Verbosities

Glenn Greenwald - Salon

John Yoo at an April 18 Civil Liberties debate (via blogger Roger Ailes):

[Since 9/11] we have had outpourings of new political speech through new methods and means, for example, uh, people I wish never existed -- bloggers.


This did not exist before 9/11. Are we really in such a civil liberties crisis if bloggers are able to use this new media to say I think quite incredible things?

Like what John? That "(w)ar declarations do not play an important role in the domestic process of deciding on war?" That "(t)he declaration of war plays an important role in limiting the power of the federal government as it affects citizens, but it does not perform that function with regard to the executive branch?" That "the optimal level of war for the United States may no longer be zero?"



Christ, what an asshole.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Bloggers revolt - Politico.com

[Blogger] Erickson then lists the office numbers of every member of the Republicans’ 27-member Steering Committee, encouraging his readers to call and protest the move.

“We must scalp one member,” Erickson wrote. “That member’s name is [Republican] Ken Calvert.”

Damn far-left dirty hippie liberal bloggers and their vendettas against poor, victimized Republican...

Wait, what now? That's Redstate.com's Erick Erickson? railing against the installation of an allegedly corrupt Congressman to an appropriations committee seat?

Dang. You know if this were happening on the left side of the aisle, the story would be, "Pelosi Flexes Muscle Using Radical Far-Left Sorosian Bloggerati," accompanied by dissections about how the "Democrat Congress" was splintered and breaking into factions. Since it's a righty problem, what's the story?

Members were quietly brooding over the Calvert move on Thursday...

I suppose since Hamas Mouse and The Fort Dix Six have run hot the last few days, and there's no fresh story about Scary Terrists That Wish To Wipe Out Your Mother to fret about, this will have to do.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Idolator, All About the Music... If Only It Were

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama made a campaign stop at a Virginia art gallery the other night, but before any cameras rolled, he requested that a painting depicting a recent pop-cultural milestone be covered up:

The one that was covered was a 6-by-10-foot oil reproduction of a widely circulated pop culture photo showing pop star Britney Spears, sans underpants, getting out of a car, with Paris Hilton in the driver's seat. The Boling piece blurs the nudity. "I wished we could have had a good dialog about freedom of speech," Boling said, but added, "I understand that a politician would want to avoid being photographed in front of Britney Spears' crotch."

Powered by ScribeFire.

In the discussion as to whether terrorism is a law enforcement problem or not, I think there's a gap in the arguments being made. Let's start with this one:



However, the idea that the frontline in the War on Terror are the guys from Reno 911 is an idea with a foundation of naivety not seen since some argued Hitler only wanted Poland. It's the kind of naivety that already cost us 3000 American lives on September 11th.



I will concede that there are bad people in the world who are actively plotting to do bad things to Americans. However, these bad people are an amorphous, purposefully disconnected bunch. They live in caves in Afghanistan, palaces in Riyadh, dormitories in Berlin, and probably apartment buildings in Manhattan. As such, there is no discernable "frontline" on which to stake out a battle. While there is certainly a poisonous and irrational ideology these people possess, they do not have the physical might to commit large-scale genocides or geographic occupations as Hitler did. Plus, if you wanted to stop Hitler, you had to get through a uniformed and disciplined army, equipped with tanks and airplanes to do so.



How do you defeat a nation that is willing to use its army to subordinate the freedoms of neighboring nations? War.



How do you defeat an amorphous, disparate and disconnected ideological group who blend in with the average citizenry of any and every location they inhabit, and have as a primary strategy a desire to commit acts of violence - not against your armies, as in traditional warfare - against an innocent and unsuspecting population?



Look, we've seen how effective our military can be in just and righteous warfare, so I understand where the instinct to solve this problem with military solutions comes from. But our knee-jerk reaction to find someone with whom to pick a fight so we can use our cruise missles reminds me of an old saying... If the only tool in your box is a hammer, just about everything's going to start to look like a nail to you. Getting back to Luckbox's argument:



How can I say that, you ask? It's simple. From the day these terrorists first attacked us in 1993, to the day President Bush invaded Afghanistan, the United States treated terrorism as a law enforcement problem. We waited until we were attacked and then sought out the men responsible so they could be punished.



I am entirely in agreement that 9/11 was a turning point for our philosophies on security. I am also in agreement that the overt support of the Taliban regime to, specifically, the organization responsible for 9/11 was worth fighting them for - militarily. Let's agree that if a state is unwilling to agree to reasonable demands to cease supporting rogue groups like al Qaeda, that it makes perfect sense to ask them to meet our troops on the battlefield to perhaps discuss alternate means of compliance.



Luckbox chronicles the terrorist attacks against America from 1993-2001, then writes:



For almost a decade, our government treated terrorism like a law enforcement problem. Plenty of people were indicted. Some were even actually captured and thrown into jail. And yet the attacks continued and continued, growing in magnitude. When 3000 people were killed, our President finally learned that waiting for the next attack and trying to arrest the perpetrators was only asking for more death and destruction.



There is a time and a place for investigations and intelligence. A lucky break helped a video clerk tip off the FBI. Law enforcement worked that time. And every now and then, it will work. But to pretend as though we're not at war... But as long as we track them down later and arrest them, everything's okay, right?



Let me make one thing clear before I jump back into my argument. This is not a war. This is an ideological battle of wills against an enemy who is neither a state nor a state-sponsored group. I do not believe "terrorism" is something against which you can declare war, nor do I believe al Qaeda is a group against which you can declare war.



A declaration of war is a state versus a state.



An authorization to use military force is permission granted by the Congress for the mobilization of our military for an explicit cause.



