The Times wants a list of documents including all internal memos and e-mails about the program of monitoring phone calls without court approval. It also seeks the names of the people or groups identified by it."

2.28.2006 Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS)

Amendments. Section 837(a) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1993, called the "Byrd Amendment," amended Section 721 of the Defense Production Act (the "Exon-Florio provision"). It requires an investigation in cases where:

• the acquirer is controlled by or acting on behalf of a foreign government; and
• the acquisition "could result in control of a person engaged in interstate commerce in the U.S. that could affect the national security of the U.S."

2.28.2006 "U.S. lacked plan for rebuilding Iraq, report says" By Rowan Scarborough. THE WASHINGTON TIMES

2.28.2006 Dubai tries to shut up Lou Dobbs

2.25.2006 One of the numerical mysteries of the 2004 presidential election is shown on this graph that I was making during September and October of 2004. Why would the numbers go down? I still don't know. But it is interesting to note that the number of search results reported by Google this morning has now grown to 36,300,000. Update: (2.27.2006 38,700,000) (2.28.2006 38,800,000) (3.6.2006 42,200,000] (3.10.2006 42,700,000) (3.22.2006 44,400,000)

So, who is the worst president ever? Go to the Google home page, enter the words worst president ever and click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" option.

2.27.2006 "The Case for Impeachment -- Why we can no longer afford George W. Bush" An excerpt from an essay in the March 2006 Harper's Magazine. By Lewis H. Lapham.

2.27.2006 "Coast Guard Had Concerns About Port Deal"

2.27.2006 "Army to Pay Halliburton Unit Most Costs Disputed by Audit", By JAMES GLANZ

2.27.2006 "Texas Nonprofit Is Cleared After GOP-Prompted Audit -- Group Says Probe Was 'Political Retaliation' by DeLay Allies", By R. Jeffrey Smith

"This audit was political retaliation by Tom DeLay's cronies to intimidate us for blowing the whistle on DeLay's abuses," McDonald said. "Enlisting the IRS to intimidate critics is a dirty trick reminiscent of Richard Nixon. . . . It is not a crime to report a crime, as we did with DeLay."

See also: Talking Points Memo: Justin Rood

Remember, this isn't just any audit. It's one the IRS was put up to by a political ally of Tom DeLay for the pretty clear purpose of cracking down on an organization that was creating problems for the then-Majority Leader.
We can't see any reason why the IRS won't say whether they followed their own rules in this case. And if they did, why can't they provide some evidence or documentation about what the review panel decided?

See also Sheila Samples: "This is the guy who pulled the trigger of the gun that fired the round that hit his friend that ruined the hunt and shed some light on the world that Dick built…"

"Checking every phone call ever made is an example of old think," he (John Poindexter) said"

He was alluding to databases maintained at an AT&T data center in Kansas, which now contain electronic records of 1.92 trillion telephone calls, going back decades. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights advocacy group, has asserted in a lawsuit that the AT&T Daytona system, a giant storehouse of calling records and Internet message routing information, was the foundation of the N.S.A.'s effort to mine telephone records without a warrant.

For a textbook case of why the public holds Congress is such low esteem, look no further than the way an Alaska congressman is short-circuiting the legislative process to sabotage the Cape Wind project off the coast of Cape Cod. Representative Don Young is trying to tack an amendment banning the project onto a bill to authorize funding for the Coast Guard. The stealth amendment has not been debated by any committee of Congress.

The Indian Neo Cons, by B. RAMAN "The pro-US evangelical fervour of the policy-making cabal surrounding the PM and its unconcealed contempt for those advising caution makes one wonder. How transparent has Dr. Manmohan Singh been with us?"

The Homeland Security Department objected at first to a United Arab Emirates company's taking over significant operations at six U.S. ports. It was the lone protest among members of the government committee that eventually approved the deal without dissent.

The department's early objections were settled later in the government's review of the $6.8 billion deal after Dubai-owned DP World agreed to a series of security restrictions.

2.24.2006 "UAE terminal takeover extends to 21 ports" By PAMELA HESS, UPI Pentagon Correspondent

A United Arab Emirates government-owned company is poised to take over port terminal operations in 21 American ports, far more than the six widely reported.

The Bush administration has approved the takeover of British-owned Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. to DP World, a deal set to go forward March 2 unless Congress intervenes.

P&O is the parent company of P&O Ports North America, which leases terminals for the import and export and loading and unloading and security of cargo in 21 ports, 11 on the East Coast, ranging from Portland, Maine to Miami, Florida, and 10 on the Gulf Coast, from Gulfport, Miss., to Corpus Christi, Texas, according to the company's Web site.

