Speakeasy No More

Paul Krugman at the NY Times ends his column about the subprime mess with a bit of friendly advice that, in a world other than the bizarro one occupied by Democrats, could fairly be described as a shout: "Given the role of conservative ideology in the mortgage disaster, it’s puzzling that Democrats haven’t been more aggressive about making the disaster an issue for the 2008 election. They should be: It’s hard to imagine a more graphic demonstration of what’s wrong with their opponents’ economic beliefs."
Puzzling, yes. But after a year of Congressional Democratic weakness, the temperate suggestions of many are likely to rise in volume from a whisper to a scream, so great is their frustration.

Former Democratic Congresswoman (and House Judiciary Committee member during Watergate) Elizabeth Holtzman, made a reasonable effort on Tuesday (despite the "enormous political resistance and cynical indifference from the media" with regard to impeaching VP Cheney) to remind the Democratic majority of what the administration's done: "wiretapping without court approval (violating the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act), authorizing and facilitating mistreatment of detainees (violating U.S. treaties and criminal laws), starting the Iraq war on a basis of lies, exaggerations and misstatements (an abuse of power)."

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) also has made the effort (h/t Glenn Greenwald) and provided a reminder of the issues, titled "The Telecoms Knowingly and Intentionally Violated at Least 4 Statutes That Require Telecoms To Protect Consumer Privacy." Yet telecom immunity remains in the Senate Intelligence Committee bill and on the table.

The ACLU has tried, too, reporting events here, and here and here on a number of administration abuses.

Then there's Atty. Gen. Mukasey's former law partner, Scott Horton (a second h/t to Glenn Greenwald) writing this in Harper's, where he said among other things, "at this point, it’s clear that breaking the law is the Justice Department’s number one, two and three priority. And law enforcement? That’s disappeared from the scene."

And, it's worth noting, there was Sen. Dodd's email reference to supporters of some 506,000 emails sent to the Senate by those objecting to telecom immunity tucked into the FISA legislation.

But did I mention Rep. Robert Wexler's (and fellow House Judiciary Committee members Luis Gutierrez' and Tammy Baldwin's) efforts to bring articles of impeachment against Cheney? Their collective effort produced more than 100,000 signatures in support in no less than five days.

Meanwhile, this is how the MSM reports Democrat-"led" Congressional efforts:

From the LA Times, this headline: "Democrats' agenda in ruins despite taking Hill."

And the Washington Post, which has: "Spending Bills Still Stuffed With Earmarks" followed by "despite Democrats' vow to slash the number of such pet projects."

Or the NY Times, which has "Republican Unity Trumps Democratic Momentum."

Democrats certainly don't seem to have many friends in the mainstream media.
Now compare all this with Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi's website which, despite a raft of failures, has the following "Next on the Agenda" item: "Demand accountability and end the “rubber stamp” approach to Congressional oversight of the war in Iraq, the fight against terrorism, and homeland security."

Or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's website, which includes this gem under the heading "Reid: Democrats Have Led The Way For Change In 2007": "And this Congress has also supported our courageous troops with more than words, but action." What follows is a list of accomplishments, such as 3.5% pay raises for the troops, "despite the President's opposition."

Clearly, many have tried repeatedly to remind Democrats what the issues are, as well as their obligations to their constituents. Yet all is for naught. Pelosi says that its a "waste of time" for the great unwashed citizenry who, despite their "passion," are merely "advocates" and not "leaders" like she and her colleagues (h/t Digby via Glenn Greenwald).
The big, substantial issues remain unresolved. Withdrawing troops from Iraq, ending the budget hemorrhage caused by that war, passing a well-designed FISA rewrite that excludes telecom immunity and corrects the flaws of the Protect America Act, revisiting the disproportionate Bush tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, conducting hearings on impeachment of--at least--the Vice President and the former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez for abuse of power, and violations of federal and international law on torture. And these are just to name a few.
The least that can be asked of this Congress is to actually fight--and not just rhetorically--for what its Democratic leadership says it stands for. Otherwise, what difference between them and the majority they replaced?