Do you see the difference?



So to your point, let's draw a distinction between what "law enforcement problem" means and how it's being framed. "Law enforcement" is not a wholly reactionary technique, and can be utilized as a methodology for proactively short-circuiting problems before they happen.



In other words, we don't have to see a plane hit a tower in order to react. Intent to commit a heinous act is as criminally negligent as actually committing said act. A man walks into a gun store, tells the clerk he wants a handgun so he can go shoot his neighbor three times in the head. The act hasn't been committed, but the intent is there and prosecutable.



So if we can establish that we're not talking about "law enforcement" as a wholly post-attack methodology, let me ask you a question... How, exactly, does an act of war (i.e., military force enacting proactive solutions) serve as a superior means to law enforcement (i.e., the gathering of intelligence by CIA/FBI) of accomplishing the following tasks:



1) Figuring out who these people are

2) Figuring out where these people are

3) Figuring out what their intentions are

4) Figuring out who's equipping/supporting/enabling these people

5) Separating them from the general population, so as to minimize or eliminate collateral damage

6) Short-circuiting acts of terror before they happen

7) Eliminating the ability of these people to continue to organize, recruit or plan for current or future attacks (including ending them, if necessary)



Obviously, a scenario where good intelligence tells us a meeting is taking place in a Gaza Strip basement can be handled by sending a team of Navy Seals in to, uh, clear the building. But that's still a law enforcement approach to solving the problem. It's not a war approach.



Here's my problem. War is an evocative framework, one which I might not be arguing against using, if not for two little things.



One, what we are effectively "fighting" is a technique wrapped in an ideology, and neither this ideology nor the technique for its application are going to go away - likely ever. Honestly, is there any scenario short of a very literal and very scary genocidal or nuclear solution that could actually solve the problem of terror for the sake of Islamic extremism?



So, under the supposition that if this is a war, this war is never, ever going to be over, my second argument against accepting war as a solution is this:



"We've always been at war with Eastasia."



Perpetual war versus vigilant use of intelligence and targeted enforcement. To me, it's an easy choice to make, especially as we've seen the groundwork laid by this administration:





Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | A state of emergency

Within the Bush administration something that senior officials call the "war paradigm" is the central organising principle. They do not use the phrase publicly, but they bend policy to serve it. After September 11 the war paradigm was instantly adopted. George Bush, who proclaimed "I'm a war president", assumed the paradigm as his natural state and right. According to its imperatives, the president in his wartime capacity as commander in chief makes and enforces laws as he sees fit, overriding the constitutional system of checks and balances. Some of the paradigm's expressions include Bush's fiats on the treatment of detainees, domestic surveillance and international law, and his more than 750 "signing statements" - interpretations of laws that he claims he can implement as he chooses.

Well, that's just one guy's opinion, and this isn't a big story, right? Tell that to Charlie Savage, who won a Pulitzer for his work investigating the President's signing statements. Here's a clip from an interview of his:



Glenn Greenwald - Salon

(Savage speaking): In his signing statements, Bush was asserting that the president, as commander-in-chief and head of the "unitary" executive branch, has the power to set aside laws in which Congress has sought to restrict his power or to regulate the federal government. This view seemed to have momentous implications for the constitutional system of checks and balances. Moreover, it was coming to light in the wake of then-recent revelations about the warrantless wiretapping program, which circumvented a 1978 statute. The NSA program showed that the Bush administration was willing to act on its aggressive theory of executive power.

This theory was adopted by the Bush administration, after reading the position papers of John Yoo, who in 2001 was in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel:



Scholar Stands by Post-9/11 Writings On Torture, Domestic Eavesdropping

Yoo argued that the Constitution grants the president virtually unhindered discretion in wartime. He said the fight against terrorism, with no fixed battlefield or uniformed enemy, was a new kind of war.

Interview with John Yoo, author of The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11

The world after September 11, 2001, however, is very different. It is no longer clear that the United States must seek to reduce the amount of warfare, and it certainly is no longer clear that the constitutional system ought to be fixed so as to make it difficult to use force. Rather than war disappearing from the world, the threat of war may well be increasing. Threats now come from at least three primary sources: the easy availability of the knowledge and technology to create weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the emergence of rogue nations, and the rise of international terrorism of the kind represented by the al Qaeda terrorist organization. Because of these developments, the optimal level of war for the United States may no longer be zero, but may actually be dramatically higher than before.

Well, we were always at war with Eurasia. Looks like we always will be too, if that "optimal level of war" is no longer "zero."



I believe that persistent warmongering by this administration has been purposeful, but less for the "noble" causes of nation building and the fostering of democracy than for engaging in a perpetual war to allow the expansion of powers of the executive branch to grow. I think this administration has been purposefully dishonest with America, and the repercussions of this unprecedented assertion of the unitary executive theory are already being felt. We live in a world where the administration can whisk you off the street and throw you in a prison without charges, can torture you if they claim you're an enemy combatant, can open your mail or eavesdrop on your phone calls without legislatively mandated oversight, and can acquire databases full of call logs or web activity from telecom companies just by issuing a non-warrant approved NSL.



They have gotten away with the above, as well as other reckless acts, through war posturing and fear mongering, and I refuse to accept the framework of perpetual war as a means of enabling governmental lawlessness.



I agree that terrorist acts should be pre-empted, but I fail to see how the framework of war is a healthy one - both for securing our elusive ideals of safety, and for the future of democracy in this country.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Since it came up in conversation today...