2.24.2006 David Korn: "White House Whitewash on Katrina?"

So Bush had done the appropriate pre-disaster work. He had "envisioned" a "seamless, coordinated effort." Yet somehow that envisioned response did not happen on its own--while Bush was playing guitar at a Navy base in San Diego the day after Katrina hit. Well, shouldn't Bush have fired whoever was responsible for not putting his vision into practice? I supposed that would not be too compassionate.

And here's an interesting comparison. The House report on Katrina (written by Republicans) was titled, A Failure of Initiative. Bush's report is called Lessons Learned. Its not called Lessons Learned Quickly, for there still is no director of FEMA (to replace Michael Brown)--just an acting director.

... the construction of American military bases inside Iraq, bases that can be maintained long after the bulk of our military forces are ultimately withdrawn, will serve to replace the bases that the United States has lost in Saudi Arabia. There may be other national security reasons that the United States cannot now precipitously withdraw its forces from Iraq, including the danger that the country would become a regional terrorist base; but none is greater than forestalling the ensuing power vacuum and regional instability, and the impact this would have on oil production.

... officials on the "Seventh Floor" of the CIA were literally ordered by then-CIA director George Tenet to co-operate with Woodward's project because President Bush personally asked that it be done. More than one CIA official co-operated with Woodward against their best judgment, and only because they thought it was something the President had wanted done or ordered.
...
One can skip a read of the book, and go simply to the index, in making their own judgments: Here are some entries:

Bush, George W.: absence of doubt in, 139-40, 420
Bipartisan solidarity of, 189, 200.
Importance of showing resolve and, 81, 116, 152, 320-21, 406, 418-19, 437
legacy of, 90, 165
morality of, 86-132, 272, 313-14
on freedom, 88-89, 93, 152, 258, 276, 405, 424, 428
optimism of, 91, 93, 313-14
patience of, 162-63, 165, 271
as a strong leader, 91, 430

2.23.2006 "Arab Co., White House Had Secret Agreement" By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer

See also Josh Marshall:

"The failure to require the company to keep business records on US soil sounds like a pretty open invitation to flout US law as near as I can tell. Forget terrorism. This is the sort of innovative business arrangement I would think a number of Bush-affiliated American companies might want to get in on. Perhaps Halliburton could be domiciled in Houston, pay its taxes in Bermuda, do its business in Iraq and keep its business records in Jordan."
...
More pointedly for the White House, the 'secret agreement' seems to have included a series of pledges, albeit rather feeble ones, of cooperation with security and counter-terrorism measures.
...
But if they need to pledge to cooperate and assist with security and counter-terrorism then clearly they are involved in port security.

But I have an even more basic question about these conditions. The administration leaked word of the side deal yesterday to help prove the Bush gang is on top of things. But don't these conditions undermine the rest of the White House talking points? If the Dubai Ports World deal was a routine business arrangement that raised no national security concerns, as Scott McClellan insisted yesterday, why did the administration "obtain extra security commitments"?

In other words, the president personally argued this week that there's no reason in the world we should hold a Middle Eastern company "to a different standard than a Great British company." If that's true, what was the motivation for the administration insisting on extra safeguards from the United Arab Emirates?

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006

Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process, and selected unrepresentative raw intelligence to make its public case.

PAUL R. PILLAR is on the faculty of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. Concluding a long career in the Central Intelligence Agency, he served as National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.

"On any given subject, the intelligence community faces what is in effect a field of rocks, and it lacks the resources to turn over every one to see what threats to national security may lurk underneath. In an unpoliticized environment, intelligence officers decide which rocks to turn over based on past patterns and their own judgments. But when policymakers repeatedly urge the intelligence community to turn over only certain rocks, the process becomes biased."
...
The Bush team approached the community again and again and pushed it to look harder at the supposed Saddam-al Qaeda relationship -- calling on analysts not only to turn over additional Iraqi rocks, but also to turn over ones already examined and to scratch the dirt to see if there might be something there after all. The result was an intelligence output that -- because the question being investigated was never put in context -- obscured rather than enhanced understanding of al Qaeda's actual sources of strength and support.

