Mideast heats up (again)

There was a brief (if probably meaningless) moment of hope in Palestine a couple of days ago, when Hamas and Fatah agreed to recognize the so-called "prisoner's manifesto", which implicity recognizes Israel.

But Hamas later denied that it agreed to recognize Israel. If so, then this is worrisome:

The deal appeared likely to lead to the cancellation of a July 26 referendum Abbas had scheduled, over Hamas's objections, on the prisoners' document. Such a showdown would have heightened tensions between Fatah and Hamas, whose fighters have clashed repeatedly in recent weeks.

So what we might have here is a meaningless deal that allows Abbas to cancel a divisive referendum -- and squander a chance to move Palestinian-Israeli relations forward.

Things didn't get any better after Hamas-linked groups kidnapped an Israeli soldier. Israel responded by invading Gaza and arresting dozens of Hamas lawmakers -- and also venturing into Syrian airspace.

At times like this it's tough to avoid a "pox on both their houses" response. Hamas is split both politically and militarily, Abbas is largely powerless and Israel's outsized response to militant provocation further poisons the well. Israel may well have concluded that there's no point to negotiating or playing nice with a group that refuses to recognize their right to exist -- and they'd have a point. Israel also has a history of going all-out to retrieve captured soldiers, believing that it cuts down on the number of such captures. And again, they have a point.

But the fact is that the only way out of the current mess -- a mess that harms both sides -- is to show restraint and a committment to dialogue. Hamas' refusal to deal with reality carries consequences -- but Israel should strive to make those consequences proportionate. Otherwise Israel makes itself captive to the most extreme Palestinian elements -- elements that would like to see the peace process dead and buried.

Israel needs to battle the extremists and talk with the moderates, as does Hamas. But both need to take care that the methods used to achieve the former don't undermine the latter. Because the latter is the only thing that will lead to a long-term solution.

Shalit, Gaza, Abbas, Hamas, Palestine, Israel, politics, midtopia

No military tribunals for Gitmo trials

I am stunned and happy and feeling very appreciative of our system of government.

The Supreme Court today delivered a stunning rebuke to the Bush administration over its plans to try Guantanamo detainees before military commissions, ruling that the commissions violate U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of war prisoners.

In a 5-3 decision, the court said the trials were not authorized by any act of Congress and that their structure and procedures violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949.

It should be a no-brainer that creating a separate legal system for arbitrarily defined prisoners -- one with far fewer legal protections than either our civilian or military justice systems -- was a bad idea. It might be Constitutional (though still ill-advised) if Congress created such a system, but to do so solely through executive power represented an usurpation of Congress' role. I'm glad to see our judicial branch come down clearly on this.

In the short term, nothing will change at Guantanamo. But the ruling means the prisoners there must be tried either as civilians in federal court, or as military combatants under the UCMJ. Presumably they are entitled to a speedy trial as well, and won't simply remain detained indefinitely because the administration refuses to submit to a trial.

The ruling also deals a blow to the President's heavy reliance on his "inherent authority" to disregard laws he finds inconvenient. Part of his legal justification for the military tribunals rested on such "inherent" authority. This ruling kicks the legs out from under that argument, and points up that the only valid opinion on Bush's "inherent" authority comes from the judicial branch.

If Bush wishes to claim such authority, he ought to seek a Supreme Court ruling validating that claim -- not simply assert the authority and then exercise it until such time as a lawsuit challenging that authority wends its way through the courts. If an emergency requires him to act before he has an opportunity to seek such a ruling, he should still seek the ruling as soon as possible -- and use the power sparingly in the meantime.

The three justices that voted in favor of the administration's position were -- unsurprisingly -- Scalia, Thomas and Alito. John Roberts recused himself because he had heard the case as a lower-court judge; but he likely would have voted with the other three.

What's interesting about that is that it takes the idea of judicial deference to a whole new level. Their dissent rests largely on a law passed in 2005 that stripped the courts of any jurisdiction over Guantanamo detainees. It's rather amazing to see three Supreme Court justices meekly accept Congress' power to arbitrarily diminish their authority over a geographic region. Congress has the power to regulate the courts, of course, but where does that power end? What would stop Congress from legislating the judicial branch out of existence, either by defunding it or simply narrowing its authority to the point that it is powerless?

But that's a battle for another day. For now the Supreme Court has reaffirmed some basic principles of American law, and for that we should be happy.

Hamdan, civil liberties, Supreme Court, terrorism, Gitmo, Guantanamo, politics, midtopia

Signing statements get scrutiny

Bush's previously reported addiction to signing statements will now get Congressional scrutiny, courtesy of Arlen Specter.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter yesterday scheduled a hearing for next Tuesday on President Bush's use of signing statements to claim the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office.