Orcinus

Any kind of serious War on Terror needs to have the flexibility to respond proportionately and nimbly to various terrorist threats as they manifest themselves, and in this respect a military emphasis is simply too musclebound to be effective. A comprehensive approach will emphasize intelligence and law enforcement -- especially global law enforcement, the very concept of which is anathema to the Bush administration -- while reserving its military options, fraught as they are with multiple collateral hazards, solely for the rare circumstances that warrant them.

If you've got 100 al Qaeda operatives in Beirut, you don't roll Humvees in and engage the Lebanese army as your solution.

Terrorist acts are acts of violence not perpetrated by a state. An act of violence perpetrated by the state is an act of war, not of terrorism. One is an act of lawbreaking, the other an attempt to provoke a state to respond.

Terrorism is a law enforcement problem, not a war problem. You can't throw 10,000 troops with heavy weaponry at a few hundred guys who look like and walk amongst the citizens of Karachi - unless, of course, you're just looking to indiscriminately wipe out as many foreigners as possible, proactively solving your problem of both terrorism and the future spread of terrorism. Ugh.

Obviously, a state that is clearly aiding and abetting - CLEARLY aiding and abetting, like Afghanistan - may need convincing in a heavy-handed sort of way to let us go after al Qaeda, but war with Afghanistan is clearly not the same thing as defeating al Qaeda.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Michelle Malkin: In the wake of choice

While we're on life issues, Bobby Schindler has a question for the GOP presidential candidates and un-moderate debate moderator Chris Matthews: "Since When Does Pro-Life Mean Killing The Disabled?"

Is this the same "un-moderate debate moderator" who asked the following questions at the GOP debate?



· In the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, just 22 percent believe this country is on the right track. Mayor Giuliani, how do we get back to Ronald Reagan’s "morning in America"?



· We’re going to talk about values. Let’s go down the line on this, just like they did with the Democrats last week on some of these trickier calls, but they do have clear answers. Starting with you, Governor. Would the day that Roe v. Wade is repealed be a good day for Americans?



· Let me go to Senator McCain. We’re in the house of Ronald Reagan. Every cab driver in America knew what Ronald Reagan stood for: defeat communism abroad, reduce big government at home. Can you, Senator McCain, restore that kind of unity of purpose?



· Governor Thompson, same question; actually you could respond to just about anything at this point. (Which he did)



· Okay, let’s start with an enjoyable down-the-line, okay? I want each candidate to mention a tax he’d like to cut, in addition to the Bush tax cuts, keeping them in effect.



And, of course...



· But let me ask you about something else that might be a negative in the upcoming campaign. Seriously, would it be good for America to have Bill Clinton back living in the White House?



Damn stinking liberals and their tough questions.



Transcript of the debate from the New York Times

Powered by ScribeFire.

Oh Hey, Cheney's Maybe On the DC Madam's List - Wonkette

The “former CEO” supposedly on the DC Madam’s phone list is “former” Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney. He paid money to some poor girl and stuck his thing in her deal. ABC News all but dropped the story when Cheney threatened to jam that prop phone three feet up the ass of Brian Ross. That’s why the formerly explosive scandal story instead got seven minutes at the end of whatever ABC News show Friday night.

There, are you people happy now? Didn’t think so. Do you know why we’re underwhelmed by this rumor? Because even if it’s a fact, which it probably is, there’s no way it would have any impact on Cheney’s “career.” This is a draft-dodging half-human war criminal with a pregnant lesbian daughter who tells senators to fuck themselves and shoots his own friends in the face. Ordering an outcall hooker is positively innocent compared to the well-known things Cheney does every day.

Obviously a rumor, and a poorly sourced one at that. Still fun though.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Hullabaloo

Bush's Approval Remains Ridiculously High In Viriginia

by tristero

NY Times:

Representative Tom Davis told Mr. Bush that the president's approval rating was at 5 percent in one section of his northern Virginia district.

So... You're driving along the streets in Tom Davis' district, enjoying the scenery of what I'm sure's a lovely place - Tom's district includes Mt. Vernon, after all. There's an all-day Stevie Ray Vaughan festival on the radio and you - why, you're feeling just completely safe. Traffic's moderate, not so bad. Coming your way down the other lane are, I dunno, something like 10 cars a minute. In other words:

Five drivers are hurtling your way every ten minutes that are so batshit crazy they actually approve of George W. Bush. Five drivers every ten minutes who can't (or won't) meet the most basic requirements of consensual reality - such as evaluating the performance of the worst president ever, let alone agreeing to drive on the right side of road! Five drivers every ten minutes whose cognitive and moral judgment is so impaired they might create a head-on collision just for kicks.

Get it? When you actually think about what those stats mean - that people who still think well of Bush are actually behind the wheels of cars, capable of doing godknowswhat for no sane reason at all... well, all of a sudden, that 5% percent approval rate seems dangerously, unacceptably high, doesn't it, now?

Powered by ScribeFire.

Maryland Republican Representative Wayne Gilchrest sat down with Reason Magazine (a Libertarian publication to which I subscribe - more Hayek than Hillary in any given issue, that's for sure) for an interview. Well worth reading all the way through, but here's a clip:





Reason Magazine - The Lonely Guy

Reason: Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.) said that Gen. Petraeus's appearance in Washington was political, meant to pump up support for the war more than inform the Congress. Is he right?



Gilchrest: I appreciate the fact that the general came here. I met Gen. Petraeus in Mosul and in Baghdad. I have a great deal of respect and I'm glad he came and glad he had a dialogue. And he also said here, again, clearly, that there's no military victory in Iraq, that it has to be a political solution. Look, Gen. Petraeus is a general taking orders from his commander-in-chief. He doesn't make policy. It is not his responsibility to say whether or not we're succeeding. The White House has to make that clarification. And for them to say "We're doing what the generals say" is irresponsible; it's just foreclosing their constitutional responsibilities. Gen. Petraeus can carry out the best tactics in the world but unless the overall strategy is well thought out he can never be successful. It always irritates me when they say "We're going to listen to the generals." They haven't listened to the generals from day one.