This process represented a radical departure from the textbook model of the relationship between intelligence and policy, in which an intelligence service responds to policymaker interest in certain subjects (such as "security threats from Iraq" or "al Qaeda's supporters") and explores them in whatever direction the evidence leads. The process did not involve intelligence work designed to find dangers not yet discovered or to inform decisions not yet made. Instead, it involved research to find evidence in support of a specific line of argument -- that Saddam was cooperating with al Qaeda -- which in turn was being used to justify a specific policy decision.
...
The intelligence community should be repositioned to reflect the fact that influence and relevance flow not just from face time in the Oval Office, but also from credibility with Congress and, most of all, with the American public. The community needs to remain in the executive branch but be given greater independence and a greater ability to communicate with those other constituencies (fettered only by security considerations, rather than by policy agendas). An appropriate model is the Federal Reserve, which is structured as a quasi-autonomous body overseen by a board of governors with long fixed terms.

A pessimist might complain that thanks to N.S.A. wiretapping, American civil liberties are woefully at risk; an optimist might point out that sure, things are bad, but they are so bad that even the crabby conservative strategist Grover Norquist has been driven to sweetly rooting for his political enemies, telling The San Francisco Chronicle last week, “For 40 years we always assumed the left would take care of our civil liberties.” He added, “If there were problems, the Democrats were the ones who would push back. But now with a Republican Congress and a Republican in the White House, the A.C.L.U. can’t get their calls returned.”

See also SFGate.com Referring to what some see as a conflict between fighting vicious terrorists and upholding all civil liberties, Norquist said: "It's not either/or. If the president thinks he needs different tools, pass a law to get them. Don't break the existing laws.

(copy of memo is Here)

... Just a few months ago, Mora attended a meeting in Rumsfeld’s private conference room at the Pentagon, called by Gordon England, the Deputy Defense Secretary, to discuss a proposed new directive defining the military’s detention policy. The civilian Secretaries of the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy were present, along with the highest-ranking officers of each service, and some half-dozen military lawyers. Matthew Waxman, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, had proposed making it official Pentagon policy to treat detainees in accordance with Common Article Three of the Geneva conventions, which bars cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, as well as outrages against human dignity.Going around the huge wooden conference table, where the officials sat in double rows, England asked for a consensus on whether the Pentagon should support Waxman’s proposal.

This standard had been in effect for fifty years, and all members of the U.S. armed services were trained to follow it. One by one, the military officers argued for returning the U.S. to what they called the high ground. But two people opposed it. One was Stephen Cambone, the under-secretary of defense for intelligence; the other was Haynes (William J. Haynes II, the general counsel of the Department of Defense). They argued that the articulated standard would limit America’s “flexibility.” It also might expose Administration officials to charges of war crimes: if Common Article Three became the standard for treatment, then it might become a crime to violate it. Their opposition was enough to scuttle the proposal.

In exasperation, according to another participant, Mora said that whether the Pentagon enshrined it as official policy or not, the Geneva conventions were already written into both U.S. and international law. Any grave breach of them, at home or abroad, was classified as a war crime. To emphasize his position, he took out a copy of the text of U.S. Code 18.2441, the War Crimes Act, which forbids the violation of Common Article Three, and read from it. The point, Mora told me, was that “it’s a statute. It exists—we’re not free to disregard it. We’re bound by it. It’s been adopted by the Congress. And we’re not the only interpreters of it. Other nations could have U.S. officials arrested.”

2.22.2006 "Bush Unaware of Ports Deal Before Approval"

The Law: "To assist in making this determination, Exon-Florio provides for the President or his designee to receive written notice of an acquisition, merger or takeover of a U.S. corporation by a foreign entity." via Talking Points Memo

2.22.2006 Paul Kiel: "Is this Administration willing to break the law to get this Dubai port deal through?

The NY Times reported today that the law governing this sort of deal, when "the acquiring company is controlled by or acting on behalf of a foreign government," requires a "mandatory," 45-day investigation. That was never done, and what's more, "Administration officials ... could not say why a 45-day investigation did not occur.

Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush’s actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by “news informers” in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com “Upside-Down Media” or below.]

Detention Centers

Plus, there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,” KBR said. [Market Watch, Jan. 26, 2006]
...
Labor Camps

There also was another little-noticed item posted at the U.S. Army Web site, about the Pentagon’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program. This program “provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations.”
...
In such extraordinary circumstances, the American people might legitimately ask exactly what the Bush administration means by the “rapid development of new programs,” which might require the construction of a new network of detention camps.

... One of the real problems here is that this administration has run up such huge trade and tax-cut-and-spend budget deficits that we're in hock to the Arabs and the Chinese to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. If they just converted their bonds into cash, they would own our ports and not have to merely rent them.

Just because the wealthy foreigners who own our debt can blackmail us with their economic leverage, does that mean we should expose our security assets to them as well?

