept Iraq after the American invasion in 2003, the Pentagon began its effort to rebuild the Iraqi police with a mere dozen advisers. Overmatched from the start, one was sent to train a 4,000-officer unit to guard power plants and other utilities. A second to advise 500 commanders in Baghdad. Another to organize a border patrol for the entire country. ...

Before the war, the Bush administration dismissed as unnecessary a plan backed by the Justice Department to rebuild the police force by deploying thousands of American civilian trainers. Current and former administration officials said they were relying on a Central Intelligence Agency assessment that said the Iraqi police were well trained. The C.I.A. said its assessment conveyed nothing of the sort.

After Baghdad fell, when a majority of Iraqi police officers abandoned their posts, a second proposal by a Justice Department team calling for 6,600 police trainers was reduced to 1,500, and then never carried out. During the first eight months of the occupation — as crime soared and the insurgency took hold — the United States deployed 50 police advisers in Iraq.

Against the objections of Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, the long-range plan was eventually reduced to 500 trainers. One result was a police captain from North Carolina having 40 Americans to train 20,000 Iraqi police across four provinces in southern Iraq.

You mean the Bush administration based policy on a complete fantasy, and executed the plan with extreme incompetence? Man, that's hard to believe....

I've said several times that, no matter what you think of the rightness of going into Iraq, we should all be incensed by the sheer incompetence of the execution. From sending in too few troops (and now too few policemen) to secure the country, to disbanding the Iraqi army, to lowballing cost estimates, to the near-complete lack of planning for the occupation, to the ignoring of the ethnic and religious divisions that had been papered over by Saddam, this administration has screwed up just about everything it undertook in relation to Iraq. The result is that even if we do "win" in Iraq -- however you define that -- the cost will be far, far higher than it needed to be.

Head on over to Donklephant for more discussion of the story.

Bush, police, terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Montenegro votes for independence

The dissolution of Yugoslavia is now complete.

Montenegro's referendum commission has confirmed that slightly more than the required 55 percent of voters supported independence for the tiny republic in Sunday's referendum.

In the capital Podgorica, a key-stronghold for the pro-independence-camp, young people in particular welcomed the birth of Europe's newest nation, with some shooting Kalashnikov rifles in the air, waving flags, and dancing.

At 600,000 people, it becomes one of the smallest nations on earth. And with this final breakup, we've gone a long way toward recreating the Balkans of the early 20th century -- a period of political instability that gave us the term "Balkanization" and helped spark World War I.

Let's hope things go better this time around.

Serbia, Balkans, Montenegro, politics, midtopia

Gonzalez considers charging reporters in NSA leaks

Striking another blow for government secrecy, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may prosecute reporters for having the audacity to listen to sources describe a secret, controversial and possibly illegal warrantless surveillance program.

On the talk show, when asked if journalists could be prosecuted for publishing classified information, Gonzales responded, "There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility."

He was referring to the 1917 Espionage Act, which made it a crime for an unauthorized person to receive national defense information and transmit it to others.

This is Gonzales at his best, carefully parsing the letter of laws for anything that can be used to support a preferred course of action, without regard to context, morality or intent. It's the kind of lawyering that let him find torture exceptions to the Geneva Convention. It should surprise no one that Gonzales would resort to such technocratic lawyering, but it should persuade no one, too.

Conservatives have become quite enamored of the 1917 Espionage Act, being as it's the only extant law on the books that affords even the possibility of jailing reporters -- something of a conservative wet dream, it seems.

The problem is that the Espionage Act was a horrid piece of legislation, much of which has been explicitly and implicitly repudiated by successive Supreme Courts in the 90 years since its passage.

The law provides that any attempt to communicate or publish information related to national defense is a criminal act, if doing so was intended to harm national security. The harshest penalties apply if such actions occur during wartime.

The law is incredibly broad and vague, and could apply to just about any reporting on any aspect of military operations that doesn't involve merely repeating official military communications. Used aggressively, the law would gut any meaningful independent coverage of wartime conduct.

It also points up once again why treating our battle against terrorism as a "war" in the conventional sense is a really, really bad idea. Doing so will extend "extraordinary" wartime suspensions of civil liberties into ordinary everyday realities. And democracy is the loser when the public can no longer maintain credible independent oversight of government actions.

It speaks volumes about the administration that it is willing to reach back into the mists of time to find a bad law that it can use to silence its critics and stifle public discussion about the conduct of this "war". I hope they get their butts handed to them for even considering it.

Gonzales, espionage, politics, midtopia

Congressman videotaped accepting bribes

Yesterday, details of the bribery case against Rep. William Jefferson were leaked to the media.

Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), the target of a 14-month public corruption probe, was videotaped accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from a Northern Virginia investor who was wearing an FBI wire, according to a search warrant affidavit released yesterday.

A few days later, on Aug. 3, 2005, FBI agents raided Jefferson's home in Northeast Washington and found $90,000 of the cash in the freezer, in $10,000 increments wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed inside frozen-food containers, the document said.

Whoops. That sure doesn't look good. They've got confessions, videotape, audio recordings and cash stashed in the freezer.

Jefferson's lawyer is understandably outraged about the leak of 9-month-old records -- there is clearly a political motive there. But it's hard to claim the info is not newsworthy, and it's pretty damning. Jefferson deserves his trial, of course. But if the FBI has this much evidence, it's an open and shut case.

bribery, corruption, FBI, Jefferson, politics, midtopia

UN urges Gitmo closure as guards, inmates clash

The UN has become the latest organization to urge that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed, while calling secret detention facilities a "clear violation" of anti-torture treaties.

A U.N. anti-torture panel issued a rebuke of Bush administration counter-terrorism policies today, calling for the closing of the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba and a halt to the transfer of suspected terrorists to countries where they may face torture.