After hearing of yesterday's meeting between 11 GOP Congressmen and the President, I actually got a little excited. Maybe Congress will come around, maybe they'll force feed him some sensible deadlines, and maybe there can be some success in renegotiating the terms of this war.



The more I thought about it, though, the more staged this whole event likely was.



The talking point that Gilchrest mentions, that we should "listen to the generals," is a designed two-purpose wedge. The first prong is to reinforce the "support the troops" mentality, where the Noble Military should not be denigrated by traitorous citizens. The second, however, is to allow the administration to triangulate themselves away from responsibility if/when accountability for the errors made arrives.



Big "if" by the way.



What do you think that "War Czar" thing was all about? If the President is "the Commander-in-Chief," then why would there need to be a bureaucrat sitting between his office and the military's top brass?



(If you think the answer to that question is "oversight," then I'd like to come to your home and laugh heartily at the wonder of your optimism.)



If I had to connect the dots between the GOP closed-door meeting with the President yesterday, the "War Czar" thing, and all the comments about Petraeus' plan needing a chance to work, it's all specifically designed to allow for the perception that the party is changing direction, when, in fact, it continues to stay the course.



Obviously, there hasn't been a War Czar brought on board as of yet, and who knows if they're still exploring the possibility, but with or without someone in that role, here's what's going to happen: The President takes the very sober and very serious meeting with (largely junior, which is an interesting enough fact standing on its own) the Congressmen and comes to the conclusion that he's willing to allow a GOP-framed supplemental bill with non-binding benchmarks (but no timelines) be submitted with a promise of no veto. In this effort, he effectively triangulates the Democratic leadership farther to the right than they'd like, but their spinelessness and unwillingness to look like they're not "supporting the troops" (whatever the hell that means this week) pushes them into granting what is, effectively, another blank check.



Summer passes, early fall, and whether or not the non-binding benchmarks fall into place, the President continues to talk about the military and our noble troops and keeps tying General Petraeus to the success of the surge (coughFrederickKagancough). If (when) the surge fails, Petraeus is the fall guy, and President Bush can push the blame squarely on his shoulders, as he delivered what the American people wanted, by signing a bill with non-binding benchmarks and appearing to adhere to some portion of the terms. If, by some freak chance, the surge succeeds, then the President doesn't need a fall guy.



Point is, these machinations are designed to allow the Republican Party to distance themselves from the war, trying to create the perception that it's bad planning and execution by the military that caused us to lose. Bush fires Petraeus, he's got his fall guy and a news cycle rife with "unnamed sources within the administration" telling Russert and David Gregory that the President regrets being misled by General Petraeus, and now we're in a situation we just can't pull the troops out of because we can't let the situation deteriorate any further, or al-Qaeda will follow us home and it'll be all Dave Petraeus' fault.



Obviously, if these GOP Congressmen were serious about repudiating Bush's war policies, they'd work with the Democratic leadership instead of the White House. We'll see what happens from here.

Powered by ScribeFire.

WP: Bush told war is harming GOP - washingtonpost.com Highlights - MSNBC.com

the meeting between 11 House Republicans, Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, White House political adviser Karl Rove and presidential press secretary Tony Snow was perhaps the clearest sign yet that patience in the party is running out. The meeting, organized by Rep. Charlie Dent (Pa.), one of the co-chairs of the moderate "Tuesday Group," included Reps. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), Michael N. Castle (Del.), Todd R. Platts (Pa.), Jim Ramstad (Minn.) and Jo Ann Emerson (Mo.).

More on this later...

Powered by ScribeFire.

Alright, so tell me how I'm supposed to feel about this:

Michelle Malkin: Data-mining for me, but not for thee

NYTimes' hypocrisy exposed again.

Following the link in her four-word accusation to the so-very-hated liberal rag brings you to a page which quotes a Village Voice article thusly:

Barely a year after their reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing data mining of ordinary citizens by a government spy agency, New York Times officials had some exciting news for stockholders last week: The Times company plans to do its own data mining of ordinary citizens, in the name of online profits.

Obviously, the big differences are that companies don't exert direct power over your freedoms, nor are you obligated to participate in their data mining operations. You could simply choose not to purchase the product or service, and they wouldn't have your data to mine. It's an ugly reality of marketing in the 21st century that since companies can collect this data, they will, and most will share and/or sell it in the interest of targeted servicing, and collapsing the purchasing cycle through specifically suggestive sales.

Again, a customer doesn't have to buy these products and/or services. He can choose not to, or choose to spend his money with companies who provide a privacy statement which agrees with their ideals more closely than another.

So let the market decide! If this is a problem, people will recognize, dollars will shift, policies will change! That being said...

Do readers really want data-mining behavior from their newspapers—not just the Times but every other big media outlet? Do they want newspaper databases to store reading histories, minute by minute, until one day the government shows up to examine ordinary citizens' shopping and viewing and chatting habits in detail? If you think it can't happen, ask the librarians who've been told to hand over readers' checkout records under the Patriot Act.

That couldn't happen, right? Wrong.

Over a three-year period ending in 2005, the FBI collected intimate information about the lives of a population roughly the size of Bethesda's -- 52,000 -- and stored it in an intelligence database accessible to about 12,000 federal, state and local law enforcement authorities and to certain foreign governments.