As part of the lunatic White House defense, Dan Bartlett argued that "people are trying to drive wedges and make this to be a political issue." But as the New Republic editor Peter Beinart pointed out in a recent column, W. has made the war on terror "one vast wedge issue" to divide the country.

Now, however, the president has pulled us together. We all pretty much agree: mitts off our ports.

Rumsfeld’s statement was particularly troubling because Dubai Ports World, owned and operated by the UAE government, will also take over a major contract managing the movement of military equipment for the U.S. Army. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace, who was at the briefing, also said he found out about the deal over the weekend. The deal was approved on February 13.
...
UPDATE: Donald Rumsfeld, as Secretary of Defense, is a member of Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States. As such, he was one of the people who, according to the Treasury Department, unanimously approved the sale on February 13. How could do that when he didn’t even find out about the sale until last weekend?

What it shows is that Bush still doesn't understand how much influence he's recently lost with his conservative base. In the brave new post-Harriet, post-Katrina world, outrage over the port deal has been driven equally by both liberal critics and conservatives like Michelle Malkin and administration uber-stalwart Hugh Hewitt, who are no longer willing to simply take Bush's word for it that they should trust him on this issue. For today's chastened conservatives, it's "trust but verify" when it comes to the Bush administration

Those who remember when conservatives called for fiscal restraint may get sour amusement from the situation. But what is truly not funny is the pathetic spectacle of the United States of America, a nation with the greatest political legacy the world has ever known, letting itself be gnawed to death by the greed in a corrupt system that can be so easily fixed.

2.21.2006 "Time for an Extreme Makeover at the Whitehouse" Nick Kristof

These kinds of moves would completely change the tone of the Bush administration. The obvious question, given my values and positions, is whether it is in the public interest for Mr. Bush to become more effective. But I think it’s good for the nation, not just for Republicans, to have a president who can actually govern. If Mr. Bush simply punches the clock aimlessly in his bunker for the next three years — longer than the entire Kennedy presidency — that paralysis will damage America and the world.

2.20.2006 "Herbert: The Torturers Win" By BOB HERBERT

Terrible things were done to Maher Arar, and his extreme suffering was set in motion by the United States government. With the awful facts of his case carefully documented, he tried to sue for damages. But last week a federal judge waved the facts aside and told Mr. Arar, in effect, to get lost.
...
In a ruling that basically gave the green light to government barbarism, U.S. District Judge David Trager dismissed Mr. Arar's lawsuit last Thursday. Judge Trager wrote in his opinion that "Arar's claim that he faced a likelihood of torture in Syria is supported by U.S. State Department reports on Syria's human rights practices."

But in dismissing the suit, he said that the foreign policy and national security issues raised by the government were "compelling" and that such matters were the purview of the executive branch and Congress, not the courts.

He also said that "the need for secrecy can hardly be doubted."

Under that reasoning, of course, the government could literally get away with murder. With its bad actions cloaked in court-sanctioned secrecy, no one would be the wiser.
...
If kidnapping and torturing an innocent man is O.K., what's not O.K.?

2.19.2006 "After Neoconservatism" By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support.
...
Writing before the Iraq war, Kristol and Kagan ... concluded, "It is precisely because American foreign policy is infused with an unusually high degree of morality that other nations find they have less to fear from its otherwise daunting power."
...
... benevolent hegemony presumed that the hegemon was not only well intentioned but competent as well.
...
The conservative critique of the United Nations is all too cogent: while useful for certain peacekeeping and nation-building operations, the United Nations lacks both democratic legitimacy and effectiveness in dealing with serious security issues. The solution is not to strengthen a single global body, but rather to promote what has been emerging in any event, a "multi-multilateral world" of overlapping and occasionally competing international institutions that are organized on regional or functional lines.
...
Good governance, which involves not just democracy but also the rule of law and economic development, is critical to a host of outcomes we desire, from alleviating poverty to dealing with pandemics to controlling violent conflicts.
...
By definition, outsiders can't "impose" democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective.

... there is nothing about theology that is universal. Theology is always particular to one religious institution.
...
And most of the rules they want us to follow are abstract--rules about how men and women should relate, rules about what families should look like, rules about what people should learn. The program, for Christian conservatives, is not essentially about faith or morality--those are elements in a larger program. The larger program is enforcing conformity.

See also, in the comments, Querent: The part I don't get about the religious argument in favor of suppressing other people's sin is, where the hell does it come from? I don't remember Jesus telling some woman at some well, "Go and make sure nobody else sins anymore!"