Specter said he is asking the Bush administration to send an official from the Justice Department to testify before the committee about the president's legal contentions, as well as several constitutional law scholars. It was not yet clear who from the administration would come, he said.

"I think that the president is trying to expand his executive authority at the expense of Congress's constitutional prerogatives, and it's very problemsome," Specter said in a phone interview. "I want to get into the details with the administration on what they think their legal authority is."

Good for him. It's one thing for Bush to issue a signing statement saying he believes the law is wrong or unconstitutional; it's another for him to actually disregard the law. One is opinion; the other is constitutionally dangerous.

So what I want to hear is how Bush has treated those laws. Were the statements merely his opinion, or did they guide how (and whether) he followed the law in question?

Bush supporters note that he's not the first president to use signing statements, and the Justice Department argues that Bush's practices are in line with that of his predecessors.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michelle E. Boardman testified during the committee's hearing on signing statements [committee materials] that presidents dating to James Monroe have used the statements to express constitutional concerns about legislation. President Bush's use of the technique is "indistinguishable" from that of previous presidents, according to Boardman's prepared remarks [text], and the number of statements Bush has issued "is in keeping with the number issued by every President during the past quarter century." She continued:

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michelle E. Boardman testified during the committee's hearing on signing statements [committee materials] that presidents dating to James Monroe have used the statements to express constitutional concerns about legislation. President Bush's use of the technique is "indistinguishable" from that of previous presidents, according to Boardman's prepared remarks [text], and the number of statements Bush has issued "is in keeping with the number issued by every President during the past quarter century." She continued:

If she's right, then no problem. But I want to see examples of how various laws were handled. I want to know whether they're bluster or something more troublesome.

signing statements, Specter, Bush, politics, midtopia

Flag-burning amendment fails

... By one measly vote.

Obligatory meathead quote from amendment supporters:

"Countless men and women have died defending that flag," said Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., closing two days of debate. "It is but a small humble act for us to defend it."

Yes, let's honor the men and women who died for our freedom by damaging one of those freedoms. Perhaps someone should send Frist a dictionary with the entry for "irony" highlighted.

You also have to admire the spin of the pro-amendment folks, who note that flag-burning has increased 33 percent this year.

The Citizens Flag Alliance, a group pushing for the Senate this week to pass a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution, just reported an alarming, 33 percent increase in the number of flag-desecration incidents this year.

The number has increased to four, from three.

Yes, we certainly need an amendment to deal with that.

I am glad this issue is dead for another year. And I hope the November elections cause Senate support for this stupidity to recede.

Frist, free speech, flag burning, civil liberties, politics, midtopia

Camptopia

I'm heading off on a camping trip with the family, so I won't be posting for several days. Meanwhile, check out the excellent posts at sites like Donklephant, the Moderate Voice and the Reaction.

politics, midtopia

Reserving a seat for Ney

In the Hall of Shame, that is.

Check out this squirming and word-parsing:

In the fall of 2004, Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) told Senate investigators that ... "he was not at all familiar with the Tigua" and could not recall meeting with members of the tribe, the report said.

Six days after the interview, Tigua representatives testified at a committee hearing that Abramoff had set up a lengthy meeting with Ney in his office in August 2002 as well as a conference call, and that the congressman had assured them he was working to insert language that would reopen their casino into an unrelated election reform bill. Team Abramoff and the tribe that year became Ney's biggest donors, contributing $47,500 to his campaign committees....

Ney's statements to the committee have been contradicted by others as well, including his former longtime chief of staff, Neil G. Volz, in admissions he made this year as part of his guilty plea to corruptly seeking to influence Ney on the Tigua issue.

Busted! Ney's response:

Brian Walsh, a spokesman for Ney, said yesterday that the congressman's meeting with the committee "was a voluntary meeting -- it was not conducted under oath."

Translation: "Sure, I lied -- but it wasn't illegal."

Walsh also pleads a misspelling: Ney's calendar showed a meeting with the "Taqua", not the "Tigua."

Funny stuff. But it doesn't explain why Ney further claimed he never met with an El Paso-based tribe. Even if he got the name wrong, surely the location would have stuck.

Finally, Walsh complains that the report relied on testimony from "convicted felons." Well, yeah. But one of those felons is Ney's own chief of staff. It's pretty hard to impeach that kind of testimony with character attacks.