The FBI did so without systematically retaining evidence that its data collection was legal, without ensuring that all the data it obtained matched its needs or requests, without correctly tallying and reporting its efforts to Congress, and without ferreting out all of its abuses and reporting them to an intelligence oversight board.

All it takes is for one of thousands of FBI or DOJ employees with the ability to file a non-warrant enabled National Security Letter request, and the government can demand the New York Times, Time Magazine, or Time Warner turn over databases full of information they use for targeted marketing for any reason, or no reason at all.

So the realist in me understands that when the NYT says the government shouldn't collect this information, it's not hypocritical to be datamining their own customers' behavior at the same time. The NYT doesn't exactly have a law enforcement arm, nor do they retain radical theories regarding Habeus Corpus detentions of American citizens. But the libertarian instincts I have run strong. I think that government shouldn't be able to acquire this information, and if it's out there they're going to want to get their hands on it.

I don't for a second believe that this is limited to this administration either. There are always going to be corrupt people in our government, and I'd probably prefer that people in power that are prone to corruption should have the ability to harvest information against their enemies that would normally fall under a casual expectation of privacy.

So no, the Times isn't hypocritical... but they shouldn't be collecting this information anyway. It's a small piece of a bigger puzzle of privacy that should belong to the individual, and not his government.

And so, I guess that's how I give a sideways pass at almost agreeing with Michelle Malkin.

Powered by ScribeFire.

This is why AGonzo gets to be Attorney General - Oh, the malfeasance!



TPMmuckraker May 9, 2007 04:56 PM

(Former US Attorney John) McKay said he began to have concerns about politics entering the Justice Department in early 2005, when Gonzales addressed all of the country's U.S. attorneys in Scottsdale, Ariz., shortly after he took over as attorney general. "His first speech to us was a 'you work for the White House' speech," McKay recalled. " 'I work for the White House, you work for the White House.' " McKay said he thought at the time, "He couldn't have meant that speech," given the traditional independence of U.S. Attorneys. "It turns out he did." He looked around the meeting room and caught the eyes of his colleagues, who gave him looks of surprise at Gonzales' remarks. "We were stunned at what he was saying."

By the way, Clinton and Reno didn't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, and she was never his White House Counsel either. Just to diffuse that argument before it begins.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Whatever you want to think about MediaMatters.org, sometimes the work that they're doing makes a great deal of sense. Take this clip:





Media Matters - ABC's Gibson uncritically reported claim that "we dodged a bullet" by foiling terror plot on Fort Dix

On the May 8 edition of ABC's World News, anchor Charles Gibson introduced a report about the indictment of six men alleged to have plotted an armed attack on the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey, by reporting as fact FBI Philadelphia special agent in charge J.P. Weis' statement that "[t]oday, we dodged a bullet. In fact, when you look at the type of weapons this group was trying to purchase, we may have dodged a lot of bullets."

What does "dodged a bullet" mean to you? How do you internalize that message? In my view, it's evocative of a near miss, something that was on the precipice of being truly dangerous, but was pulled back at the very last second.



Obviously, there's no evidence that was a fact. I'm happy that this alleged terror plot has gotten the attention it has, simply because it does provide a template for how these problems can be solved through the cooperation of law enforcement and intelligence efforts.



But who benefits when it is uncritically reported that the FBI says, "we dodged a bullet?" This persistent fearmongering has gone on too long, and when our media is complicit in allowing law enforcement to amplify what was, by all accounts, a bad situation into something that's evocative of a far worse scenario, that's a problem.



No one wanted these guys to strike, but keep in mind that the alleged plot had been under law enforcement surveillance for over a year at this point, and they made the arrests through a weapons-buy sting.



What does that tell you?



Maybe that these guys weren't equipped to strike yet, and that law enforcement knew what they were doing getting close to these guys without just yanking them off the streets and throwing them in Gitmo?



Even the so-called liberal media likes an attention-grabbing headline, and this certainly qualifies. With or without the added hyperbole.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Duh. Of course he will.F. Thompson sharpens strategy - Politico.com

Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson acknowledges his coming-out speech in California last weekend didn't live up to expectations, advisers say, and he is planning a tighter and sharper message dubbed "Stump Speech 2.0" for a Saturday night event to be attended by key conservative leaders.

Friends working on the speech say it will include more of a call to arms than the entertaining but unfocused after-dinner address Thompson gave to an eagerly expectant audience Friday night at the Balboa Bay Club and Resort in Newport Beach, Calif.

Saturday's event will be a crucial audition in Northern Virginia, where Thompson will be the keynote speaker at a dinner of the Council for National Policy, an organization of conservative leaders. Organizers say he will be introduced by Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, who is among the most important voices of evangelical Christians. Friends helping Thompson with the speech say it will have more of a discussion of values issues than the Orange County outing and will emphasize the importance of confirming conservative judges. "It will be more of an effort to get people excited about the fact that conservatives can win in 2008," said a person close to Thompson. "People found out last weekend that he didn't walk on water, and he was a little rusty."

File this under "obvious," but if I'm a Republican candidate in this pre-election cycle, and I've had a chance to observe how the others in the race are doing, I'm eschewing economics and substantive discussions about Social Security to go pander to the Christian Right too. First off, after James Dobson's assertions a few weeks back, he's got to bend over backwards to get the Christian Right back on board. Dobson may not be a full-fledged kingmaker, but he's got enough pull with the Christian Right to steer a sizeable portion of that bloc to or from anyone he chooses.

So the side benefit to an evening of pandering to the Christian Right? You don't have to talk about anything of substance. Thompson, obviously, will state his opposition to abortion, and will talk about "judicial activism" and "legislating from the bench" and how he'll make sure that our American values are protected and blah blah blah...