2.19.2006 "New Clerk for Alito Has a Long Paper Trail" By Adam Liptak

"We don't normally contemplate a high-level Justice Department official becoming a Supreme Court clerk," said Ronald D. Rotunda, a specialist in legal ethics at George Mason University School of Law. "It's just asking for problems that are unnecessary." Most Supreme Court law clerks, who prepare memorandums and draft decisions for the justices, have little of note on their résumés beyond superior grades at a top law school and a clerkship with a federal appeals court judge.
...
Mr. Ciongoli, 37, represents a different model. He has a rich and public history in government and, most recently, as a senior lawyer at Time Warner.

"It really indicates a lapse in judgment," Deborah L. Rhode, who teaches legal ethics at Stanford, said of Justice Alito's decision. "I just don't think it helps your reputation for nonpartisanship, particularly after such partisan confirmation hearings, to start out by hiring someone who is perceived to have an ideological agenda."

2.18.2006 "I Love Scientists" by Neil the Ethical Werewolf

Looks like scientists at NIH are making progress on a vaccine for Ebola!

I'm hoping that the scientists don't get laid off due to budget cuts, like those government scientists working on renewable energy who lost their jobs right after Bush talked about weaning us off our addiction to oil. Fortunately, there isn't a wealthy pro-Ebola lobby in America, so we're probably safe this time.

About the only good news for the White House these days is how the bad stories keep stepping on each other. The news media, the Democrats and even the most discerning voters simply cannot focus at once on everything that threatens to sideline President Bush's administration.
...
Cheney’s sporting fiasco certainly stepped on what would have been another public airing of the CIA leak case, but the prosecution of his former top aide is a story with legs. Once this trial starts, Cheney might be well advised to go on another hunting trip.

In July 2004, the Bush-Cheney campaign caused quite a flap in the religious community by asking church goers to turn over church directories to the campaign and distribute partisan materials in their churches. The move was denounced throughout the Christian community — even the Southern Baptists said it was "appalling."

A month later the Republican National Committee asked Bush-backing Roman Catholics to provide copies of their parish directories, too. Archdioceses balked at the suggestion.
...
Apparently, Republicans in North Carolina assumed enough time has passed for them to try the exact same stunt. Also keep in mind, churches are prohibited under federal tax law from helping political parties and intervening in campaigns. In a situation like this, the North Carolina Republican Party is asking the churches to take all the risk — putting ministries tax-exemption at risk — while the GOP gets all the gain.

In other words, as far the GOP is concerned, partisan political gain comes first, legal and moral consequences for the congregation comes second. Classy.

Remind me, which is the party that's considered pro-religion?

See also "DoD staffer's notes from 9/11 obtained under FOIA" (Steven Cambone)

2.18.2006 Maureen Dowd: "Dowd: Hunting for a Straight Shooter"

Rummy is genuinely perplexed about why it's wrong to subvert democracy while promoting democracy.
...
"Ultimately, in my view," Rummy concluded, "truth wins out."

Bad news for him, and his pal Dick.

2.17.2006 "Judge Orders Spying Documents Released"

2.16.2006 George F.Will: "No Checks, Many Imbalances"

... terrorism is not the only new danger of this era. Another is the administration's argument that because the president is commander in chief, he is the "sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs." That non sequitur is refuted by the Constitution's plain language, which empowers Congress to ratify treaties, declare war, fund and regulate military forces, and make laws "necessary and proper" for the execution of all presidential powers . Those powers do not include deciding that a law -- FISA, for example -- is somehow exempted from the presidential duty to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

Vice President Cheney is right that he has the ability to classify materials; that is clear from the Executive Order.

It is also clear, however, that the rules and processes for CLASSIFYING national security information are completely different than DECLASSIFYING information. That is evident from reading the structure of the Executive Order itself.

So, Cheney is engaged in Executive Branch over-reach again, implying he has a power that is not designated.

A federal employee gets hassled by Homeland Security for antiwar stickers on his car. Is it a mistake, a new rule, or the part of a trend of the First Amendment being bullied out of existence? Read the transcript, read the rules and decide for yourself

In a more recent example of possible political pressure at the agency, press officers and scientists cited an e-mail message sent last July from NASA's headquarters to its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. It said a Web presentation describing the uncontroversial finding that Earth was a "warming planet" could not use the phrase "global warming." It is "standard practice," the message went on, to use the phrase "climate change."

Q Let me ask you another question. Is it your view that a Vice President has the authority to declassify information?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: There is an executive order to that effect.