The committee, charged with monitoring the 1984 Convention Against Torture which the United States has ratified, also charged that the imprisonment of suspects in secret detention facilities constitutes a clear violation of the 1984 treaty.

Not too surprising. But it once again drives home how damaging Gitmo and secret detention facilities are to our cause. They continue to cost us the moral high ground we need in order to effectively combat terrorism. They continue to alienate people who should be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with us. They continue to represent a betrayal of the ideals and principles we profess to defend.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said today that "we're a little bit disappointed" with the U.N. report "because we don't think the commission really took into account all the information provided to it, in terms of changes in policy, changes in laws, changes in procedures."

McCormack said the Guantanamo detainees pose "a threat to people around the world."

Uh-huh. That's why, of the 750 or so detainees, we've released hundreds and only charged 10.

The UN position, unfortunately, is more persuasive:

The committee said it welcomed the U.S. commitment that officials from all U.S. government agencies, including contractors, "are prohibited from engaging in torture at all times and in all places." It also welcomed the U.S. pledge not to transfer terror suspects to countries where they would "more likely than not" endure torture.

But the committee expressed skepticism about the U.S. commitment to comply with such pledges, citing concern about the adequacy of a U.S. policy to obtain "diplomatic assurances" against torture from countries with poor rights records.

That, and this administration's tinkering with the definition of "torture", and Bush asserting his inherent right to authorize torture, and this administration's general penchant for not matching words to actions.

The administration reflects some careful parsing of the truth in its further response to the report:

Snow, at the news briefing today, said the United States invited the U.N. committee to visit the Guantanamo facility "on a number of occasions."

"They chose not to do so," he said.

True. Of course, the reason they chose not to visit was because of the restrictions placed upon them, notably a ban on actually talking to the detainees. So for Snow to now claim that we were open and welcoming is, frankly, BS.

Coincidentally, there was a dustup at Gitmo today, as prisoners attacked guards who entered a medium-security area to stop a prisoner from committing suicide.

Prisoners wielding improvised weapons clashed with guards trying to stop a detainee from committing suicide at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the military said Friday.

The fight occurred Thursday in a medium-security section of the camp as guards were responding to the fourth attempted suicide that day at the detention center on the U.S. Navy base, Cmdr. Robert Durand said.

Detainees used fans, light fixtures and other improvised weapons to attack the guards as they entered a communal living area to stop a prisoner trying to hang himself, Durand said.

Earlier in the day, three detainees in another part of the prison attempted suicide by swallowing prescription medicine they had been hoarding.

Sure sounds like "Club Gitmo" to me. Four suicide attempts? In one day? Maybe being imprisoned without charge or hope for four years can drive people to despair. Maybe that's why Gitmo is such a moral, legal and ethical embarassment.

Update: U.S. officials say the fight was a coordinated effort by the prisoners, and the fourth "suicidal" detainee was simply pretending in order to draw the guards in.

United Nations, torture, terrorism, Gitmo, Guantanamo, politics, midtopia

Trying on the Hitler suit

Canada's National Post is reporting that Iran's parliament has approved a law that would require religious minorities to wear colored bands identifying their faith.

The law mandates the government to make sure that all Iranians wear "standard Islamic garments" designed to remove ethnic and class distinctions reflected in clothing, and to eliminate "the influence of the infidel" on the way Iranians, especially, the young dress. It also envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public. The new codes would enable Muslims to easily recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus becoming najis (unclean).

The law has apparently been passed by the Iranian parliament but still requires approval by the true ruler of Iran, Ali Khamenei. The law would take effect in the fall at the earliest.

I'm not seeing much independent confirmation of this yet, just articles in some Israeli papers, conservative blogs and Christian news sites. So there may be less here than meets the eye.

If true, though, it's yet another sign of what a nutcase Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is -- he pushed hard to get the law through -- and how willing Iran is to embrace every bad image their critics have ever painted them with.

And how important it is to ensure that these guys never get nukes.

Ahmadinejad, Hitler, Islam, nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Hamas, police battle in Gaza

Civil war fears are on again in Palestine.

Palestinian police fought gunbattles in Gaza City on Friday with a new Hamas-led security force set up by the Islamist government in defiance of President Mahmoud Abbas.

At least four people were wounded in the first fighting since Hamas deployed the force on Wednesday. Two police, one Hamas member and a gunman from Abbas's
Fatah movement were hurt....

Quick! Can anyone name another country where armed militias are making a bad situation worse?

The 3,000-strong Hamas-backed force, formed under the authority of Interior Minister Saeed Seyam, was deployed in a challenge to the authority of Abbas, whose Fatah movement was defeated by Hamas in elections in January.

In response, Abbas ordered the deployment of a Fatah-loyal police unit. The decision marked the latest step in a deepening power struggle between Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, whose Hamas movement took power in March....

"It seems that the civil war has begun," said one medic, who did not want to give his name. Gunfire echoed as he spoke.

Let's hope not. While some pro-Israeli hawks might see positive things in a divided and distracted Palestine, a collapse of central authority will make dealing with the Palestinians more difficult, and eliminate whatever control the PA has over its more militant factions. Peace talks requires someone in authority to talk to. And that's without getting into the humanitarian disaster a civil war would be.

civil war, Fatah, Hamas, Palestine, politics, midtopia

Artist faces deportation

Came across this interesting individual face in the ongoing immigration debate. Should Huck Gee be deported?

He's a British national who has lived in the United States since he was 7. He's now 33, and hasn't been back to England in 16 years.

But he never applied for citizenship, thanks mostly (he says) to inertia and not seeing much difference between that and permanent residency. Sounds like a lot of young adults I know.