Look, it doesn't take a whole heckuva lot to bring the Christian Right around. Promise a few of their powermongers a seat in the Grover Norquist weekly, talk about "people of faith," sympathize with their victimhood of the majority, and use the word "Liberal" as an invective as often as possible.

Ideas like "family values" and "judicial activism" are inherently meaningless, but the Christians like to hear them anyway.

I particularly enjoyed this quote from the article as well, describing the jockeying for position by Republican operatives to get the call from the campaign:

"A lot of people who aren't involved are throwing their name out, hoping they'll get called," said a top Republican consultant who has not been called and didn't want to throw his name out. Other strategists are taking the tack of trying to maintain a low profile, play hard to get and hope the phone rings and they get tapped.

Gee, I really hope Chip asks me to the Prom. He's so dreamy...

Thompson's really enjoying this free ride of his in the press, but I hope he declares soon enough so the substantive vetting of his ideas can occur. There are a lot of people who see him as the Reaganesque figure they crave for the party, but I'm not entirely sure the hawkish tough guy bravado is going to play as well in 2008 as the right would like. I also think he's going to have to work hard to distance himself from his neoconservative connections, including the guys responsible for selling this war, promoting the surge, and developing this administration's radical theories of unchecked executive branch power.

He's going to have to declare soon enough. I just hope the questions about how closely his policies correlate with neocon theory are asked, and that he's forced to either stand on the associations he's developed, or repudiate them publicly to distance himself.

Powered by ScribeFire.

So it turns out that one of the Fort Dix Six (copyright BG, all rights reserved) was an Albanian refugee brought to this country during the war in Kosovo by Bill Clinton's administration in 1999.





Michelle Malkin

Eight years ago, at the Clinton administration's behest, this nation welcomed refugees escaping a genocidal regime whose military spread fear and brutalized its people. Eight years later, we have a homegrown jihad plot targeting a base that symbolizes the best, the brightest and the most compassionate our military has to offer.

So, clearly, what Malkin is saying is that George Bush screwed up the goodwill an international act of charity created, right? I mean, these guys didn't start planning until he took office, so aren't their plots on his watch? Let's ask an expert in minority relations what he thinks.







"George Bush doesn't care about Albanian people."

Powered by ScribeFire.

Uh, about what I said below? Nevermind.


War Room - Salon.com

Gen. David Petraeus has promised a "forthright assessment" of progress in Iraq come September, and more and more Republicans seem to be seeking political cover there. We're not giving the president a blank check, their argument goes. We're just giving him until September to see if this "surge" is actually going to work.

September? Did somebody say September?

" The surge needs to go through the beginning of next year for sure," Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the day-to-day commander for U.S. military operations in Iraq, tells the Washington Post.

The beginning of next year? Like, say, January?

No.

"What I am trying to do is to get until April so we can decide whether to keep it going or not," Odierno says. "Are we making progress? If we're not making any progress, we need to change our strategy. If we're making progress, then we need to make a decision on whether we continue to surge."

Powered by ScribeFire.

Pajamas Media: PhotoSchlocking "The Once and Future Obama"

In another way, the hues and glow and the almost the near halo surrounding Obama in this image suggests more than anything else the fine obscuring hand of what is known as socialist realism. Either way, it seems very early to get this level of propaganda out of the MSM, even the Washington Post.

Twice in one day I'm linking to Pajamas Media, which seems excessive but for the brewing culture of victimhood perpetrated by our monolithic liberal media. God forbid that the Washington Post actually has a decent, high quality picture of Obama to run alongside an article about him - forgetting, for a moment, that the Getty Images stock photo is likely a poorer-quality image from which a subscriber could order the higher-quality shot. No, having a picture that's not pixellated, clean and sharp shouldn't be allowed. It's obvious that Photoshopping isn't playing fair. Total propaganda.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Concurring Opinions: Five Years On... How Significant is Padilla?

Five years ago today, May 8, 2002, Jose Padilla was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport on a material witness warrant issued by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In June 2002, Padilla was transferred to military custody, where he was detained as an "enemy combatant" until January 2006, at which time he was transferred to civilian authorities here in Miami pending trial on criminal charges.



Five years after his initial arrest, Padilla's criminal trial appears finally destined to actually take place, with jury selection concluding today and opening arguments scheduled to begin next Monday, May 14. The beginning of Padilla's criminal trial and the coincident anniversary leave me to wonder just how significant this trial actually will be, the ultimate result notwithstanding...



The system is working the way it's supposed to; it just took the better part of five years to get there, and much will turn on the extent to which this case becomes precedent over the next five years.

IANAL, but even I can see what's wrong with the claims above - which is ironic, because I found this linked from Instapundit, who actually is a lawyer or professor of law.



First, is "(t)he system working the way it's supposed to?" Well, that depends if you believe that the President retains the authority to pull American citizens off the street and throw them in jail without charging them with a crime. I'm going to say, for sake of posterity, that's wrong. Allow me to clip a piece from another Constitutional attorney, Glenn Greenwald in November 2005:

(T)he decision yesterday by the Administration to finally bring charges against U.S. citizen Jose Padilla -- who has been kept incarcerated in a military prison for three years solely on George Bush’s order, in solitary confinement and indefinitely -- was done not in order to signal a retreat by the Administration with regard to its claimed right to imprison U.S. citizens without any judicial processes, but instead, to protect and solidify that power by ensuring that its patent unconstitutionality cannot be ruled upon by the U.S. Supreme Court in the pending Padilla case.