As a side note, the report details $4 million in payments from Abramoff to Ralph Reed, carefully funneled through Grover Norquist so that Reed wouldn't be taking money directly from gambling interests. Slimy as that is, neither Reed nor Norquist are Congressmen. Although this should certainly be a factor in Reed's bid for Georgia's lieutenant governor seat.

lobbyists, gambling, corruption, Norquist, Reed, Abramoff, Ney, politics, midtopia

From telephone calls to bank records

The big revelation in today's papers are that the government has been monitoring a huge international database of financial transactions, looking for evidence of terrorist funding so they can trace it and shut it down.

The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.

Nobody should be suprised by this. We know the administration was monitoring phone calls, and we know they were trying to trace terrorist funding.

The one thing I find surprising is that a company based in Belgium agreed to share the data, despite rules to the contrary. But they have U.S. operations, which makes them subject to U.S. law. And in the aftermath of 9/11 they were interested in helping if they could.

So is this program another warrantless wiretap program? Yet another power grab by the administration in the name of fighting terror?

Yes and no. As constructed, I have fewer problems with this effort than I do with the eavesdropping program.

First, it's not warrantless:

Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.

Yes, it's a broad grab. But at least they're getting subpoenas (though it appears that's only because Swift demanded them). They're just National Security Letters, true, which require very little in the way of factual support. But it's better than just ignoring the whole warrant/subpoena process.

Second, it's mostly international records, and there are safeguards to keep the records of American citizens private.

Among the safeguards, government officials said, is an outside auditing firm that verifies that the data searches are based on intelligence leads about suspected terrorists. "We are not on a fishing expedition," Mr. Levey said. "We're not just turning on a vacuum cleaner and sucking in all the information that we can."

The auditing firm is a nice touch. But regardless, I have no problem with scanning foreign transactions. It's similar to what the NSA was created to do: monitor foreign communications. They don't need a warrant to do so, because foreigners have no protections under the Constitution.

So I don't have a big problem with the broad outline of the program. My concerns are smaller.

1. This program, created as a temporary, emergency measure right after 9/11, is becoming entrenched as a permanent tool. If this is going to be a long-term effort, then the program needs to ensure that it takes careful care of individual rights. As one official noted: while tight controls are in place, "the potential for abuse is enormous." It's the same problem we run into with other "emergency" powers claimed under the "war" metaphor; they are inherently incompatible with a decades-long fight such as we're facing with regard to terrorism. We need to find ways to access this data without invoking "emergency" powers that trample on rights.

2. If they're using an audit firm to ensure that every search is based on intelligence leads, that raises a big question: why do they need to use broad administrative subpoenas? If they know enough to request a record, they should be able to get a narrower warrant that would be far more protective of individual rights. The administration has shown little interest in such balancing measures. But as in the phone database case, it's not clear why -- other than a general desire to operate with as few restrictions as possible.

So while this program bears watching, and probably could use some reforms to make it compatible with long-term use, I don't find it as offensive as the more purely domestic operations that Bush has authorized.

banking, terrorism, Swift, NSA, CIA, politics, midtopia

As expected, House votes to slash estate tax

The vote was 269-156.

Now it goes to the Senate, where the vote is expected to be much closer.

Republicans trot out the same discredited rhetoric:

"I've never thought that every trip to the undertaker should be a accompanied by a trip by the I.R.S. to your family," said Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the Republican whip. "Do I have to sell the corner grocery store or the service station, just to pay the inheritance tax?"

Of course, Republicans have been unable to show examples of that actually happening. I'm blown away by Blunt's ability to repeat a talking point with a straight face, even after it's been debunked.

The Democrats have it right on this one:

Democrats, with equal vehemence, countered that fewer than 1 percent of estates are subject to any tax and that a further rollback would benefit only the very richest families while widening the federal deficit.

"This is the Paris Hilton tax relief act — not Conrad Hilton, Paris Hilton," said Representative Stephen Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts. "This Congress has bent over backward to take care of the wealthy, the strong. Who do we neglect? The people who do the menial work."

It's all about priorities. And it makes no sense for this to be a top priority. Fix other things first.

Bleh. Let's hope the Senate is made of sterner stuff.

taxes, estate tax, politics, midtopia

Good for her

In an example of why we have warrant requirements, there's this story:

Library Director Michele Reutty is under fire for refusing to give police library circulation records without a subpoena.

Reutty says she was only doing her job and maintaining the privacy of library patrons. But the mayor called it "a blatant disregard for the Police Department," which needed her help to identify a man who allegedly threatened a child.

If you read the piece, you'll note that the only thing the librarian did was uphold the law by requiring the police to have proper authorization before they accessed private records. Once the police did that, she helped them out and they found the guy they were looking for.

Now she's being condemned and faces possible disciplinary action for doing her job:

Borough labor lawyer Ellen Horn, who also represented the library trustees, said Reutty was "more interested in protecting" her library than helping the police.

"It was an absolute misjudgment of the seriousness of the matter," Horn said at Tuesday's meeting.

What's more serious: a slight delay in identifying a subject, or a complete disregard for the Fourth Amendment, thus creating an environment where the police have the right to demand access to any records they want, without having to give a reason?

And anyway, what if Reuty had simply acquiesced?

The whole episode is "shocking," Reutty said Wednesday. "I followed the law. And because I followed the law, at the end of the day, the policemen's case is going to hold strong. Nobody is going to sue the library and nobody is going to sue the municipality of Hasbrouck Heights because information was given out illegally."

Precisely. By insisting that police follow the law, she ensured that a crucial piece of evidence will not be challenged by defense lawyers and thrown out of court. And she ensured that neither the borough nor the police will be sued.

I don't actively fear my government; I think government in general tries to do a good job. But things like the Fourth Amendment are one reason I feel that way.

For instance, Britain doesn't have an equivalent of the Bill of Rights. Which leads to things like this:

The police have launched a crackdown on English soccer hooligans to prevent them from reaching Germany for the World Cup, officials said Wednesday.

Intelligence officers were stationed at ports across the country, said Commander Bob Broadhurst, who leads the Metropolitan Police operation against soccer violence.

Broadhurst said about 3,500 troublemakers had been ordered to hand in their passports before the tournament begins.

Think about that. The government prevents perfectly legal private travel by temporarily revoking the passports of 3,500 people they think might cause trouble at the World Cup. It's an arbitrary exercise of government power. A good idea, perhaps. But nothing stops the government from exercising that power for bad reasons.

The United States can revoke a citizen's passport, too, but only on very narrow grounds: they are a criminal defendant who poses a flight risk, or a condition of parole requires them to stay in the country -- that sort of thing.

Britain's not a bad place to live. But in many ways British citizens rely on tradition and the good graces of their government to protect them from abuse. They have laws protecting privacy, but they are not rights; they can be revoked as easily as they were granted.

Rights are important. Yes, they protect the bad as well as the good. But since the founding of this country we've considered that a good trade-off. We should not let security fears goad us into surrendering those rights.

Update: Reutty resigned in October 2006 after six months of battling the library board, and took a job as head of the Oakland, N.J., Public Library.

England, Britain, New Jersey, Fourth Amendment, Bill of Rights, privacy, civil liberties, politics, midtopia

Puppy killed; call Judge Judy!

At the risk of becoming the Ann Coulter of dead puppies, I had a couple of unorthodox reactions to this sad story.

A miniature pinscher puppy in North Branch, just a couple of months old, was beaten to death by three boys, ages 6 to 8, for no apparent reason -- not that there's ever a good reason for doing that.

This is terrible. I am saddened. It was a difficult moment in our house when my daughter accidentally killed a toad. And having recently lost our cat, I know how much the loss of a pet can hurt.

But I couldn't help noticing two things:

1. The family is named Darwin.

2. The family plans to take legal action. Maybe small claims court. Or maybe not:

They also plan to take legal action in small claims court or on the TV show "The People's Court." The Darwins contacted the show and have been told there is interest in their case. If nothing else, the boys should get community service, Darwin said.

You know, when my dog is killed, the first thought that goes through my head is not "hey, let's call People's Court!"

I'm going to hell, I know.

animal cruelty, Minnesota, Bella, politics, midtopia

Less than meets the eye

Congressional corruption is a hot topic, but these seem to be more smoke than fire:

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) made a $2 million profit last year on the sale of land 5 1/2 miles from a highway project that he helped to finance with targeted federal funds.

A Republican House member from California, meanwhile, received nearly double what he paid for a four-acre parcel near an Air Force base after securing $8 million for a planned freeway interchange 16 miles away. And another California GOP congressman obtained funding in last year's highway bill for street improvements near a planned residential and commercial development that he co-owns.

I'm all for scrutinizing lawmaker finances, and earmarks are a growing problem. But the connections here seem tenuous at best. For instance:

Arthur C. Zwemke, a Robert Arthur partner whose company plans to build a 1,635-home residential and commercial development on the site, scoffed at assertions that the Prairie Parkway had boosted the value of Hastert's land. The price for the land had been locked up in 2004 by land speculator Ron March, who then ceded the project to Robert Arthur Land, he said. The price, he added, could not have risen with the news of the Prairie Parkway funding. Besides, the parkway is still years from construction, he noted, and land prices are soaring as Chicago's sprawl moves ever westward.

The California airbase case is a little stronger, because even if Rep. Ken Calvert's gains were "in line with rising property values," one reason the property values were rising was because of his earmark. It's Congressional insider trading. So look more closely at that one.

The third case, involving Rep. Gary Miller, seems as weak as Hastert's:

Miller, the other California Republican, helped secure $1.28 million in last year's highway bill for street improvements near a planned residential and commercial development in Diamond Bar, Calif., that he co-owns with a top campaign contributor.

Kevin McKee, a Miller spokesman, said the road improvement was a mile away from the development and had been designated by Diamond Bar officials as their top priority.

Scrutinize Congress? Fine. But care must be taken to avoid turning a concern about corruption into a witchhunt. Congressmen live (well, maintain a residence) in their district, and bring federal money home to their district. That almost inevitably leads to federal money being spent near places that the Congressman may have a financial interest in. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Watchdogs must meet a higher standard of proof than simply pointing out those geographical facts.

Gary Miller, Calvert, Hastert, corruption, Congress, politics, midtopia

WMDs FOUND IN IRAQ!!!!

Well, sort of. Okay, not really.

In case you had any doubts that Rick Santorum and Pete Hoekstra are idiots, I give you this:

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) told reporters yesterday that weapons of mass destruction had in fact been found in Iraq, despite acknowledgments by the White House and the insistence of the intelligence community that no such weapons had been discovered.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Santorum said.

The lawmakers pointed to an unclassified summary from a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center regarding 500 chemical munitions shells that had been buried near the Iranian border, and then long forgotten, by Iraqi troops during their eight-year war with Iran, which ended in 1988.

Saddam was known to have developed and used chemical weapons; we sold him the components for some of it, and his gas attacks against Kurdish villages are a component in his ongoing trial. Iraqi troops used poison gas during the Iraq-Iran war. We have previously found old artillery shells modified for chemical warfare.

What we have never found -- and still haven't -- is any indication that he had functioning stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons, or a functioning nuclear program. 15-year-old artillery shells do not constitute a reason to invade.

Even the Pentagon rejects the senators' contention:

Asked why the Bush administration, if it had known about the information since April or earlier, didn't advertise it, Hoekstra conjectured that the president has been forward-looking and concentrating on the development of a secure government in Iraq.

Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

Idiots.

Hoekstra, Santorum, Iraq, WMD, politics, midtopia

Government on the cheap

First, Gov. Tim Pawlenty wanted contractors to front their own money in order to get contracts to work on the Crosstown Commons project. The result? Nobody submitted a bid, and the project is now delayed for at least a couple of months.

Now Pawlenty wants private businesses to lend the state their top IT experts for a year -- for free.

The state is asking high-tech firms and large corporations to lend their computer experts for as long as a year to the Office of Enterprise Technology. The private companies would continue to pay their employees' salaries and benefits.

The computer experts would be put to work on an ambitious project to reinvent the government's computer network. The proposal lists 14 categories of work, ranging from cyber security to systems development to government Web site design.

The first question that jumps to mind is, "why would the private sector agree to this?" The answer to that, the state hopes, is civic-mindedness and the chance to guide the direction of state government.

That's a beautiful thought. And if it works without murky quid pro quos, great; I'll admit I was wrong.

But consider these other thoughts:

1. Why would a party that routinely demonizes government as "the problem" suddenly expect companies to respect government enough to donate their top people?

2. There is no free lunch. Why is it better to effectively tax a few individual companies in order to fill a statewide need, rather than spreading the pain around by simply hiring the necessary experts with taxpayer money?

3. What kind of example do we set when our government keeps trying to find ways to not pay for what it wants?

The article calls this a "grand experiment." But it doesn't strike me as grand so much as chintzy, an attempt to chisel the private sector for something that should simply be paid for like any other government obligation. This isn't the Peace Corps; this isn't an attempt to change the world. It's computer infrastructure. We would not expect Dell to give the state free PCs, nor would we expect AT&T to provide free high-speed data links. So why should we expect free IT design services?

A "grand experiment" would be a project designed to help citizens directly, like a statewide WiFi network or an education initiative or something like that. Modernizing the government's computer network just doesn't fit the bill. It's small-bore thinking wrapped up in gaudy language.

Drive to Excellence, Pawlenty, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

Khomeini's grandson calls for invasion of Iran

His name is Hossein Khomeini, and he did it from inside Iran; he lives in Qom.

The grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, the inspiration of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, has broken a three-year silence to back the United States military to overthrow the country's clerical regime....

"My grandfather's revolution has devoured its children and has strayed from its course," he told Al-Arabiya, an Arabic-language television station. "I lived through the revolution and it called for freedom and democracy - but it has persecuted its leaders."

He also made clear his opposition to Teheran's alleged development of a secret nuclear weapons programme. "Iran will gain real power if freedom and democracy develop there," he said. "Strength will not be obtained through weapons and the bomb."

It's not the first time he's said this -- he first did so in 2003 -- but it's still startling to hear.

I think it's pretty cool. An invasion would be a seriously bad idea, but it's good to hear more and more voices being raised against the ruling mullahs -- and their nuclear program. It's been clear for years that the mullahs do not represent the people of Iran. As internal opposition grows, the mullahs come under increasing pressure to either relent or crack down. And they lose either way.

This is probably the last we'll hear from Khomeini for a while, though. His connections will probably spare his life; but he'll be even more thoroughly muzzled than he has been up until now.

nuclear, Khomeini, Iran, politics, midtopia

Estate tax vote looming

The estate tax will go up for a vote in the House this week, but full repeal isn't on the table.

Here's the compromise:

Estates worth as much as $5 million -- $10 million for couples -- would be exempt from taxation indefinitely.

The tax rate on estates worth more than the exemption level up to $25 million would be set at the same tax rates that apply to capital gains -- now 15 percent but scheduled to rise to 20 percent in 2011. The rate for estates worth more than $25 million would be twice the capital gains rate.

Here's what I don't like about the bill:

The bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the estate tax cut would cost the government $279 billion over 10 years.

And with no "pay as you go" provision, guess where that money will come from? If you answered "piled on top of the already big deficit", you'd be right. It's better than the $1 trillion cost of a full repeal, but it's still too much money.

As I've written before, "fixing" the estate tax just makes it that much harder to address more-pressing concerns, like the Alternative Minimum Tax or, say, reducing the deficit.

There's also this lovely piece of bribery:

To lure Democratic senators from Washington state and Arkansas, Thomas included a lucrative tax break for the timber industry, pushing the total cost of the bill to nearly $280 billion.

You gotta love it when both sides sell out their principles for a buck.

The good news: Passage isn't certain, and is even less likely in the Senate, which rejected an estate-tax appeal earlier this year.

alternative minimum tax, AMT, taxes, estate tax, politics, midtopia

Safavian found guilty

Refocusing attention on Republican corruption, a former Bush official has been found guilty in the Jack Abramoff probe.

A federal jury found former White House aide David H. Safavian guilty yesterday of lying and obstructing justice, making him the highest-ranking government official to be convicted in the spreading scandal involving disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Safavian, a former chief of staff of the General Services Administration, was convicted in U.S. District Court here of covering up his many efforts to assist Abramoff in acquiring two properties controlled by the GSA, and also of concealing facts about a lavish weeklong golf trip he took with Abramoff to Scotland and London in the summer of 2002.

He could get up to 20 years in prison, as well as a hefty fine.

It will be interesting to see how the various corruption scandals play out as we lurch toward the November elections. The Abramoff probe is sexy because it's a many-tentacled beast that helped bring down Tom DeLay and could yet ensnare other leading Republicans, notably Bob Ney. It's organized corruption that springs directly from Republican efforts to ramp up fundraising and both co-opt and embrace lobbyists.

The Democratic scandals, on the other hand, are a series of inidividual incidents. William Jefferson suspected of soliciting bribes; Alan Mollohan growing suspiciously wealthy in a very short time. It's personal greed, which speaks to the broadness of the "culture of corruption" on Capitol Hill but doesn't implicate the entire Democratic Party the way Abramoff implicates Republicans.

But will voters care? And should they? Is that a distinction without a difference? Will voters blame the parties or the individuals? Or might they decide "a pox on both your houses" and stay home?

I think the difference is important. Democrats aren't notably less corrupt per capita than Republicans, but in this case the corruption is concentrated in the Republican leadership. The Democratic leadership has many problems, but systemic corruption a la Abramoff isn't one of them.

One might argue that the GOP is simply more efficient and open about its ravenous pursuit of cash, but that's still a reason to prefer Democrats: they're simply too disorganized at the moment to manage truly harmful levels of greed.

As long as the Democrats feel corruption is a winning issue for them, it will have a salutory effect: they will police themselves more vigorously in order to retain that political leverage. And their efforts to spotlight Republican corruption will force some discipline on the GOP, as well as keeping the issue in the public eye.

It worked for the GOP in 1994, when they swept a sclerotic Democratic majority from power. In a demonstration of the truism that power corrupts, it is now the Democrats' turn to return the favor. The GOP, knowing the electoral power of the issue, managed to maintain its anticorruption discipline for several years; we can only hope that if the Democrats regain power in part because of an anticorruption platform, the same will hold true for them.

Jefferson, Mollohan, Ney, Abramoff, corruption, politics, midtopia

Two plus two

The two missing soldiers have been found dead. And they did not get the quick and painless death I hoped for.