Articles of (and On) Impeachment

The manner in which the MSM has treated the issue of impeachment (of, particularly, Vice President Cheney) is one of casual, if not embarrassed, dismissal. A quick search of the NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times and Boston Globe provided scant results. Here are some:
The effort by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) in November to bring his bill to the House floor calling for the impeachment of Cheney was described by the NY Times editorial board thusly:

"It is hard to know which effort has longer odds, the bid by Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, to become president of the United States, or his bid to unseat Vice President Dick Cheney by impeaching him."

At the Wapo on Tuesday, during their "Post Politics Hour" where White House and Congressional reporters take questions from readers, one reader (and from Canada, no less) wondered why the issue gets short shrift: "Can you explain why the move by three members of the judiciary committee for impeachment hearings against the Vice President has not received much media attention? I didn't see anything in the online Washington Post, for instance. Rep. Wexler apparently has gathered 80,000 signatures supporting his position on his Web site. This appears to be big news to me.

Michael Abramowitz:
To be quite honest, I am not aware of whether we have written about this. We have gotten these questions in one form or another for several years: Impeachment is not going to be happening under this Congress, even if there are some law-makers who think it is a good idea. So the media moves on to other things.

Over at the LA Times, a search turned up an article by a neuropsychiatrist on the need for assessments on the brain health of presidential condidates (probably not a bad idea), and an obituary on the death of Henry Hyde, former Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and, ironically, the one "who presided over impeachment proceedings against President Clinton."

At the Boston Globe, meanwhile, a search there produced an editorial that made passing reference to Kucinich's "no-hoper effort to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney" in a piece on President Bush's veto of the SCHIP legislation.

And if you find this a bit peculiar, it'll strike you even more so in light of the failed efforts by three House Judiciary Committee members, Robert Wexler (D-FL), Luis Gutierrez )D-IL, and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) to have their editorial printed by these same newspapers cited above, calling for impeachment. Said Wexler,

"We laid out precisely why the House Judiciary Committee should open up hearings. … And we set out in an op-ed why we should do it, and none of the major newspapers in the country — the New York Times or the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the LA Times — they chose not to run it.
I thought it was a fairly significant statement by the mainstream media that when members of the House Judiciary Committee lay out a credible claim for why impeachment hearings should begin regarding the Vice President of the United States, and they refuse to run it, then we decided well we would start this website…and see what the feeling was in terms of mainstream America."

Here's a succinct rundown of reasons for impeachment by former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman (who also sat on the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate):

"There is little serious debate about whether Bush administration actions -- wiretapping without court approval (violating the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act), authorizing and facilitating mistreatment of detainees (violating U.S. treaties and criminal laws), starting the Iraq war on a basis of lies, exaggerations and misstatements (an abuse of power) -- meet the Constitutional standard."

Not a bad summation of the facts. Too bad they can't be found, along with the Wexler and colleagues editorial, in any MSM newspapers.

Brave Legal Eagles, All

Here's a surprise:

From the NY Times, "at least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials."
The vague, lawyerly suggestions and advice came from the unlamented former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former star White House counsel Harriet Miers, Dick Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, and former senior lawyer at the National Security Council, John Bellinger.
As Marty Lederman points out,

"countless government officials 'advised' the CIA not to destroy the tapes . . . but no one actually instructed the CIA not to do so, nor, presumably, did anyone go so far as to tell the CIA that it would be unlawful to destroy the tapes."

Perfect, illuminating legal behavior. No one says anything directly, concretely. The parties merely "advise," express "vigorous sentiment" that the tapes be destroyed and, wink-wink, the message is clear to all and sundry. It certainly seemed clear to Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA deputy director of operations. He authorized the destruction.
So why would the White House seek the destruction of evidence that illuminated its brave stand on "agressive interrogation"? John Bellinger, in a Guardian interview in November, tells us

"With respect to interrogation techniques, there has been change in that area as well. The interrogations that may be done today are not the same techniques that may have been used a number of years back."