Greenwald is speculating, probably rightfully so, that the only reason Padilla ever got charged with a crime was because the administration didn't want the Habeus Corpus fight landing in the Supreme Court. Rumsfeld v. Padilla had been winding its way through the courts, despite the best efforts of the administration to deny standing based on various technicalities (e.g., they tried to get the case dismissed because Rumsfeld lives in Virginia and the suit was filed in New York, among other technicalities).



So the system did work, I suppose, in spite of the administration's actions. That Padilla was finally charged with criminal acts did not happen until he had spent three years in solitary confinement in a military prison.



But what about the idea of "precedent" here? Is this criminal trial going to decide whether or not Habeus Corpus stays on the books or not? Is this criminal trial going to be a road map for prosecuting future alleged dirty bombers? Hardly. There are laws Padilla's been charged with breaking, and this trial is going to focus on whether the lawbreaking that has been alleged has actually occured. I'd actually bet at this point that the Habeus Corpus issues will be kept out of the courtroom, as they are irrelevant to the question of whether he broke the laws he is alleged to have broken.



I'm just cynical enough to believe that Padilla will be convicted of something bad enough so that he'll be thrown down a hole and forgotten for the next sixty years, whether he is technically guilty of that something or not. But I'm also just cynical enough to see that an endorsement of the ideas the Concurring Opinions blogger by the widely-read conservative Instapundit is setting the table for an implicit approval of Bush's authoritarian ideals in "law enforcement."



Basically, once Padilla is convicted of something, the meme will shift to, "we need to get these guys off the street by any means necessary," even if it means giving up freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution to do so.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Pajamas Media - Presidential Straw Poll 2008 - Survey Results

We regret that Congressman Paul, a good and decent American with loyal motives and deeply held convictions, seems to have garnered among his supporters a small group for whom unethical conduct appears to be permissible if it gets him elected. We are certain he would disapprove of it.

Still, this behavior must stop immediately, as well as the rude and abusive messages we are receiving from these supporters. If they do not, Pajamas Media will have no choice but to remove Mr. Paul permanently from our poll. The choice is now in the hands of Mr. Paul’s supporters.

I don't know what's worse... That a (sadly) marginalized candidate's rabid base thinks gaming an Internet poll is a good campaign strategy, or that the organization posting the poll feels the need to respond to this sort of "behavior" in this fashion.

No comments about the Dem side of things though, where Bill Richardson appears a virtual lock for the nomination. Thanks Pajamas Media!

Powered by ScribeFire.

MyDD :: Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics

I'm told there's an outside shot that House Democrats on the Armed Services Committee will put a restoration of habeas corpus into the Defense Department Authorization Bill being marked up tomorrow and Thursday. Apparently Chairman Skelton has the votes but there are concerns about whether to have this fight now.

Why is this not an easy sell? Why is this not the right side of the right issue at the right time? Christ, we just arrested six guys that allegedly were going to take on Fort Dix, and we didn't have to throw them in secret prisons to do it either. Why isn't the spin on this that we can "fight terror" while still respecting the Constitution?

It is inexcusable that our legislators aren't sure now's the time to have this fight, and it's even more inexcusable that anyone would fight on the other side of this issue. When it comes to our core freedoms, there's no reason at all we need to find a politically advantageous time to pick the fight.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Daily Kos: How Late is Too Late?

Forget what you previously heard that timetables undermine the troops, give a terrible advantage to the insurgents, and amount to a craven surrender in the Global War on Terror™. Those are Democratic timetables. What we have here are Republican timetables, which are patriotic, strategic and a wise conservation of U.S. military resources. This isn't "cut and run," no sirree. This is letting the Iraqis work things out for themselves.

So now there's a drum beat from the right that says we need to wait until September to see progress. Sigh... Here's my fearless prediction on this non-deadline deadline: Because the current conversation in the press revolves around timetables and deadlines due to the vetoed supplemental, Republican Senators and Congressmen are realizing now that the war becomes their albatross in the 2008 elections if they don't find a way to triangulate their previously hawkish positions a little closer to the center.

Because, you know, no one ever makes a big deal about a Republican being "for it before he was against it."

Anyway, what will happen in September is that the administration and military will start talking about all the progress being made, whether it's true or not is beyond the point, and will claim that the Iraqi government is well on their way to becoming the organized, temperate and legitimate body that can take control of its own destiny...

...if we can continue to work with them to help keep the peace. Our troops aren't going anywhere, and I don't think even the most optimistic progressive activists believe otherwise.

Bush is dead-assed determined to keep realigning "the mission" until he can hand this thing off and allow his party to attempt to create the perception eight years from '08 that Obama or Clinton or Gore was the one that ruined everything through their cut-and-run surrendering.

Because, you know, Democrats surrender while Republicans throw good soldiers into unnecessary danger stand and fight.

Powered by ScribeFire.

The Carpetbagger Report » Blog Archive » The plot at Fort Dix

Apparently, the plot was disrupted when the would-be killers videotaped a training session, and brought it to a store to have it burned onto to a DVD. The store clerk saw the video, called the FBI, and agents set up a sting operation, posing as arms dealers, to arrest the suspects.

Obviously, this is a great development and encouraging news. The law enforcement officials who were involved with the arrests, not to mention that store clerk, deserve the nation’s gratitude.

That said, there are a few angles to this story to consider.