When he was 18, he was caught selling $5 worth of marijuana to a friend of a friend. Frankly, that also sounds like a lot of young adults I know.

He paid his fine and served 30 days in work release and 3 years' probation.

14 years later, he's a successful art toy designer. He took a trip to Asia. When he got back to the States, he got interrogated by Homeland Security, which initiated deportation proceedings against him based on the 1991 conviction.

Does this seem just to you? Is this the face we want to present to the world? Why do we go out of our way to punch people in the nose? Does that really enhance our security? Is this a good use of our limited resources?

terrorism, Homeland Security, immigration, deportation, Huck Gee, politics, midtopia

CIA rendition lawsuit dismissed

A judge has dismissed a lawsuit against the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program, saying a trial would compromise national security.

Judge T. S. Ellis 3d ruled in favor of the Bush administration, which had argued that the "state secrets" privilege provided an absolute bar to the lawsuit against a former C.I.A. director and transportation companies. Judge Ellis said the suit's going forward, even if the government denied the contentions, would risk an exposure of state secrets.

The case involves Khaled el-Masri, a Kuwaiti-born German, who was arrested on Dec. 31, 2003, in Macedonia, where he had gone for a vacation. From there, he was flown to a prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was held for five months before being released. During his incarceration in Kabul, he has said, he was shackled, beaten and injected with drugs.

I understand needing to protect state secrets. But there has to be some recourse for people wrongly detained or abused by the government. "National security" cannot be a blank check for wrongdoing. And in this case the "evidence" of harm appears to be a simple affidavit by Porter Goss. With all due respect to Mr. Goss, it seems ludicrous that the CIA director has the power to squelch a lawsuit against his agency simply by saying it would harm national security.

This case is a bit odd in that regard anyway, because the government has largely acknowledged most of el-Masri's claims:

United States officials have acknowledged the principal elements of Mr. Masri's account, saying intelligence authorities may have confused him with an operative of Al Qaeda with a similar name. The officials also said he was released in May 2004 on the direct orders of Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, after she learned he had been mistakenly identified as a terrorism suspect.

Then make amends to the guy already, and allow a debate on whether we should be rendering people like this, as well as what safeguards are in place to prevent and if necessary remedy mistakes and wrongdoing.

rendition, Goss, Khaled el-Masri, CIA, terrorism, politics, midtopia

BellSouth seeks retraction

Ratcheting up the pressure on USA Today, BellSouth has asked for a retraction on the newspaper's NSA database story.

It'll be interesting to see where this goes. BellSouth didn't challenge the story before publication, and the report appears to be at least partly true, in that AT&T hasn't denied it and Qwest has confirmed it. It's a battle of unverified denial vs. anonymous sources. So unless USA Today uncovers some problem with its reporting, I doubt they'll issue the retraction. But we'll see.

NSA, USA Today, BellSouth, politics, midtopia

American credibility eroding

I can't say I'm surprised at this, but this report says America's image problem is getting worse.

In increasing numbers, people around the globe resent American power and wealth and reject specific actions like the occupation of Iraq and the campaign against democratically elected Palestinian leaders, in-depth international polling shows.

America's image problem is pervasive, deep and perhaps permanent, analysts say -- an inevitable outcome of being the world's only superpower.

But there is worse news. In the past, while Europeans and Asians and Arabs might have disliked American policies or specific U.S. leaders, they liked and admired Americans themselves.

Polls now show an ominous turn. Majorities around the world think Americans are greedy, violent and rude, and fewer than half in countries like Poland, Spain, Canada, China and Russia think Americans are honest.

"We found a rising antipathy toward Americans," said Bruce Stokes of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, which interviewed 93,000 people in 50 countries over a four-year time span.

Lots of people, myself included, have pointed to this as one of the main drawbacks to the Bush administration's go-it-alone foreign policy. Fighting an enemy as amorphous as terrorism requires international cooperation. Bush's first term was marked by constant and at times deliberate snubbing of both proven and potential allies, with the invasion of Iraq marking a pinnacle of sorts. That not only squandered good will; it damaged our ability to track terrorists and deny them safe havens.

Keeping the peace, winning the war on terrorism and other critical goals are achievable "only if people like you and trust you," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center.

Kind of a "duh" moment, you'd think. But this administration has only belatedly realized it. Now even our allies aren't thrilled with us.

Almost half of those polled in Britain, France and Germany dispute the whole concept of a global war on terrorism, and a majority of Europeans believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. More than two-thirds of Germans, French and Turks believe American leaders lied about the reasons for war and believe the United States is less trustworthy than it once was.

What bothers me is that the study says the problem isn't just Bush; many foreigners have come to believe that the problem is Americans themselves. So it will take more than one election to overcome that.

Obviously, we shouldn't focus solely on winning popularity contests. Sometimes the right thing or the necessary thing isn't the popular thing. But we also shouldn't go out of our way to antagonize other countries, as we have done; we shouldn't appear to be hypocrites, as we have done; and we should listen with an open mind to what other countries have to say, even if we don't always heed their advice. That's what builds bridges and creates allies instead of enemies.

Bush, diplomacy, foreign policy, politics, midtopia

Air traffic controllers retiring en masse

By the end of next year a quarter of the nation's air-traffic controllers will retire. Besides the loss of that much experience, there is concern that their replacements will not be ready.

Those in the present generation of controllers -- hired after President Reagan fired about 11,000 striking workers in 1981 -- are approaching their 50s. Ironically, the FAA counts almost 500 of the controllers fired in 1981 as possible replacements for the retiring controllers.

Controllers are eligible to retire at 50 or after serving 25 years. They face mandatory retirement at 56.

By the end of 2007, 3,769 of the country's 14,736 air traffic controllers will be eligible for retirement.

The FAA estimates that 7,540 controllers could retire by 2011. That's more than half the current work force. And the number could reach 8,549 by 2012. Additional controllers could be lost through death, illness, resignation and promotion.

I was only 14 in 1981, so I barely remember the effect of firing 11,000 controllers. But I seem to recall that the planes kept flying. If we can handle the loss of 11,000 controllers all at once, I would think we could handle this more gradual attrition. On the other hand, the skies are a lot busier these days, so there's less slack in the system.

The FAA says it's on top of things:

Jay Aul, the FAA's human resources manager for controller operations support, said the agency will have all the replacements it needs even considering the required three to five years of training.

"We have a pool of applicants we can draw on," Aul said. "There are 1,300 military controllers who want to come over, 800 to 900 people in our college training programs, 300 people we reached through our job fairs, and about 500 former PATCO controllers."

I would hope so, since anyone can see this one coming. Though it's pretty funny that they're considering hiring back some of the fired controllers.

In the end this may just be a tactic by the controller's union to stir up interest ahead of contract negotiations. But given that it takes up to five years to train a new controller, a miscalculation could cause problems for an extended time.

FAA, air traffic controllers, air travel, politics, midtopia

No kidding....

In the "well, duh" category, George Will (who I've found myself agreeing with more often lately) notes that a lot of people are "values voters", not just social conservatives.

An aggressively annoying new phrase in America's political lexicon is "values voters." It is used proudly by social conservatives, and carelessly by the media to denote such conservatives.

This phrase diminishes our understanding of politics. It also is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values and everyone else votes to . . . well, it is unclear what they supposedly think they are doing with their ballots.

Every demographic phrase necessarily trades accuracy for pithiness, but Will is right that the "values voter" phrase has been hyped and distorted more than most. And let's not forget that even if you put aside the hopelessly vague meaning of the phrase and accept that it means "social conservatives", their impact on the last election was probably overstated.

But I invite the Republicans to court values voters -- and get creamed in November by an electorate more concerned about substantive problems than ethereal wedge issues.

George Will, values voters, politics, midtopia

Slowdown

I've been a little light on the posts the last couple of days, and I apologize. Work and home life have gotten very busy with the approach of summer, leaving me short on time. I'll have some posts up later today and will play major catch up tomorrow.

In the car I was listening to MPR, which was broadcasting the Hayden confirmation hearings. I had the pleasure of listening to Russ Feingold question Hayden. On this issue I'm very close to Feingold, so it was great to hear him articulating many of the same things that I've written about in the past few months.

I must say I was also impressed by Hayden -- cool, polite, and obviously very smart. I can see why members of Congress who have worked with him like him. He was quite straightforward, not dodging questions and willing to answer hypotheticals -- a refreshing change from the Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

So what have I been doing instead of posting? Besides putting in some odd hours at work, I've been cutting in a new vegetable garden. I do it by hand because I like the work: removing the sod with a shovel (to be transplanted elsewhere), hoeing up the soil (instead of renting a tiller), mixing in fresh topsoil and manure, lining the edge with paving bricks turned on edge to help keep the weeds out and putting up a short fence to keep animals out.

I finished it today and was finally able to plant the tomato plants that I've been growing in pots. They're a family beefsteak hybrid, developed by the last farmer in my family tree and kept going by the rest of us saving a few seeds from each season's harvest. This weekend I'll plant the rest of the garden: lettuce, broccoli, peas, beans, corn and maybe some peppers. I tried carrots last year, but our soil is too clayish and dense. So no roots this time around.

Our raspberry patch should also bear fruit for the first time this year, so I'm a happy farmer. My wife likes developing flower beds; for me, it's only worth it if I can eat it.

politics, midtopia

Hall of Shame member to be sentenced

He's already in the Hall of Shame, but James Tobin will be sentenced to prison today for his role in the jamming of Democratic phone lines in New Hampshire in 2002.

The effects go beyond prison terms:

The New Hampshire Republican Party, burden by legal bills, is virtually broke, with $733.60 in its federal and state accounts.

The Republican National Committee, in turn, has paid $3 million in legal fees in criminal and civil cases growing out of the controversy. The RNC has paid at least $2.8 million to Williams & Connolly and other firms for Tobin's defense, and about $150,000 to Covington & Burling to defend the RNC in a civil suit brought by the New Hampshire Democratic Party.

Politics is hardball, but there's no place for dirty tricks. Win fair, or you don't deserve to win.

Update: He got 10 months and was fined $10,000.

New Hampshire, Tobin, politics, midtopia

Reactor-for-peace deal with Iran?

Europe is considering building a light-water reactor in Iran as part of a package of incentives to get Iran to give up its domestic uranium-enrichment capability.

McCormack said Tehran would be required to halt its program of enriching and reprocessing uranium on Iranian soil, saying the U.S. and others "do not want the Iranian regime to have the ability to master those critical pathways to a nuclear weapon."

The Iranian reaction? I'll give you one guess.

Hojjatollah Soltani, second secretary of the Iranian Embassy in Venezuela, said such a proposal would acceptable only if it "only if they recognize our right to (use) nuclear technology" — including uranium enrichment.

The deal is similar to the one we offered North Korea back in the 1990s, when we began building them two reactors in exchange for them giving up their nuclear program. Work on the reactors was halted a few years later when it became clear North Korea hadn't given up its own program.

There's no reason to think the outcome will be any different with Iran, but it's a worthwhile offer to make. Reactors take years to build, which provides plenty of time to ensure Iran is complying with the terms of the agreement. And if they reject the deal it's just one more example of Iranian intransigence on this subject.

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

NSA roundup

Two things of note today with the NSA phone database story, and a development in the NSA's warrantless wiretap story.

First, the New York Times has a thoughtful essay by Jonathan David Farley of the Center for International Secuirty and Cooperation, who sheds more light on the question: does copying everyone's phone records help us find terrorists? His answer: no, for several reasons, among them one I mentioned a few days ago: the Kevin Bacon problem.

It's a thought-provoking explanation of how network analysis works, and the problems posed by the NSA's version. His conclusion: the NSA effort would not actually be effective, and for that reason alone it is not worth the civil liberties damage.

Meanwhile, two of the phone companies mentioned in the USA Today story that set off this brouhaha have denied that they were ever approached by the NSA:

Verizon Communications Inc. denied Tuesday that it had received a request for customer phone records from the National Security Agency, bringing into question key points of a USA Today story. ... The statement came a day after BellSouth Corp. also said the NSA had never requested customer call data, nor had the company provided any.

Denials aren't proof of anything, of course. But then, neither are anonymously sourced stories. Their denials leave AT&T as the only company to not deny the charge, and Qwest has already said it was approached but turned the government down.

Finally, Arlen Specter has struck a deal with other GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, laying the ground rules for determining the legality of the NSA spy programs.

It's basically a surrender:

Specter has mollified conservative opposition to his bill by agreeing to drop the requirement that the Bush administration seek a legal judgment on the program from a special court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.

Instead, Specter agreed to allow the administration to retain an important legal defense by allowing the court, which holds its hearings in secret, to review the program only by hearing a challenge from a plaintiff with legal standing, said a person familiar with the text of language agreed to by Specter and committee conservatives.

Conservative Republicans who pushed for the change say that it will help quell concerns about the measure’s constitutionality and allow the White House to retain a basic legal defense.

An expert in constitutional law and national security, however, said that the change would allow the administration to throw up huge obstacles to anyone seeking to challenge the program’s legality.

Exactly. The only people with legal standing would be someone who could show they were affected by the program. But with the surveillance targets being kept secret, no one will know if they were a target, and certainly couldn't prove it. So showing standing will be a nigh-impossible task.

All of this is simply to clear the way for legislation that would declare the surveillance program legal. The only bone thrown to opponents is a clause giving the FISA court jurisdiction over challenges to the program. But FISA already had such jurisdiction over intelligence matters, and the administration didn't care, instead asserting non-FISA authority for the program. Bush will continue to assert "inherent" constitutional authority for the program and thus continue to ignore FISA. And thanks to Specter's surrender, FISA can't do anything about it until someone with standing challenges the program.

The story does note that some cases are already in the pipeline:

But a GOP aide familiar with the compromise said more than 20 cases are “in the pipeline” in which plaintiffs have challenged the surveillance program. It was very likely that the court would rule on one of the cases if Specter’s bill passed, the aide added.

Maybe. We'll see how many of those cases survive the "standing" hurdle.

BellSouth, Verizon, Specter, terrorism, NSA, politics, midtopia

The Rove indictment kerfuffle

Truthout, which last Friday reported that Karl Rove would be indicted soon, today reported that it had happened.

As I said last time, take it with a grain of salt. Truthout is a wee bit biased, there's no independent corroboration and Rove's spokesman virulently denies it.

That disconnect has led others to speculate that Truthout has been the victim of a well-built hoax. And Wonkette summed up their own skepticism with "Karl Rove indicted, everyone with a blog to get their own unicorn."

When you traffic in rumors, sometimes all you get is air.

Plame, Rove, politics, midtopia

No Iraq War Syndrome yet

On the good news front, researchers have found no evidence of an "Iraq War Syndrome" similar to the "Gulf War Syndrome" that affected veterans of the 1991 invasion.

They examined whether there had been an increase in ill health in soldiers returning from Iraq and compared the mental and physical health of forces who had been deployed and those who had not.

They found only slight increases in symptoms but reserve forces experienced more mental health problems than regular forces.

The most interesting side note is that this seems to knock the legs out from under the "depleted uranium" theory of causation. Depleted uranium, being exceedingly dense, is used in Western tank armor and antitank rounds. The general nervousness surrounding "radioactive" materials led many people to assert that the rounds caused health problems by creating fine dust particles that can be inhaled.

This never made much sense, since depleted uranium is less radioactive than natural uranium. Even uranium miners -- exposed to much higher doses for much longer periods of time -- come out clean.

Depleted uranium weaponry was used as much or more in the Iraq war as it was in 1991. If it was a serious cause of health problems, they would have shown up in the current study. They did not.

Speaking as a former tanker, I'm relieved. I never worked with DU rounds, but the effectiveness of DU -- both as protection and weapon -- is not something I would give up lightly. Even if they posed a health threat, I'd be willing to accept a slight increase in long-term health risks in exchange for surviving the war. It just doesn't make sense to increase your odds of dying now by 10 percent in order to reduce your odds of dying 30 years from now by 5 percent. If you want to live forever, don't volunteer for a combat branch of the military.

depleted uranium, health, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Pentagon identifies all Gitmo detainees

No, seriously.

The handover marks the first time that everyone who has been held at Guantanamo Bay in the Bush administration's war on terror has been identified, according to Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler. A total 201 of the names have never been disclosed by the Defense Department before.

The list is in pdf form here. But even more interesting is who isn't on it:

But none of the most notorious terrorist suspects were included, raising questions about where America's most dangerous prisoners are being held.

With this release, we'll start getting the stories behind the detentions. It'll be interesting to see how compelling those stories are. I have no doubt that at least some of the people at Gitmo deserved to be there. But it seems that large numbers of them committed no crime other than being in some way associated with the Taliban. And nothing justifies depriving detainees of their rights, be that access to a court or treatment according to the Geneva Conventions.