Ah, yes. A "change in that area" has taken place. Or has it? In response to a question about waterboarding specifically, Bellinger said

"we've decided that we just don't want to get engaged in hypotheticals and applying the law to the facts of these particular cases."

He cited the United States Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations that prohibits, among other things, waterboarding. Then he added,

"critics will say, well, what about the CIA? But remember as far as the change - and I think we've been talking about change in tone and change in policy - where we were a few years ago was that there were not clear rules that anybody could point to and that they might have been applied differently in different places. And now there are clear rules applicable to all of our military in any place in the world and you can just go and read them."

Having brought up the CIA's exclusion from the manual's restrictions, he behaves as if prohibitions apply to them as well, but declines to specifically say so.
To sum it all up, although the CIA apparently hasn't altered its interrogation methods, it almost certainly doesn't tape them any longer.
Again, Marty Lederman:

"a slew of people evidently advised the CIA that it would be unwise or even illegal to destroy the tapes. Thereafter, most or all of those officials, in the CIA, in the White House, in Congress, etc., eventually found out that the CIA did destroy the tapes -- and not a single one of them did a thing about it. Why not? Well, perhaps it's because this entire group finally issued a collective sigh of relief that, finally, the CIA had failed to heed their 'advice.'

Addendum to FCC Post

I should have made clear the relaxation of ownership restrictions referred to the so-called "newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership."

The FCC's Gift to Corporate Media

Just in time for Christmas, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman, Kevin Martin, tied the bow on a nice, big shiny present for corporate media.
Despite bipartisan opposition from the Senate Commerce Committee, and despite their warning that they would "move legislation to revoke the rule and nullify the vote" if the FCC voted to "relax" ownership restrictions in the 20 largest U.S. media markets, Martin and two other Republican members (with the two Democrats on the five member commission voting against) ignored opposition and voted 3-2 for the change in ownership rules.
So, why would Martin and friends do this in the face of such obvious disagreement? One need look no further than the White House for the answer. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on December 4, saying the Bush Administration rejected any effort to delay the vote "or any attempt to delay or overturn these revised (FCC) rules by legislative means. The administration has long supported modernization of media ownership regulations to more accurately reflect the changing media landscape."
Of course, by "modernization" read "consolidation." And consolidation means one thing: A louder corporate voice shilling for its view of reality at the expense of local voices covering essential stories, such as local zoning issues, environment concerns or labor disputes.
Gutierrez' letter also says that "the FCC has crafted changes that appropriately take into account the myriad of news and information outlets that exist today." But this is a mirage. The number of media outlets isn't an indicator of media diversity. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) analyzed this very issue. In a letter to Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, the GAO found, for example, that

"in Wilkes Barre/Scranton, we identified eight television stations. However, one owner of two stations participated in an agreement with a third station and the remaining four television stations participated in two separate agreements—each agreement covering two stations. Thus, while there are eight television stations and seven owners in Wilkes Barre/Scranton, there are three loose commercial groupings in the market. This example suggests that the number of independently owned media outlets in a given market is not always a good indicator of how many independently produced local news or other programs are available in a market."

The report also found (drawing its data from Free Press after stating that the federal government has, itself, no reliable statistics on the matter) that woman and minority-owned full-power television and radio stations were limited to 5% and 3% respectively (for television) and 6% and 8% for radio stations.
As FCC member Michael Copps noted, "racial and ethnic minorities make up 33 percent of our population but they own a scant 3 percent of all full-power commercial TV stations. And that number is plummeting."
And these are just ethnic minorities--the report doesn't determine what percentage can be assigned to reflect political/social minority viewpoints.

The long and short of it is that Martin engaged in the appearance of openness in listening to public concerns regarding this continued drive toward media consolidation. He cited the number of public hearings the commission held to gather citizens' input. Yet despite that public input, he and his colleagues went ahead and voted for continued consolidation.
As the NY Times has it,

"opponents of the ban say in the past decade there has been an explosion of news outlets thanks to cable television and the Internet and that such restrictions are no longer necessary. Ban supporters say there may be additional outlets, but there has been no corresponding increase in news gatherers and producers, especially at the local level."