Specifically, whether or not they should have kept this scene in the training video*:



Why do they always have the monkey bars? Does Fort Dix have a moat over which they were planning to grapple? Actually, kudos to those who handled this situation in the way these situations should be handled:

[T]oday’s success was due to intelligence gathering and law-enforcement efforts — the very techniques the Bush White House has consistently ridiculed as ineffective in counterterrorism. For that matter, as Steve M. noted, “[A]pparently no warrantless wiretapping led to these arrests, no torture of suspects in overseas prisons, nothing liberals have objected to in the Patriot Act. Remember that when you’re told that these arrests prove that we can’t trust liberals and Democrats.”

Like John Kerry said, terrorism is a law enforcement problem. Trying to throw the might of your military against non-state sponsored acts of destruction is a ludicrous notion. Equip law enforcement and intelligence with the abilities to do an effective, non-authoritarian job within the bounds of our civil rights. Another bomber contract awarded to Boeing ain't doing the same thing to help.

*The picture above is not from their training video, although the author is nearly positive there were monkey bars in their movie as well.

Powered by ScribeFire.

The Blog | Steve Clemons: Obama's Interesting Proposal for the Automobile Sector | The Huffington Post

Barack Obama's policy shop is kicking out some good stuff.



I find this proposal of his, reported by Bloomberg, to help American automobile manufacturers offset retiree health care costs for gains in cutting carbon emissions intriguing. Of course, there are flaws, like in most great ideas, but it's an interesting and commendable gesture that gets away from the nasty, destructive battles in the past between automakers and progressive environmentalists.



Obama is linking progress on two major social problems so that one leverages gains in the other.

Look, we know "the environment" is a social concern, and we know "health care" is a social concern, but it's disingenuous to connect the health care costs of automotive retirees with global warming as a two-noble-birds-with-one-progressive-stone solution.



Who exactly are the benefits of this "offset (of) retiree health care costs?" The automotive industry, naturally. While there can be a tenuous connection drawn between keeping people healthy and insured and the public not having to pony up tax dollars for medical welfare, this policy of Obama's isn't addressing a "major social problem" of health care with this solution. He's subsidizing the bail-out of obligations a specific industry has found too onerous to which to adhere, and in return is proposing the industry works a little harder to meet environmental standards which market forces are likely to demand in coming years anyway.



Let's call this what it is - the give-and-take of politics, and Obama building relationships with certain segments of corporate America that could benefit from the types of corporate welfare that appears to have a positive impact on the general public. I've got no problem with this type of pandering, as it's how you develop a donor base and engage people on all sides in constructive cooperation, But let's stop just short of framing this idea as a panacea for both health care and global warming, alright?



Now, if we want to talk about the loss of manufacturing jobs as a "major social problem," I'd be all for it. How about tying these proposed subsidies to the automotive industry to both environmental reform and commitments to build their cars and trucks a little north of Juarez?

Powered by ScribeFire.

Powered by ScribeFire.

The Blog | James Boyce: Time To Stick A Fork In Rudy Giuliani: He's Done. | The Huffington Post

In January and February, when Rudy Giuliani was rising high in the Republican polls, I nominated him to be the candidate mostly likely to fade fast, and fading fast he is. In polls released today, he has lost 50% of the support he had just 90 days ago.

Human Head calls him "Ghouliani," which always makes me giggle. Seeing as he's clearly the most overtly authoritarian candidate in the running (he'd only blow past Habeus Corpus "infrequently"), it upsets me that it's going to be a socially liberal take on Roe v. Wade that does him in, and not a collective repulsion at his attitudes towards civil liberties.

I'll take what I can get, I suppose.

Powered by ScribeFire.

The legend of Rahm | Salon Books

I remember sitting on my couch in Chicago and thinking, "If the Democrats want to turn it around, they need to take some lessons from the machine around here. Chicago Democrats have no scruples. They treat political offices as feudal inheritances. They shake down contributors like a corrupt pope selling indulgences. They're sleazy, they're arrogant … and they WIN."

That night, on the northwest side, Rahm Emanuel was elected to Congress...

As they said about Buddy Hackett in Vegas, [Rahm] Emanuel works blue. "Fuck" is one of the most versatile words in English, but he seems to have discovered new grammatical and linguistic uses for it. Washington is "Fucknutsville." A Republican congressman is a "knucklefuck." As with his liberal politics, he seems to have inherited his gift for invective from his mother, who is quoted as playfully calling him a "little shithead." The Emanuels -- who hail from the upper-middle-class suburb of Wilmette -- are an intense, competitive family. Emanuel's father and brother are surgeons, another brother is a Hollywood agent who inspired the Ari Gold character on "Entourage."

I'll trade "sleazy" and "arrogant" for a good solid thumpin' at the polls.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Jesus' General features a guest poster who writes:

Tom was shot a half-dozen times in the neck and head with hollow-point bullets (aka "cop killers”")

People get shot every day. Why is this significant? Well, the victim was Tom Wales, an assistant DA in Seattle, whose assassination investigation was being handled by John McKay - one of the eight fired US Attorneys. Still not enough? Let's try The Washington Post:

A U.S. attorney in Seattle was singled out for dismissal in part because he clashed with senior Justice Department officials over the investigation of a federal prosecutor's murder, and he was recommended for removal 18 months earlier than was previously known, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews.

Sure, but if it's just a clash, how do we know the DOJ wasn't in the right to get McKay off the case?

Several officials familiar with the investigation said McKay and other officials in Seattle believed that senior Justice officials were not paying enough attention to the case.... "The idea that I was pushing too hard to investigate the assassination of a federal prosecutor -- it's mind-numbing" that they would suggest that, McKay said. " . . . If it's true, it's just immoral, and if it's false, then the idea that they would use the death of Tom Wales to cover up what they did is just unconscionable."

Absolutely despicable.

Powered by ScribeFire.

(Me, rea