Let us hope that the Gitmo experiment is rapidly coming to an end, not to be repeated any time soon. And then let us turn our attention to the hidden prisoners still in U.S. custody. They appear to be uniformly bad people; I'm glad they're behind bars, and hope they stay there for a very long time. But we are still honor- and duty-bound to treat them according to the law. Even Saddam gets a trial; so, too, should our remaining prisoners.

Guantanamo, terrorism, Gitmo, politics, midtopia

Where's the strategic intelligence?

The New York Times had an interesting article this Sunday about the CIA. It suggests that by responding to the huge demand for immediate intelligence, we as a nation have lost the means to generate strategic intelligence -- the kind of stuff that gives a clear picture of the war we use tactical intelligence to win.

The greatest problem in the eyes of some C.I.A. and other intelligence officials who served before and after 9/11 is that the agency can no longer produce strategic intelligence. It can no longer advise the president on the wisest ways to use military and diplomatic force. Its ability to see over the horizon has dwindled until its thousands of analysts can't see past the end of their desks.

The big picture has been bumped by spot news. Strategic intelligence is the power to know your enemies' intentions. Spot news is what happened last night in Waziristan. Drowned by demands from the White House and the Pentagon for instant information, "intelligence analysts end up being the Wikipedia of Washington," John McLaughlin, the deputy director and acting director of central intelligence from October 2000 to September 2004, said in an interview.

Why is this important? Because the CIA is the only civilian spy agency we have. The rest of our intelligence assets are dominated by the Pentagon, which does a fine job but has a different focus.

Once upon a time in the cold war, the C.I.A. could produce strategic intelligence. It countered the Pentagon's wildly overstated estimates of Soviet military power. It cautioned that the war in Vietnam could not be won by military force. It helped keep the cold war cold.

"You need to have a civilian check on the military in American society," said Richard L. Russell, a decorated C.I.A. analyst who now teaches senior diplomats and military officers at the National Defense University. "It's healthy for the president to have a second opinion on military affairs."

Instead, the demand for up-to-the-second data is turning the CIA into an adjunct of the military -- not culturally, but practically.

The agency is becoming "a battlefield combat support agency," Mr. Russell said. C.I.A. officers in Baghdad and at headquarters are pinned down answering daily tactical questions of the military: How strong is that bridge? How wide is that road?

Those are not the big strategic questions: How can the United States drain the swamp that breeds terrorism instead of killing snakes? What are the bricks and mortar for building democratic institutions in undemocratic states? Those questions are unanswered. "The C.I.A. becomes so consumed by the current crisis that it can't anticipate the next one," Mr. Russell said. "It becomes so balkanized that it becomes blinkered. Everyone's looking at their blades of grass and nobody's surveying the forest."

There are lots of reasons for the change in focus at the CIA, from the end of the cold war to the rise of the 24-hour news cycle. But it points up the growing lack of a counterbalance to the military in intelligence matters, and the ongoing inability to define exactly what it is we're fighting and what the best way to fight it might be.

This isn't about lack of data; the article notes that analysts never see 95 percent of the intelligence we collect. It's about lack of intelligent assessment of the incredible amount of data we have.

"They just don't have substantive experts," Mr. Russell said. "Name five C.I.A. experts on anything. I can't do it."

There's no point in fighting a war if we don't know who we're fighting, why we're fighting and why the current strategy is the best one. We don't need more data. We don't need more target analysis. We need people who can understand the world and explain why things work the way they do. Only then can we make informed choices about how best to defeat terror.

Bush has tried to address the problem by hiring more analysts. But it takes time to train them, and unless we change their mission, it won't help.

Carl W. Ford was an assistant secretary of state for intelligence from 2001 to 2003, capping a 38-year career that included senior posts at the Pentagon and CIA. As he put it:

Without fundamental changes in the ways American intelligence is analyzed and reported, Mr. Ford said, "we will continue to turn out the $40 billion pile of fluff we have become famous for."

"What we don't need is more money and people, at least not for now," he said. "Give us $20 billion more a year and we will give you just that much more fluff."

If this is true, than this represents a massive failure of our intelligence overhaul. If we didn't stop and think about what kind of intelligence we needed, and then set up the structure to provide it, we've wasted much of the past five years. And perhaps that failure helps explain the many mistakes we've made during that same time. Because if the administration didn't demand that its spies ask the right questions, it was never going to get the right answers.

I haven't used the words "Bush administration" and "incompetence" in a sentence for a while. But it may be time to dust them off again.

terrorism, CIA, intelligence, politics, midtopia

Border Guards

Bush is proposing sending several thousand National Guard troops to help secure the Mexican border.

Guarding borders is what militaries do, so I don't worry about the "militarization" of this particular police function.

But the Mexican border is 2,000 miles long. Here's the equation:

6,000 troops ÷ 2,000 miles = 3 soldiers per mile

No matter what you think about the idea of sending the military to stop illegal immigrants, that adds up to "token effort."

I'm more sympathetic to the "overstretching the military" argument; how long are we going to take Guard troops away from their families and civilian jobs? Having returned from Iraq, will border state troops now face the prospect of being sent to patrol the border? And will this be another example of Bush federalizing Guard units?

This is a temporary deployment, which helps address that issue, but it also means it's just a temporary solution -- more smoke than fire.

UPDATE: Bush's national address on the subject is encapsulated here, with the White House transcript here.

Nothing really new, other than ending the "catch and release" policy -- in which non-Mexican illegal immigrants are allowed to go free until their deportation hearing. Most (surprise, surprise) never show up again. That seems sensible.

It won't be cheap; the change will require new prisons to hold arrested immigrants until they get a deportation hearing, and justice requires that those hearings be held fairly quickly. And it's strictly small-bore, a tactical change.

The big bore stuff looks problematic. My own perspective is here.

terrorism, immigration, politics, midtopia

Another NSA poll

You won't see me dealing with polls much here, simply because they are too inconsequential, meaningless, and subject to change.

But since much has been made of last week's poll apparently showing 2-1 support for the NSA phone database, I thought I'd mention this one.

A majority of Americans disapprove of a massive Pentagon database containing the records of billions of phone calls made by ordinary citizens, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. About two-thirds are concerned that the program may signal other, not-yet-disclosed efforts to gather information on the general public.

The survey of 809 adults Friday and Saturday shows a nation wrestling with the balance between fighting terrorism and protecting civil liberties.

By 51%-43%, those polled disapprove of the program, disclosed Thursday in USA TODAY. The National Security Agency has been collecting phone records from three of the nation's largest telecommunication companies since soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The discussion on this topic has just begun, so neither of these polls are gospel. But it's worth noting that this poll had double the sample size (and thus a smaller margin of error) than the earlier poll, and comes after people had had several days to read and think about the NSA program.

Also worth noting is this:

Most of those who approve of the program say it violates some civil liberties but is acceptable because "investigating terrorism is the more important goal."

So a strong majority thinks it violates civil liberties; it's just that a sizable minority think the trade-off is worth it.

I don't, obviously, for reasons I've outlined before. But I will be heartened if the discussion on these sorts of programs moves away from simplistic assertions like "security is paramount" and weak justifications like "it's not clearly illegal", and toward the broader question of "exactly what sort of infringements on civil liberties are we willing to tolerate in pursuit of physical safety?" And that, of course, begs for the follow up question: "are all these infringements touted as 'necessary' really necessary, or are there less-intrusive ways to protect us?"

And finally, the big question: "when push comes to shove, do Americans have the courage that it takes to live in a free society?"

I do. I hope a strong majority in this country do, too.

security, privacy, NSA, civil liberties, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Gee, who would have thunk it?

Why is a government phone database a bad idea? Because of stuff like this:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

Hmmm. Do you suppose that tracking calls made by reporters might have a chilling effect on their ability to report, far out of proportion to whatever legitimate security interest the government has in finding and plugging leaks?

Do you suppose that such practices might be ripe for abuse -- used, say, when the activity being investigated is not a national security issue but, say, embarassing or criminal?

Let's extend the analogy to the Internet, and let's make it personal.

I post under a pseudonym. If I were to become a thorn in the side of the administration, they could easily track the IP addresses used for posting, learn my identity, and then take action. What if my employer is one of those that would not be happy to find that I'm running this site? The government could simply inform my employer and I'd be forced to stop blogging on pain of losing my job.

I broke no law. I would not be charged with any crime. But I would be effectively silenced.

Such things are insidious, and harmful to a free society. They ought to be odious to anyone who values a free society and a strong democracy. Handing the government the keys to our privacy in hopes that they will keep us safe from terrorists simply exchanges a distant threat for a near one, and destroys the very thing that we're trying to defend.

civil liberties, privacy, NSA, politics, midtopia

Discriminating against poor students?

A California judge has suspended a statewide exam that high school students must pass to receive their diploma.

Today's Star Tribune had a brief on it, mentioning that the judge concluded the exam discriminated against "poor students" and those with limited English skills.

My first reaction was "Poor students? Isn't that the point of such an exam, to weed out the bad students?"

But upon further research, the judge meant students who are economically poor. And the argument there is an interesting one.

The lawsuit claimed that many students have not had the opportunity to learn the material on the exit exam because they went to substandard schools with unqualified teachers, insufficient textbooks and squalid conditions.

Freedman agreed, saying, "Students in economically challenged communities have not had an equal opportunity to learn the materials tested."

Freedman wrote in his opinion that the "record is replete" with evidence of California's underfunded schools and said his decision applies to students statewide.

Few people would disagree that students should graduate with certain basic skills. And a graduation exam is a good way to test whether they have those skills.

But as this lawsuit highlights, if a student has not acquired those skills, whose fault is it: the student's or the school system's? Who do you punish, the student or the school?

On the other hand, if you can get a diploma without learning those basic skills, what value does the diploma have?

It might come down to cases. But it seems to me the problem can be solved by focusing on the goal: turning out an educated populace.

If a student fails the exam, they don't get a diploma: they get shunted into a high-quality, well-funded remedial program that will bring their skills up so that they *can* pass the exam.

Meanwhile, if a school has a large percentage of students failing to pass the exam, it gets scrutinized. If the problem is funding, it gets more resources. If the problem is staff competence, it gets a housecleaning. If the problem is simply a highly challenged student body -- poor, large number of non-English speakers, unstable homes -- it gets something tailored to that.

Focus on the goal: A diploma should mean something, and if students are failing to learn we should place the blame -- and the resources -- where it belongs.

education, California, politics, midtopia

Highly-enriched uranium found in Iran

is Iran still operating a clandestine nuclear enrichment program?

U.N. inspectors have found traces of near bomb-grade enriched uranium on nuclear equipment in Iran, diplomats said on Friday, as the EU prepared a declaration that will insist Tehran shelve all enrichment work.

Maybe not:

The new discovery by U.N. inspectors of high-enriched uranium traces in Iran was made on equipment from a former research site razed by Iran in 2004 before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could examine it, diplomats said.

Er, okay. So that means they had a clandestine enrichment program. Something we already knew. Phew.

Still, the fact that they had near bomb-grade uranium casts doubt on the peacefulness of the venture. Power plants don't need anywhere near that level of enrichment.

The Iranian reaction was, paraphrased, "you're all a bunch of pussies":

Iran signaled undiminished confidence in a lack of big power resolve against its atomic work with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling Western pressure "psychological propaganda" and the U.S.-mooted, last-resort option of war "unlikely." ... Reacting to the report, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told the students' news agency ISNA: "These comments lack any importance and do not come from a real source."

Not really the words of someone interested in a diplomatic solution, are they?

nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Big windfarm planned for Texas

Kudos to Texas for thinking big, as usual.

A proposal to build the biggest offshore wind farm in the nation won approval yesterday from Texas state officials, the latest development in the fast-growing segment of the alternative-energy industry.

Texas General Land Office, which manages state lands and mineral rights, said yesterday that it reached an agreement granting Superior Renewable Energy the rights to 39,900 acres of submerged lands in the Gulf of Mexico, just off the coast of Padre Island and south of Baffin Bay. The big wind turbines, expected to number more than 100, will be erected as few as three and as many as eight miles offshore.

The Houston company, headed by the former executive of a small oil company, said it plans to build 500 megawatts of capacity, enough to power a small city or about 125,000 homes. But the firm's executive vice president and general counsel Michael Hansen said it will probably be about four years before construction begins.

This is serious money: the project will take four to five years to complete, at a cost of $1 billion to $2 billion.

There are the usual environmental concerns: The wind farm is astride a major migratory bird route. That's a legitimate problem, but surely we can develop ways to keep birds away from the blades. Eventually I'd like to see some sort of cost-comparison for wind farms, quantifying the benefits of reduced pollution against the threat to wildlife. On the plus side, the lease agreement contains tough standards for protecting birds, according to consumer watchdog Public Citizen.

Consider this a test case for offshore wind power generation. If it goes well, wind could become a significant source of power over the next decade.

renewable energy, wind farm, energy, texas, politics, midtopia

NSA spying update

It's been a very busy day at work, and other bloggers are way ahead of me. So I'll just point you to the insights at the following purveyors of food thought:

The Moderate Voice has a good roundup of opinion.
One Donklephant poster explains his concerns, while another asks "does datamining work, anyway?"

My few thoughts:

The Washington Post poll showing 63% support for the program is worthless, because it's based on 400 people interviewed the same day the story broke. It's a sampling of opinion, but not necessarily informed opinion.

The idea behind "social networks" is to find out who's connected to whom. You find a suspect, find out who's talking to him, then find out who's talking to those people, and so on. Sounds great -- unless you've ever played the Kevin Bacon game. Do that and you soon come to the conclusion that it's possible to connect anyone to nearly anyone else in relatively few moves. Which makes sense, because the connections progress geometrically.

So to find a meaningful pattern, you have to start with a known terrorist phone number. And if you've got that, you ought to be able to get warrants to tap that phone, pull its records, and look at those direct connections.

If that's true -- and I freely admit to not be an expert -- all the database does is save a little time. Is that worth the huge invitation to abuse that it offers?

Finally, ThinkProgress notes that the phone companies could be liable for billions of dollars in damages if they turned over records illegally. Somehow I think they'll get excused from that, given the NSA arm-twisting, but there could be some expensive lawsuits in their future.

terrorism, privacy, civil liberties, NSA, politics, midtopia

Rove to be indicted?

Truthout is reporting that Karl Rove has told his bosses that he will be indicted in the Valerie Plame case, and would resign when that happened.

Details of Rove's discussions with the president and Bolten have spread through the corridors of the White House where low-level staffers and senior officials were trying to determine how the indictment would impact an administration that has been mired in a number of high-profile political scandals for nearly a year, said a half-dozen White House aides and two senior officials who work at the Republican National Committee.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources confirmed Rove's indictment is imminent. These individuals requested anonymity saying they were not authorized to speak publicly about Rove's situation. A spokesman in the White House press office said they would not comment on "wildly speculative rumors."

Which, at the moment, is all they are. Truthout is not exactly an unbiased source, and so far there's no independent confirmation. But it would be unusual for Truthout to state the case so clearly if they didn't have something to back it up.

Fitzgerald, Plame, Rove, politics, midtopia

Hamas militants propose recognition of Israel

According to Hamas members, there's a spirited debate going on within the party about recognizing Israel.

Many Hamas leaders favor recognizing Israel, but Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar and the group's top leader, Syria-based Khaled Mashaal, have refused, the official said.

The debate became public with the release of a proposal worked out by top militants, including those from Hamas, imprisoned in Israeli jails. The document calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War: the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.

Whether such a land-for-peace deal is acceptable to Israel is a matter of debate. And several other demands in the document, notably the right of return for Palestinian refugees, are strongly opposed by Israel. So the proposal is best considered a work in progress.

In some other promising signs, Israel said it would be willing to use some of its impounded tax payments to the Palestinian Authority for humanitarian efforts within Palestine. And Fatah and Hamas have agreed to stop violent clashes, a step away from civil war if it holds. However violence continued even after the truce.

Baby steps all. But steps in the right direction.

Fatah, Hamas, Palestine, Israel, politics, midtopia

Bob Ney under the microscope

I'm several days late getting to this, but Bob Ney has been added to the Hall of Shame watch.

Ney is under the microscope for allegedly taking contributions and gifts in the form of trips, concerts, sporting events and meals from Abramoff and Tony Rudy, a former aide to DeLay who recently pleaded guilty to charges his conspired to bribe members of Congress with Abramoff.

On Monday, Ney's former chief of staff and later lobbyist Neil Volz was pleading guilty to two minor corruption charges in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. ... Ney allegedly reciprocated for [Abramoff's] favors by introducing legislation to help Abramoff's Indian tribe clients and entered language into The Congressional Record denouncing the business practices of a cruise line owner with whom Abramoff was in a dispute.

A lot of bad chiefs of staff floating around, it seems.

Volz, Ney, politics, midtopia