And that's really what this comes down to. We live in an increasingly unstable and insecure world. This we know. But we do not know, without a great deal of independent effort, how and by whom decisions that affect us are made by a behind-the-scenes, small, and much-too-powerful elite. This shouldn't be the case in a democracy. And such decisions are simply not properly or throughly reported sufficiently by media. And why should they be? They're wholly owned subsidiaries of, yes, corporations.

Religion & Government at Home and Abroad

Last week, Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) announced the government would seek to ease restrictions on headscarves worn by women in government offices and universities.
The Turkish Daily News writes that any attempt at changing the policy would upset the "secular elite, which includes powerful army generals, top judges and university rectors. The secularists view the headscarf as a symbol of political Islam and, therefore, as a direct challenge to Turkey's separation of religion and state."
Interestingly, despite reelecting the AKP (a party with Islamist roots) to a second five year term, "Turks' attitudes regarding Sharia (Islamic religious law) are different from those in many other predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East," according to a recent Gallup Poll.
Only 7% of Turks believe Sharia should be the only source of legislation while 26% say it should be one (but not the sole) source.
In another Gallup Poll, "Majorities See Religion and Democracy as Compatible," 14% of Iranians believe Sharia should be the sole source of law while more than 66% believe it should play some role.
Yet in the same poll, 9% of Americans thought the Bible should be the sole source of legislation while 46% believed it should be one (but not the sole) source.
To illustrate the similarities between, especially, Iranians and Americans when it comes to religion's importance in public (and legislative) life, here is a sample from the recent speech by Republican candidate Mitt Romney on religion, where he said

"the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong."

Or former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee who said, in a speech to the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit, "I come today as one not who comes to you but as one who comes from you. You are my roots." He said that same-sex marriage contravened "the holy word of God." He termed abortion a "holocaust."
And, referring to his background as a Baptist minister, said, "I think it's important that the language of Zion is a mother tongue and not a recently acquired second language."

To put it another way, twice as many Americans as Turks believe religion should inform legislation, while a solid majority (57%) of Turks believe it should play no role. Compare that with a mere plurality (44%) of Americans who believe so.

Conclusions? Only one. Any threat to "our way of life" is more likely to come from among us than from abroad.

Omnipotence, Omniscience, Spying and the Loss of Liberty

The Bush Administration recently dispatched Attorney General Michael Mukasey and the Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to publicly defend its warrantless and illegal surveillance of Americans. However, despite these attempts at justification, this remains unconstitutional and intrusive, and is a clear abandonment of the principles of democratic government.
This isn't a new story. The spying began prior to 9/11 and efforts to justify it on that basis clearly fails based simply on the chronology, if nothing else. As the NY Times reported, "in December 2000, agency officials wrote a transition report to the incoming Bush administration, saying the agency must become a 'powerful, permanent presence' on the commercial communications network, a goal that they acknowledged would raise legal and privacy issues."
McConnell implicitly endorsed this position recently when he wrote in the NY Times, in arguing for a renewal of the Protect America Act, that

"the intelligence community needs a law that does not require a court order for surveillance directed at a foreign intelligence target reasonably believed to be outside the United States, regardless of where the communications are found." (By "where the communications are found," read the United States, and note that the phrase "foreign intelligence target" doesn't necessarily exclude American citizens)

Attorney General Mukasey wrote similarly that

"the House of Representatives recently passed a version that would significantly weaken the Protect America Act by, among other things, requiring individual court orders to target people overseas in order to acquire certain types of foreign intelligence information. Similarly, the Senate Judiciary Committee made significant amendments to the Senate Intelligence Committee's bill that would have the collective effect of weakening the government's ability to effectively surveil intelligence targets abroad." (Again, "target people oversees" and "effectively surveil intelligence targets abroad" doesn't necessarily exclude American citizens)

Yet Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) wrote (in defense of the House Restore Act Mukasey referred to which reinstated court oversight protection excluded in the Protect America Act) that the legislation:

"provides exactly what the Director of National Intelligence asked for earlier this year: it explicitly states that no court order is required to listen to the conversations of foreigners that happen to pass through the U.S. telecommunications system. It does not grant Constitutional rights to foreign terrorists."