General Caldwell declined to speak in detail about the physical condition of those who had been found, but said that the cause of death could not be determined. He said the remains of the men would be sent to the United States for DNA testing to determine definitively their identities. That seemed to suggest that the two Americans had been wounded or mutilated beyond recognition.

The suspicion is that they were beheaded:

The Mujahedeen Shura, an umbrella group that claims Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia as a member, said in a statement posted on the Internet that the successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had slaughtered the two Americans. The authenticity of the statement, like many that are posted on the Internet, could not be verified. The Arabic word used in the posting — "Nahr" — denotes the cutting of the throat, and it has been used by jihadi groups when they have beheaded their victims.

Medieval idiots.

I oppose the war in Iraq. But even though the war may be a mistake, that doesn't change the fact that there are some very bad people on the other side that badly need to be helped off this plane of existence. I happen to think our presence in Iraq is creating more and more of them, which is one reason I think the war is a mistake. But that doesn't even begin to excuse behavior like this. May the perpetrators find themselves on the wrong side of a Rheinmetall 120mm smoothbore.

Separately, an Army investigation has concluded that two soldiers killed in 2004 were shot by the Iraqi troops patrolling with them.

The deaths of Army Spc. Patrick R. McCaffrey Sr. and 1st Lt. Andre D. Tyson were originally attributed to an ambush during a patrol near Balad, Iraq, on June 22, 2004.

But the Army's Criminal Investigation Command found that one or more of the Iraqis attached to the American soldiers on patrol fired at them, a military official said Tuesday.

Not so good, and something that has been a low-level worry among war observers for awhile. That and the infiltration of the armed forces by militias is one reason we've been reluctant to provide the Iraqi army with heavy weaponry, which has hampered their development as a capable fighting force.

Luckily, this sort of thing is rare, according to the Pentagon. Take that with a grain of salt, since this report only came about after a lengthy investigation. But if it were truly a serious problem we would hear a lot more about it from the soldiers involved.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Al Qaeda claims to have two missing soldiers

A group of Al-Qaeda affilated groups claim to be holding the two missing American soldiers.

The umbrella group, called the Mujahedeen Shura Council, said it was holding the two privates — one from Texas and the other from Oregon — as well as four Russian diplomats kidnapped June 3 in Baghdad. It also claimed to have killed a fifth Russian.

My stomach always clenches when I hear about U.S. troops getting captured, because the possibilities are so much messier than the relatively straightforward fates of being killed or wounded in combat.

I'm not hopeful about what will happen to these two. A lot depends upon which insurgent faction captured them; I would have been happier to see them fall into the hands of native Iraqis rather than groups linked to Al Qaeda.

A couple of thoughts and observations from the coverage:

1. Why do we "capture" insurgents, but insurgents "kidnap" U.S. soldiers? The answer is usually because we're uniformed combatants and they're not. But i don't recall us describing the Viet Cong as "kidnapping" soldiers during the Vietnam war. This isn't a criticism; it's just an observation on the role language plays in shaping perceptions of this fight.

2. The reason we should treat prisoners humanely is for precisely this situation: it gives us some hope that the enemy will treat our prisoners similarly. And if they don't, it gives us solid grounds for moral outrage.

But what can we say if they treat these two prisoners the way we treated the Abu Ghraib prisoners (some of whom died)?

What can we say if they simply decide to hold them indefinitely, like we do with the prisoners at Gitmo?

What can we do if they decide to waterboard them, or stick them in "stress positions", or freeze and bake them?

May we find them and rescue them so we don't have to answer any of the above questions. And if they are killed, may their deaths be quick and merciful.

torture, terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Speaking of Iraq news....

I got so wrapped up crafting my "truth in Iraq" post that I forgot to mention the report that inspired it.

The Washington Post has obtained a copy of a cable from the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, outlining the difficulties faced by embassy staffers.

You can download the full text of the cable in pdf format at the link. But here's a taste.

Women staffers reported being harassed if they didn't cover their heads and faces. Men reported that it was dangerous to wear shorts in public. Electrical supplies were scattered, some neighborhoods having no power and others having it for four or five hours a day. But corruption is involved, too: one woman reported that a building housing a government minister suddenly found itself with power 24 hours a day after his appointment. There are long lines (really long, as in a 12 hour wait) for fuel in some places.

More ominously: Working for the embassy can be a death sentence. Embassy employees tell no one where they work, not even their families. They don't take their cell phones home because that's a giveaway, and they cannot be called at home. Many of them have made plans in case they are abducted, and they avoid embassy events where cameras will be present. The embassy shreds documents that contain local staff names.

The guards at Green Zone checkpoints have become "more militia-like", taunting employees, even holding up embassy credentials and announcing what they are -- a potentially lethal revelation. Several staffers have asked for press credentials instead, out of safety concerns.

These are not the sort of things that should be happening in the capital of a country in its third year of occupation.

terrorism, Baghdad, security, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Where's the truth in Iraq?

One of the ongoing themes in the Iraq debate is the argument that the "true" picture of life in Iraq is not reaching Americans. Either it's better than portrayed (the prowar argument) or worse (the antiwar argument). Any report one way or another is dismissed either as biased in its own right, or simply "missing the bigger picture."

Some examples of the whiplash of conflicting reports:

Bush's recent trip to Iraq. On the one hand you have people hailing Bush's recent trip to Iraq as a sign of the improving security situation, since he was able to fly by helicopter over Baghdad to reach the Green Zone. The last time he visited, he landed and stayed at a military base.

Critics point out that we are in the midst of an offensive to "retake" Baghdad, 3 years after the end of the invasion, which certainly doesn't imply progress. And Bush didn't even tell the Iraqi prime minister he was coming, which certainly doesn't imply trust.

But then we get reports of coalition forces handing control of parts of Iraq over to Iraqi forces, which indicates that the security situation is improving.

Ignoring the good news. Reporters are criticized for not covering "good news", while others counter by pointing to the high death toll among journalists in Iraq, and note that if Iraq is so dangerous reporters can't leave the Green Zone, that says all we need to know about the security situation.

There's probably some truth to the "not reporting good news" argument, for a couple of mundane reasons: the inability of reporters to get out and witness such occurrences, and the fact that a school opening simply isn't as interesting or important as the ongoing violence. Reconstruction statistics tend to get reported as roundups, with such things as "3,000 schools have been renovated in the last year", rather than as 3,000 separate stories. It's fair to say that that lessens the impact of the good news.

But such complaints need to be taken with a grain of salt as well; a raw number like "3,000 schools renovated" or "100 playgrounds have been built" doesn't say much about what is meant by "renovated", doesn't say whether a playground is actually used, and doesn't mean anything unless we have some context: how many schools are there?

Last year a reporter (CNN, I think; the story has aged off the Web) traveled to several of these "renovated" schools and found that many of them had been superficially repaired but lacked supplies or electricity or functioning toilets or many of the other things one needs to have a working school.

Also last year, the New York Times did a short piece on a playground in Baghdad. U.S. troops spent $1.5 million in 2004 building it in a nice spot along the banks of the Tigris. A year later the playground was abandoned, the grass dead, because it was simply too dangerous to go there. But I'll bet that playground is still listed among successfully completed reconstruction projects.

We have undoubtedly renovated a substantial number of schools, and repaired a substantial number of sewer lines, and rebuilt a substantial number of electrical systems. But what that number is, and what it actually means as far as the quality of life in Iraq, is far more complicated than the bland "renovated schools" count suggests.

And here's another thought: you may think the media underreports the good news, but they also underreport the bad news. There's only so much space in any given newspaper or so much airtime on TV. The vast majority of photos never get seen by the vast majority of people, who also are not confronted with the vast majority of daily outrages. They, too, get aggregated into statistics. If you want a taste of just how much bad news you're not bombarded with each day, check out this site.

Economic measures. These are things like electricity and oil production, both of which have struggled to reach prewar levels. That may sound like we're not doing well, despite pouring billions into reconstruction. But the insurgency has diverted much of that spending to security, and it's difficult to increase electricity production when insurgents keep blowing up power lines and distribution stations. On the other hand, our inability to establish a secure environment is the reason the insurgency is able to do so much damage.

The fact is that Iraq is not one place, but multiple places. Outside of the Sunni Triangle, there is not much of an insurgency. What you do have, though, is sectarian violence, including Shiite death squads and security forces infiltrated by militia members. And in all places violence and corruption make rebuilding difficult.

Within the Sunni Triangle, the insurgency makes meaningful reconstruction especially difficult. But that just highlights one of the main criticisms of the occupation -- that it was poorly planned, and we've never had enough troops to do the job properly. Which is why we find ourselves retaking the same cities again and again, and spending more on providing security for construction projects than we do on the actual construction.

Is Iraq getting better? In places. Is it getting worse? In places. Is it safe and secure? Not even close, unless you're a Shiite in a predominately Shiite area or a Sunni in a predominately Sunni area. And that will remain the case until we have enough boots on the ground -- coalition or Iraqi -- to reestablish the governmental monopoly on violence that is essential to a secure state.

terrorism, reconstruction, security, Iraq, politics, midtopia