So what, exactly, is the disconnection here? Simply, the administration wants the power--on principle--to engage in warrantless wiretapping of not only foreigners overseas (which it is already legally entitled to do), but potentially on American citizens abroad (and, potentially, at home since communication hubs are located in the US), and do so without legal or congressional oversight. They want, unchecked, the power to turn the United States--a nation of laws--into a lawless state.
McConnell, Mukasey and others want the public to think that the FISA safeguard requiring a warrant makes impossible sucessful monitoring of terrorists' communications. Yet, as Holt says,

"if federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies want to read the email or listen to the phone call of an American citizen, they have to get - except in emergencies - a judge to issue a warrant allowing them do so, as the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution requires. Such a court order would be easy to get if there is cause to believe that the American's communications are important intelligence for the protection of our security. And in such 'emergencies' there would be quick after-the-fact review by the courts. These are not 'unimportant, obscure technical details' - this is the heart of the bill."

There is nothing that prevents intelligence agencies from monitoring terrorist communications. The sole, proper requirement is that the government obtain a court order to monitor communications of people within the United States and American citizens abroad. And even this can be obtained after the fact, in the event of exigent circumstances.

Yet none of the proper, legally and constitutionally required safeguards have been employed by the government. The starkest evidence for this is the complicity of telecommunications companies. Constitutional legal expert Glenn Greenwald has written extensively about this, and telecom immunity from prosecution comprises a significant element of McConnel's and Mukasey's "arguments."
Mukasey, in defending telecom companies' complicity, wrote that pending legal action against them ought to be dismissed if

"the attorney general certified to the court either that a company did not provide assistance to the government or that a company had received a written request indicating that the activity was authorized by the president and determined to be lawful."

Not "determined to be lawful" by a court (a necessary branch of government in accordance with our separation of powers) but by the attorney general and the president (for whom he works).

McConnell asserted that:

"those in the private sector who stand by us in times of national security emergencies deserve thanks, not lawsuits. I share the view of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which, after a year of study, concluded that 'without retroactive immunity, the private sector might be unwilling to cooperate with lawful government requests in the future,' and warned that 'the possible reduction in intelligence that might result from this delay is simply unacceptable for the safety of our nation.'"

But the issue isn't (and never has been ) cooperation "with lawful government requests." In fact, according to the NY Times,

"N.S.A. [National Security Agency] officials met with the Qwest executives in February 2001 and asked for more access to their phone system for surveillance operations, according to people familiar with the episode. The company declined, expressing concerns that the request was illegal without a court order."

Not only did the request precede the attacks of 9/11 by several months (and right after the Administration took office), but Qwest's legal staff objected to the absence of a court order. Clearly, the company objected not to the request for assistance but that it didn't meet legal safeguards.

The blatant disregard for the Constitution, couched in the language of patriotism, has rendered the United States a lawless place where no one is safe. This isn't mere hyperbole. It's exactly what's being determined right now in Congress. Our Bill of Rights is slowly but determinedly being neutered and our proud history and tradition of the rule of law, for which so many have died defending, is about to be buried by seekers of raw power.
Edward Lazarus, a Constitutional lawyer, observed in 2005 that

"I might even accept, for the purposes of argument, that, in the panicky aftermath of 9/11, it was understandable for the President to act unilaterally to protect against a potential second-wave attack, regardless of constitutional limits.
But . . . there has been copious time for deliberation and, if necessary, Congressional action. In this context, it simply cannot be that the President, acting alone, has the permanent authority he now claims to override a carefully-wrought congressional scheme for fighting terrorism, and enact his own set of secret rules."

Or, as U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor noted in August 2006, ruling that the NSA surveillance program was unconstitutional, "there are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all ’inherent powers’ must derive from that Constitution. The public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution."