26%

Andrew Sullivan: "Bush asked to have his presidency judged on how he waged the war in Iraq. He has got his wish."

5.29.2007 Court Protects Gender Discrimintion by Scott Lemieux

As Ruth Bader Ginsburg notes, the evidence of gender discrimination in the case of Ledbetter v. Goodyear, decided today by the Supreme Court, is unambiguous:

5.27.2007 More Heffelfinger Sara

Two weeks after 9/11 all the USA's met in DC, and visited the Pentagon crash site, and from there went to the White House to meet with Bush. They were told, "We are at War, You are on the Front Lines."

Looseheadprop comments:

"USAs were suddenly being given direction to do take "charge" of all sorts of things that they had been hand's off of before."
...
1. If USA's are supposed to be "in charge," why have a completely autonomous department of HOMELAND SECURITY? If the USA's are "in charge," let Homeland Security report to them.

2. Regardless, USA budget for terrorism prosecutions should come right out of HOMELAND SECURITY's budget.

And CNN reports:

Group: Terrorism not focus of Homeland Security
...
"The DHS claims it is focused on terrorism. Well that's just not true," said David Burnham, a TRAC spokesman. "Either there's no terrorism, or they're terrible at catching them. Either way it's bad for all of us."

... I walked outside my apartment in Athens this morning and the air smelled of burning, which means that the smoke from the massive, record-breaking wildfires in south Georgia has drifted over the rest of the state. Usually, the wind blows from west to east, but fires this big start to generate their own weather systems, and the wind is blowing to the west and north.

We can argue about the virtues, the propriety, of unorthodox readings of the law by the Executive -- of going right up to the line and getting chalk all over one's spikes. But even if unorthodox, and pro-Executive, and aggressive, readings of the law are in some cases permissible, what should be beyond the pale is acting in accord with a body of secret law. (Here)

5.27.2007 "Tales From The Department Of Justice" By: Christy Hardin Smith. Reddhedd casts some sunlight on the Isikoff, Thomas article.

5.27.2007 Analysts' Warnings of Iraq Chaos Detailed -- Senate Panel Releases Assessments From 2003 By Walter Pincus and Karen DeYoung

See also Steve Benen who describes the history of stonewalling the reports (Here)

5.27.2007 Critical Care Without Consent -- Ethicists Disagree On Experimenting During Crises By Rob Stein, Washington Post Staff Writer

The federal government is undertaking the most ambitious set of studies ever mounted under a controversial arrangement that allows researchers to conduct some kinds of medical experiments without first getting patients' permission.
...
The organizers said the studies are going forward only after an exhaustive scientific and ethical review by the National Institutes of Health, which authorized the funding in 2004, and the Food and Drug Administration, which approved the first phase about a year ago and the second phase six months ago.

See also: "Test of Controversial Artificial Blood Product a Failure"

What does this “Support the Troops” legislation mean for the United States military? Supporting our troops has nothing to do with this bill, other than keeping them there for another 30 years to protect US oil interests.

Reggie Walton, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, was appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts effective May 19.

See also: "Libby's claim of innocence also makes it difficult for him to express the contrition that can bring a lenient sentence. "It's tough to sit up there and say … ‘None of this happened,' but he needs to address the court somehow. He's got to," Mr. Howard said."

I think he just did.

Libby Doesn't Want Bloggers to Know Who Is Shilling for Him
...
We, the public, do have a very big interest in seeing the letters and knowing who wrote them. Libby has managed to hide most of the names of the people who are paying for his defense. Since he has, by all accounts, served as the perfect firewall, we deserve to know whether those directly benefiting from Libby's lies are footing the bill to defend him. While Judge Walton may not be able to change the laws surrounding disclosure of legal defense funds, I hope he understands that seeing these letters allow us to see precisely who is behind Libby's defense

I wanted to discuss with former U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Comey the ethics of his pursuit of Jose Padilla, when Comey knew full well (and had even admitted) that Padilla’s “confessions” could never be used in a court of law. Comey’s behavior vis a vis the Padilla case, now being tried in Miami, raised many questions. ... The Coast Guard now claims it will seek damages from Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman for eight failed patrol boats amounting to $24 billion . Maybe $48 billion. Atkinson minces no words about Lockheed Martin. He writes that essentially Lockheed Martin has confessed to being an on-going criminal enterprise with 80 additional criminal and civil cases, convictions (or admission of guilt) for fraud and related infractions .

Comey is taking home a million dollar plus salary, complete with bonuses and stock options. I guess he didn’t want to answer questions about any of his activities–not about Padilla, not about his limp protest to secret monitoring of U.S. citizens, not about his new position with the company in “deep water doo doo.” He declined my request for an interview.

Which is what I predicted

5.25.2007 "Americans, especially Catholics, approve of torture" By TOM CARNEY

5.25.2007 Heffelfinger, Native Americans, and Voting Rights by emptywheel

I haven't read all the coverage on Goodling's confirmation of the reason behind Thomas Heffelfinger's appearance on the firing list. But I've read a lot, and I'm really amazed by the coverage of the interchange. Goodling's response to Ellison's question about the reasons for Heffelfinger's appearance on the list, Goodling said:

GOODLING:There were some concerns that he spent an extraordinary amount of time as the leader of the Native American Subcommittee of the AGAC and put -- clearly, people thought that that was important work, but I think there was some concern... (More)

There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy.

On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney's team and acolytes -- who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy.
...
The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf -- which just became significantly larger -- as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

5.24.2007 Tristero says:

"Kinda takes your breath away, don't it? But the real kicker is that the only reason Bush authorized this sheer idiocy is because someone persuaded Bush not to greenlight - at least not yet - Cheney's plans to attack Iran with the US military. That's right: Bush actually thinks he's taking the sensible, middle course, between the appeasers who foolishly urge negotiating with Iran, and the miltiary hawks."

What does the Justice Department have in the way of evidence?.

They have 300,000 taped phone conversations, of which 230 phone calls are the heart of its case. Of those 230 calls, 21 make reference to Jose Padilla. Of those 21 phone conversations, Padilla’s voice is heard on seven. Of those 7, there are discussions about having some “picnics,” so they could “smell fresh air and eat cheese” and oh, yes, a very “significant” blather when Padilla talks about spending $3500 on “zucchini.” No talks of terrorists acts, no bombs. Nothing.

The government claims the food references were code.

5.24.2007 More on gay translators:

"Lawmakers who say the military has kicked out 58 Arabic language experts because they were gay want the Pentagon to explain how it can afford to let the valuable specialists go." (Here)

5.23.2007 "The Three Most Intriguing Words in Goodling's Testimony" Marty Lederman

5.24.2007 "Just one teeny, tiny question: On whose orders was the career hiring at the Department of Justice turned into a perverted partisan seeding ground? Sunshine, please." Christy Hardin Smith (Here)

5.23.2007 "Pentagon Making Preparations To Keep Tens Of Thousands Of Troops In Iraq For ‘Decades’" Think Progress via Norm who called it a long time ago

5.23.2007 looseheadprop:

... Mary Jo White had an interesting observation towards the end of the evening. After pointing out the tradition in the SDNY that in order to be considered to be USA there, you had to have served the office previously in a career capacity, and opining that it would not be fair to the USA to appoint someone who had never been a prosecutor before because they "wouldn't have a clue" of how to do the job; she noted that "those who devised this plan were young political operatives with no understanding of DOJ or its traditions. Alberto Gonzales had no federal experience. Harriet Myers had no federal experience." Mary Jo, quite charitably, noted that they had no idea how DOJ is supposed to work and for 6 years had no experience with a Congress composed of a loyal opposition, so there were never any grownups in charge.
...
So, the only good news here is for the criminals, oh yeah and the terrorists. I remember the days when Dave Kelley and Pat Fitzgerald with the support and, yes, insulation from Main Justice from Mary Jo White, were actually building cases and putting terrorists in jail. I remember when they were able to foil plots before anyone got hurt or any computer networks melted down. I remember when terrorist atrocities were met with competent evidence, indictments returned on probable cause and convictions gained after trial.

I remember what the rule of law looked like. More importantly, I remember what it felt like. It made me proud to be an American. It made me proud to know that although there were scary bad men out there who wanted to hurt us, grownups–talented, smart, hardworking, sincere and honorable grownups–were in charge. It was their respect for the Constitution, for both the spirit and the letter of the law THAT made me feel safe.

As long as our system of Justice and our whole country is in the hands of the Kiddie Kampers, no one will feel safe…because no one will be safe.

Well, yeah—the interests of the pregnant woman and the fetus are the same in the best case scenario. In a situation where the pregnancy has been planned or is at least wanted, with the support of a partner (as applicable), where there exists emotional and financial stability, the means to support a(nother) child, and the mother is both psychologically and physiologically healthy during the pregnancy, as is the fetus, then everything’s copasetic with the whole “shared interests” concept. Even failing that perfect intersection by one or two degrees, many women decide to find a way to work an unplanned pregnancy and the resulting child into their lives.

But in some cases, that’s not desirable or possible; the pregnancy just isn’t viable because of the external environment, which ought to matter at least as much as the internal environment of the womb, considering the latter is only pertinent for nine months. And in those cases, the “shared interests” concept is just a load of horseshit. There’s really no kinder way to say it.

Al Hurra television, the U.S. government's $63 million-a-year effort at public diplomacy broadcasting in the Middle East, is run by executives and officials who cannot speak Arabic, according to a senior official who oversees the program.

That might explain why critics say the service has recently been caught broadcasting terrorist messages, including an hour-long tirade on the importance of anti-Jewish violence, among other questionable pieces.

5.22.2007 New Documents Confirm Gonzales Lied To Senator About Plan To Install Rove Protege As U.S. Attorney Think Progress

5.22.2007 FRANK RICH:

As The Boston Globe discovered, Regent's Web site boasts that some 150 of its grads were hired by the Bush administration, and not, it seems, because of merit. In Ms. Goodling's graduating class, 60 percent failed the bar exam on their first try.

No wonder Bush is pushing so hard to include a measure offering telecoms retroactive immunity for their role in domestic wiretapping, going back to 9/11 (note--that retroactive immunity date probably resolves the debate about when the more egregious domestic wiretapping practices started, since it wouldn't do them much good to get immunity for only part of the time they were engaging in the practice).

The administration’s proposal would also provide legal immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the National Security Agency’s surveillance program without warrants before it was brought under the surveillance act in January. It would also provide legal protections for government workers who took part in the N.S.A. program.

... it wouldn't help a private phone company very much that the president said they could break laws that that pesky legislative branch had made. Especially with the prospect of thousands of private litigants seeking up to $1000 a day in damages each. ... Bush knows they need immunity, because on his orders, it appears they were wiretapping us illegally from March 11 to roughly March 25, 2004.
...
Hell--maybe we can recruit the telecoms and their abundant lobbyists to get rid of Bush for us, in retaliation against him for deliberately exposing their companies to millions in damages. Having seen their efforts in the net neutrality fight, I'd sure love to have those resources on our side for a change.

Curses, Mitch McConnell! Oh for the days when the GOP had the hapless Bill Frist leading the Senate.

Mike McConnell, the Bush administration's Director of National Intelligence, has a remarkably dishonest Op-Ed in The Washington Post this morning, in which he argues for completely unspecified "updates" and "changes" to FISA in order to expand -- yet again -- the Government's powers of eavesdropping on Americans. McConnell's entire argument for expansion of surveillance powers rests on a patent falsehood.

In paragraph after paragraph, McConnell claims that FISA -- which was first enacted in 1978 but amended multiple times since then -- is an obsolete law because it was from an era where "the first cellular mobile phone system was still being tested" and "a personal computer's memory had just been expanded to 16 kilobytes." He then affirmatively (and falsely) states, several times, that FISA is unchanged since 1978 and thus does not recognize new communications technology such as e-mail and cell phones:

As Monica Goodling, a key player in the United States attorney scandal, prepares to testify before Congress on Wednesday, the administration’s strategy is clear. It has offered up implausible excuses, hidden the most damaging evidence and feigned memory lapses, while hoping that the public’s attention moves on. But this scandal is too important for the public or Congress to move on. This story should not end until Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is gone, and the serious damage that has been done to the Justice Department is repaired.

Iraq's most powerful Shiite politician, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, has been in the United States since May 17 to seek immediate medical attention for lung cancer, the Washington Post reported May 19. Al-Hakim has worked closely with the United States and is also Iran's main ally in Iraq; his untimely departure from the scene could have serious repercussions for both U.S. and Iranian interests. Al-Hakim is not the only ailing Iraqi leader: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is also ill, and Iraq's top cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is also aging -- a situation which bodes ill for future stability in Iraq.

See also: War and Piece

WP: SCIRI/SICI leader Hakim in the US for treatment of lung cancer. "In a reflection of Hakim's stature, President Bush authorized immediate transportation to get Hakim from Iraq to the United States, an administration source said yesterday. Vice President Cheney played a role in arranging for Hakim to see U.S. military doctors in Baghdad, who made the original diagnosis, and for the current medical treatment in Houston, the sources said."

Talabani is in Rochester, New York

If my friend is right — and this is just one anecdote from one Airman, but he’s been there three times, all over the country doing the same thing, building what he builds — we are building a huge, permanent infrastructure in Iraq. We are putting in the latest equipment, and it is not there to support some temporary military presence. What’s going up is not something to be taken down and removed when our troops withdraw or respond to some uncertain Congressional appropriation. And the facilities that are being constructed, and the way they are being linked, indicate a more or less permanent military presence.

At issue is the Bush administration's view that since the government has "sovereign immunity" - individuals can't sue it unless it agrees to be sued - only Congress can waive that immunity, and it hasn't done so with all the environmental whistleblower laws.

If true, an employee can't sue the government for lost wages or other punitive measures that might have been taken as a result of the employee's speaking out. The footnote in the Labor Department ruling said Congress had waived sovereign immunity only for the clean air and solid waste laws.

But there appears to be a dispute within the department about whether other laws also could be covered.

Translation: Except for those illegal aliens qualifying under Section 601(h), no illegal aliens can obtain new status until the Secretary of Homeland Security sends the president and Congress a letter saying all triggers have been met.
...
When you find Section 601(h), you may be surprised to read that the exception to the triggers appears to be enormously large:
...
Perhaps I am wrong, but I can only read Section 601(h) as a massive undercutting of the entire concept of "triggers," an undercutting which various talking points have not underscored or quantified, which points to why the jam down demanded by Senator McCain is so reprehensible. Ordinary citizens have almost zero chance of figuring out what this bill intends and how its provisions will interact, and the proxies on whom they might rely will hardly have any opportunity to fully vet the language.

5.19.2007 The Truth About PM’s ‘Special Relationship’ With Bush The Independent, UK

Britain disagreed with the US over two key decisions in May 2003, two months after the invasion - to disband Iraq’s army and “de-Ba’athify” its civil service. Geoff Hoon, on 2 May 2007, said: “Sometimes … Tony (Blair) had made his point with the President, I’d made my point with Don [Rumsfeld] and Jack [Straw] had made his point with Colin [Powell] and the decision actually came out of a completely different place. And you think: what did we miss? I think we missed (Vice-President Dick) Cheney.

5.17.2007 "Jon Stewart Catches Gonzales Lying About McNulty" (with the Latina-Ashcroft hospital scene)

More on Comey

5.19.2007 Tina Foster:

As to the big picture, people in the Middle East are certainly aware that the CIA kidnaps people, but this had been a dirty little secret and key word "little". It is no longer-- some estimates are that as many as 15,000 people have found their way into American custody in foreign locations intended to be beyond any law. And now, our government actually argues in court that this is all perfectly legal!
...
We need to restore the rule of law. While I favor closing GTMO, that does not solve the problem. The problem has, thus far, been transferred elsewhere, and still exists, and closing GTMO without doing anything else would just move the problem out of sight. As a people, we need to decide whether or not we want our government and military to disregard the rule of law as long as they do so in someone else's country.

What has been so infuriating to people in the Middle East and the rest of the world is that double standard regarding human rights and fundamental freedoms. For U.S. citizens at home, we ordinarily provide a panoply of legal rights... but the message is that other people are less than human-- they don't even deserve the most basic of human rights. This double standard is so galling to so many people, that it has lowered the standing of the United States in the eyes of many.

5.18.2007 Time: "Was Gonzales' Emergency Visit Illegal?"

5.16.2007 "Detroit City Council Passes Double-Impeachment Resolution"

5.15.2007 Comey testifies about Gonzales' and Card's attempts to get Ashcroft's signature on spying reauthorization." Must Read and Video of Comey's testimony

Marty Lederman: Yes, if you think this sounds familiar, it is -- it eerily resembles the scene in which Michael Corrleone "protects" his father at the hospital in The Godfather. With Jack Goldsmith as Enzo the Baker, and Alberto Gonzales as McCluskey the crooked cop. (The President, of course, is Sollozzo. Comey would be Michael, except that he's a good 14 inches taller than Al Pacino . . . . Oh, and then there's the bit about how Comey refuses to meet with Andy Card -- the President's Chief of Staff! -- at the White House without an unbiased third party witness (SG Ted Olson -- a/k/a Tom Hagen).)

Washington Post Editorial: The dramatic details should not obscure the bottom line: the administration's alarming willingness, championed by, among others, Vice President Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, to ignore its own lawyers. Remember, this was a Justice Department that had embraced an expansive view of the president's inherent constitutional powers, allowing the administration to dispense with following the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Justice's conclusions are supposed to be the final word in the executive branch about what is lawful or not, and the administration has emphasized since the warrantless wiretapping story broke that it was being done under the department's supervision.

Now, it emerges, they were willing to override Justice if need be. That Mr. Gonzales is now in charge of the department he tried to steamroll may be most disturbing of all.

Anonymous Liberal: First, it appears that the White House was willing (and in fact did, for a time) authorize a program that the Justice Department--including the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, the head of the OLC, and the FBI Director--had determined to be illegal. And if all of these people had not threatened to simultaneously resign, it is very likely that the White House would simply have continued renewing this program without the Justice Department's blessing.

That's a rather stunning fact, and one that I wish at least a few mainstream journalists would attempt to grasp the significance of. The White House authorized a program that everyone of significance in the Justice Department had determined to be lacking any legal basis. They willfully violated the law.

Just an Observer: Note that nowhere in Comey's story are NSA officials mentioned. But FBI Director Robert Mueller was a central player in the drama -- he even met personally with President Bush -- and also was one who threatened resignation. This indicates that, whatever was going on before the program was modified, those activities were being conducted by the FBI, not just the NSA. That could mean purely domestic unwarranted wiretaps, unwarranted black-bag jobs, or similar misconduct.

But see: Anonymous Liberal: "Robert Mueller's Role in the NSA Controversy"

Peter Swire: Comey’s Revelations Suggest Either Gonzales Is Lying Or More Spying Programs Exist Video

emptywheel: There's something ironically revealing about this story: Kollar-Kotelly complained, partly, because she believed the government was shielding the existence of "the program" from her. But that's what appears to be going on now (and in the hearing on the NSA program). Bush is admitting the existence of a program tapping those with six degrees of separation from bin Laden as a way to shield this, the datamining program.

"The President's Secret Program: A Timeline" By Paul Kiel

Marty Lederman compiles the better blog articles on the subject (Here) See also Shakesville

On the other hand, Douglas W. Kmiec, a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University (66th in nation, home of Kenneth Starr), says:

...the comparison to Watergate is wholly inapt. Watergate involved a real crime -- breaking and entering, with a phenomenally stupid coverup that also fit the definition of criminal obstruction. And the underlying motivation for Richard Nixon's demise was raw politics. Comey's tale lacks crime and this venal political intrigue.
...
The FISA-presidential power spat invites reasonable legal minds to disagree, as Comey and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales do.

emptywheel and Marty Lederman blow Kmiec out of the water. Lederman says:

Second, the AG signature might have been necessary to induce the requisite private actors -- telcom companies in particular -- to continue to go along with the program.

Yesterday vice president Dick Cheney defended Mr Wolfowitz, saying: "Paul is one of the most able public servants I've ever known .... I think he's a very good president of the World Bank, and I hope he will be able to continue."

... Independent journalists Basav Sen and Hope Chu summarized the new agreement thu:sly

“A move that appears on the surface to be beneficial for Iraq — debt cancellation — is being used as a tool of control by the World Bank, the IMF and the wealthy creditor countries. What is more, it is a tool of control that will last long after the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces.”

THE ALBERTO GONZALES SHOW....One of the great discoveries of the Republican Party over the past decade or two is that an awful lot of the rules we take for granted are, in reality, just traditions. Like redistricting only once a decade, for example, or keeping House votes open for 15 minutes. And what Republicans have found out is that if you have the balls to do it, you can just ignore tradition and no one can stop you. It's that simple.

What all these events have in common is that they evidence a complete disregard for established norms of conduct. This willingness to push the envelope, to depart from all previously accepted standards of fair play and good governance in the quest for partisan advantage, has been the defining feature of the Republican Party over the last twenty to thirty years. And it has slowly infected nearly every aspect of modern politics, including, most perniciously, the standards governing political debate itself.

It's long been understood that politics involves spin, that politicians and their surrogates can and will put the best spin possible on the facts in order to sell themselves and their policies (and to criticize their opponents and their policies). But there's a difference between spinning and lying, and there's traditionally been a line that, whether due to respect for the bounds of civilized debate or fear of suffering political repercussions, politicians generally did not cross--at least with respect to facts that are easily verifiable.
And More

City officials and a range of medical experts are now convinced that the dust and toxic materials in the air around the site were a menace. More than 2,000 New York City firefighters have been treated for serious respiratory problems. Seventy percent of nearly 10,000 recovery workers screened at Mount Sinai Medical Center have trouble breathing. City officials estimate that health care costs related to the air at ground zero have already run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and no one knows whether other illnesses, like cancers, will emerge.
...
From the beginning, there was no doubt that Mr. Giuliani and his team ruled the hellish disaster site. Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, all with extensive disaster response experience, arrived almost immediately, only to be placed on the sideline. One Army Corps official said Mr. Giuliani acted like a “benevolent dictator.”
...
Records show that the city was aware of the danger in the ground zero dust from the start. In a federal court deposition, Kelly R. McKinney, associate commissioner at the city’s health department in 2001, said the agency issued an advisory on the night of Sept. 11 stating that asbestos in the air made the site hazardous and that everyone should wear masks.

Of course, none of the reporters covering the deal on Thursday has actually seen the language of the agreement they are now praising because the specific legislative language is still being kept secret (MyDD's Matt Stoller just got his hands on a copy of a more detailed summary and thankfully posted it here - but it is only a summary and not the actual legislative language that will be included in the Peru, Panama, Colombia and South Korea trade deals, and as we know, legislative language is where the rubber hits the road in trade deals. See the addendum at the bottom for more). All they saw at the press conference were press releases and summaries, and yet they dutifully transcribed those press releases and summaries to report as ironclad fact that this deal means pending trade deals will definitely include strong, enforceable labor and environmental protections.

No reporter, rank-and-file Member of Congress or member of the public has seen the final language of any new trade pact that this deal purports to represent. Put another way, in reporting that this deal definitely means strong labor/environmental standards without actually seeing the legislative language, Beltway journalists are behaving just like their idol Friedman, who admitted on national television that he used his newspaper columns and television appearances to champion the job-destroying Central American Free Trade Agreement even though "I didn't even know what was in it."

5.13.2007 Frank Rich:

By my rough, conservative calculation -- feel free to add -- there have been corruption, incompetence, and contracting or cronyism scandals in these cabinet departments: Defense, Education, Justice, Interior, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development. I am not counting State, whose deputy secretary, a champion of abstinence-based international AIDS funding, resigned last month in a prostitution scandal, or the General Services Administration, now being investigated for possibly steering federal favors to Republican Congressional candidates in 2006. Or the Office of Management and Budget, whose chief procurement officer was sentenced to prison in the Abramoff fallout. I will, however, toss in a figure that reveals the sheer depth of the overall malfeasance: no fewer than four inspectors general, the official watchdogs charged with investigating improprieties in each department, are themselves under investigation simultaneously -- an all-time record.

The indictment, returned Thursday, replaces charges brought in February against Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who resigned from the spy agency a year ago, and Poway-based defense contractor Brent Wilkes. The charges grew from the bribery scandal that landed former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham in prison.

The pair now face 30 wide-ranging counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.

As I said, the changes to the Wilkes/Foggo indictment are far more interesting. The new facts alleged get to the real heart of the Wilkes/Foggo scheme--an effort to get $100 million in contracts to provide commercial cover for the CIA's extraordinary rendition flights (about which Laura Rozen has been reporting for over a year). According to the indictment, the scheme to get the air service contract started in December 2004 and continued until the FBI raided Brent Wilkes' business in August 2005.

For five and a half years, the Bush administration has ignored and neglected the heroes of the 9/11 community. These heroic first responders have been left to fend for themselves, without coverage and without care. I understand why the Bush administration is coming after me -- I have tried to help the very people they refuse to help, but until George W. Bush outlaws helping your fellow man, I have broken no laws and I have nothing to hide.

Dina Rasor, author of the recently released book "Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War," offered further insight into the private contractor phenomenon in a Huffington Post story on Wednesday. "There is also evidence that these contractor billings are sucking up the supplemental money and making other logistical areas suffer," wrote Rasor. "The supplemental money is flexible so that the Army can use it where they need it, but there is evidence that the contractor over-billings are taking away much needed money for replacing basic fighting equipment such as night vision goggles, workable radios and armored vehicles. The most common email that I get from Iraq makes the point that while troops can get luxury items at the large bases, such as soft-serve ice cream and plasma televisions, they can't get enough equipment needed to save their lives when they leave the cushy bases and go out into hostile areas. There is real resentment among the troops that KBR makes life very nice for the military brass and others at the base, but will not go out of the gate, as required, to make sure that they have the basics that they need."

Beyond this is one central point hammered home by Scahill and Greenwald: How can we justify the usage of private armies that profit from this war, and thus have a financial interest in continuing and expanding this war? Is this not a recipe for endless conflict and bottomless profiteering?

Two hearings took place on Thursday, both of which served to reveal one absolute and unavoidable reality: Oversight of and investigations into the activities of the Bush administration, especially regarding Iraq, could not have come soon enough. It was a day of many questions, a few answers, and plenty of truth for all to see.

The private America Supports You Fund and the Pentagon program with a similar name share the same goal: to promote and encourage the work of grass-roots groups that help soldiers and their families with things like small care packages for deploying troops and renovating houses to accommodate soldiers who come home wounded.

But some department officials also appear to have seen the new foundation as an important tool in their push to maintain public support for troops overseas, a task that they feared had become much tougher since the November election put the Democrats in control of Congress.

Karl K. "Kasey" Warner said he has "concerns" and sees parallels between himself and eight other ousted U.S. attorneys. Congress and an internal Justice Department agency are investigating whether those firings were politically motivated.
...
"The facts speak for themselves. Look into how I ran my office. See how I managed the office," Warner said. "If they want to look at the cases I had and the corruption cases we have now, people can come to their own conclusions about why I was let go."

emptywheel says:

But I'm not sure Monica will get us where we need to go in this, either--the White House. After all, she has been given a good deal of authority. The delegation to her of hiring authority on political hires, for example, makes no requirement that she consult anyone. She didn't have to consult with Harriet Miers and Karl Rove--that was just consultative, not managerial. So she will honestly be able to testify that she was in charge of this whole process. She was not ordered to do what she did--it's not clear anyone ordered her to politicize DOJ. Which means she will have the ability to be perfectly honest--but also perfectly effective as a firewall.

5.11.2007 About that DOJ Leak by emptywheel

I'd like to elaborate on a point I made earlier this week: that a leak described by Wilkes' Defense Attorney Mark Geragos sure sounds like an attempt by Main Justice to taint the Wilkes prosecution. The leak was one of several pieces of evidence Geragos gave for asserting that Lam had indicted Wilkes improperly.

Richard Perle lays into George Tenet on Post OpEd page (appropriate venue). Like a cage match between See No Evil and Evil

There is yet another United States attorney whose abrupt departure from office is raising questions: Debra Wong Yang of Los Angeles. Ms. Yang was not fired, as eight other prosecutors were, but she resigned under circumstances that raise serious questions, starting with whether she was pushed out to disrupt her investigation of one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress.
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It is hard to see what put Ms. Yang on the White House list other than her investigation of Mr. Lewis, which threatened to pull in well-connected lobbyists, military contractors and Republican contributors. Ms. Yang, by all accounts, had a strong record. Alberto Gonzales hailed her as “one of the most respected U.S. attorneys in the country.”

The new job that Ms. Yang landed raised more red flags. Press reports say she got a $1.5 million signing bonus to become a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a firm with strong Republican ties. She was hired to be co-leader of the Crisis Management Practice Group with Theodore Olson, who was President Bush’s solicitor general and his Supreme Court lawyer in Bush v. Gore. Gibson, Dunn was defending Mr. Lewis in Ms. Yang’s investigation.

Another young Halliburton worker named James Logsdon told me about the burn pits. Burn pits are large dumps near military stations where they would burn equipment, trucks, trash, etc. If they ordered the wrong item, they'd throw it in the burn pit. If a tire blew on a piece of equipment, they'd throw the whole thing into the burn pit. They burn pits had so much equipment, they even gave them a nickname - "Home Depot."

The trucker said he would get us some photos. And I naively asked, how big are they, the size of a backyard swimming pool? He laughed, and referred to one that he had seen that was 15 football fields large, and burned around the clock! It infuriated him to have to burn stuff rather then give it to the Iraqis or to the military. Yet Halliburton was being rewarded each time they billed the government for a new truck or new piece of equipment. With a cost- plus contract, the contractors receive a percentage of the money they spend. As Shane told me, "It's a legal way of stealing from the government or the taxpayers' money."

The first caller who was put on the air demanded an investigation of the lies that launched the war, and asked for accountability "all the way up." In response to Adelman's claims that history would hold people accountable, the caller said "I would love to have a job where, worst case scenario, my historical record is flawed."

5.10.2007 Administration Withheld E-Mails About Rove Murray Waas

Several of the e-mails that the Bush administration is withholding from Congress, as well as papers from the White House counsel's office describing other withheld documents, were made available to National Journal by a senior executive branch official, who said that the administration has inappropriately kept many of them from Congress.

This is the key graf of Murray's entire article. Because, if Berenson is correct--and Griffin was never appointed using the PATRIOT provison--then his 120 day interim period should have already expired, some time in April. It had appeared that Griffin was just riding the wave on the PATRIOT Act provision until Bush signs the revocation of that authority, at which point some other arrangement would presumably have to be made. But he's still there in Arkansas. Am I missing something? Under what terms is Tim Griffin still serving as US Attorney? Is there a US Attorney for Eastern Arkansas?

Vice President Dick Cheney’s surprise trip to Baghdad today was meant to deliver a tough message to the Iraqi government – put off your vacation plans and get back to work.

U.S. officials have been livid since discovering that Iraq’s fledgling parliament – hardly a hive of activity in the first place – was planning to take a two-month summer recess, postponing work on a bill spelling out how oil money would be shared among Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian groups or a law authorizing new regional elections.

5.10.2007 Marty Kaplan:

Ninety-second responses and 30-second rebuttals were made in heaven for sound bites, which are the mother's milk of political coverage. They're fabulous for gags and gaffes and gut-checks. They're great for figuring out who we want to have a beer with, whose face the sun shines on, whose acting is most authentic. But "debate" is no more the right word for these performances than "reality" is the right word for reality tv.

What did we learn about George W. Bush from the Republican primary debates before the 2000 election, or from the general election debates of 2000 and 2004, that was of any use? From all those occasions put together, did we get the kind of insight into his character that would have enabled us to predict how he would dismiss a CIA warning that Bid Laden was determined to strike in the US as a cover-your-ass annoyance interrupting his August idyll in Crawford? Did the way he answered debate questions help us predict his My Pet Goat paralysis? Here's the money shot from the October 2000 campaign; how much of Iraq could be predicted from it?

GOVERNOR GEORGE W. BUSH: I'm worried about over committing our military around the world. I want to be judicious in its use. You mentioned Haiti. I wouldn't have sent troops to Haiti. I didn't think it was a mission worthwhile. It was a nation building mission. And it was not very successful. It cost us a couple billions of dollars and I'm not sure democracy is any better off in Haiti than it was before.... I'm not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say this is the way it's got to be. We can help. And maybe it's just our difference in government, the way we view government. I mean I want to empower people. I want to help people help themselves, not have government tell people what to do. I just don't think it's the role of the United States to walk into a country and say, we do it this way, so should you.inety-second responses and 30-second rebuttals were made in heaven for sound bites, which are the mother's milk of political coverage. They're fabulous for gags and gaffes and gut-checks. They're great for figuring out who we want to have a beer with, whose face the sun shines on, whose acting is most authentic. But "debate" is no more the right word for these performances than "reality" is the right word for reality tv.

Graves acknowledged that he had twice during the past few years clashed with Justice's civil rights division over cases, including a federal lawsuit involving Missouri's voter rolls that Graves said a Washington Justice official signed off on after he refused to do so. That official, Bradley J. Schlozman, was appointed as interim U.S. attorney to succeed Graves, remaining for a year until the Senate this spring confirmed John Wood for the job. Wood was a counselor to the deputy attorney general and is a son of Bond's first cousin, although the senator's spokeswoman, Shana Marchio, said Bond did not recommend him for the job.

Schlozman had been a controversial figure in Justice's civil rights division for stances on voting rights. After he arrived in Kansas City, he came under fire from Democrats for pushing forward with an indictment of voter-registration activists in Missouri just weeks before last November's elections. Now a lawyer for the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, Schlozman was tentatively scheduled to testify next Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. But Justice and legislative aides said yesterday that Schlozman has requested more time to prepare his testimony.

5.8.2007 "Record shops: Used CDs? Ihre papieren, bitte!"

5.8.2007 "The importance of the Parker (D.C. gun ban) case" Know your enemy.

5.8.2007 "Condi Snoozed While Chevron Paid Off Saddam"

5.8.2007 Working Women Under Attack, Again By Jill Miller

The Department of Labor, which in the past has been an ally in protecting the rights of working women, recently cut the Women's Bureau's already meager budget. Congress intended to protect the Bureau and provided more than enough funding to do so, but the Department still choose to single out the Bureau for cuts. This action is unnecessary, unconscionable and unacceptable. It threatens the interests of the nearly 70 million women in the U.S. labor force and jeopardizes programs that play an integral role in promoting flexible work options, mentoring and other policies that have been shown to help women advance at work. Even more disturbing, this is not an isolated incident. It's a part of a larger attempt by the Bush Administration to gradually and quietly downsize the Women's Bureau until it can no longer address the challenges of women workers. Over the past seven years the Administration has scrubbed information about the Equal Pay Matters Initiative from its web site and later eliminated the Initiative all together. It attempted to close all 10 of the Bureau's regional offices and targeted more than half of the career positions in the Bureau's national office for outsourcing. Clearly, the Administration thinks that they can begin to ignore the concerns and needs of working women without us putting up a fight. They were wrong!

Yesterday on Meet the Press you told Tim Russert that there was no "texture" to the pre 9-11 threat reporting despite the "system blinking red" and despite your "hair (being) on fire" which resulted in your emergency meeting with Condoleeza Rice in mid July and the CIA's Presidential Daily Brief given to President George W. Bush on August 6, 2001 entitled, "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." Then, even more disingenuously, you added that "everything went silent" in August 2001.

How could you forget, former DCI Tenet, that on August 23, 2001, you were briefed about the Moussaoui case in a power point briefing titled, "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly." You were told among other things: that Moussaoui wanted to learn to fly a 747, paid for his training in cash, was interested to learn the doors do not open in flight, and wanted to fly a simulated flight from London to New York. You were also told that the FBI had arrested Moussaoui because of a visa overstay and that the CIA was working the case with the FBI. One of the documents given to you even had Bin Laden's picture on it! And the CIA held successive briefings about Moussaoui: August 27th, 2001, with the deputy director of operations; August 28th, 2001, with the executive director of the CIA; August 30, 2001 with the director of Central Intelligence; September 4th, with the executive director of the CIA; and September 10th, with the deputy director of operations (see Moussaoui defense exhibits 660, 670, 671,672,673, and 674). So how can you say "everything went silent" in August?!

Recently, Tomdispatch.com regular Michael Schwartz followed the oil slicks deep into the Gulf of Catastrophe in Iraq. Offering a sweeping view of the role oil, the prize of prizes in Iraq, has played in Bush administration considerations since 2001, he concludes on the Mother of All Benchmarks: "Like so many American initiatives in Iraq, the oil law, even if passed, might never be worth more than the paper it will be printed on. The likelihood that any future Iraqi government which takes on a nationalist mantel will consider such an agreement in any way binding is nil. One day in perhaps the not so distant future, that ‘law,' even if briefly the law of the land, is likely to find itself in the dustbin of history, along with Saddam's various oil deals. As a result, the Bush administration's ‘capture of new and existing oil and gas fields' is likely to end as a predictable fiasco."

The 1970 killings by National Guardsmen of four students during a peaceful anti-war demonstration at Kent State University have now been shown to be cold-blooded, premeditated official murder. But the definitive proof of this monumental historic reality is not, apparently, worthy of significant analysis or comment in today’s mainstream media.

After 37 years of official denial and cover-up, tape-recorded evidence, that has existed for decades and has been in the possession of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has finally been made public.
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But the media's apparent unconcern about confirmation of the official order to carry out these assassinations may bear a simple message: be prepared for them to happen again.

In a triumph for the pharmaceutical industry, the Senate on Monday killed a drive to allow consumers to buy prescription drugs from abroad at a significant savings over domestic prices.

See also Former top justice official praises fired U.S. Attorneys, says action was harmful By Rebecca Carr

And James B. Comey, the second in command under Gonzales, said it would irreparably harm the integrity of the Justice Department if two internal probes reveal that its former White House liaison took party loyalty into account before hiring federal prosecutors.

"I don't know how you'd get the genie back into that bottle," said Comey, speaking before the House Judiciary Committee's panel on commercial and administrative law. "If that was going on it strikes at the very core of what the Justice Department is."

In other words, given the heavy-handed way BushCo forced Cohen into the office and his association with Buchanan, you might worry that he'd drop the prosecution of Alaska's "Corrupt Caucus."

Particularly given the timing and the subject matter. After all, Cohen was brought in just as this investigation was becoming public. And there seems to be nothing BushCo likes more than a corrupt energy deal.

Thus far, however, such concerns are unfounded. This is a USA hand-picked by a Gonzales crony, prosecuting key Republican legislators. Perhaps, in spite of her penchant for stupid drug prosecutions, Buchanan can pick quality USAs.

Under Schlozman, the profile of the career attorneys hired by the section underwent a dramatic transformation.

Half of the 14 career lawyers hired under Schlozman were members of the conservative Federalist Society or the Republican National Lawyers Association, up from none among the eight career hires in the previous two years, according to a review of resumes. The average US News & World Report ranking of the law school attended by new career lawyers plunged from 15 to 65.

Read in conjunction with: 4.28.2007 Maureen slam-dunks Tenant

He says Condi panicked in October 2002 and made him call a Times reporter, Alison Mitchell, who covered the Congressional debate about invading Iraq. He told Alison to ignore the conclusions of his own agency, which had said the links between Saddam and terrorist groups were tenuous, and that Saddam would only take the extreme step of joining with Islamic fanatics if he thought the U.S. was about to attack him. His nose growing as long as his cigar, he said nothing in the C.I.A. report contradicted the president's case for war.

"In retrospect," Slam writes, "I shouldn't have talked to the New York Times reporter at Condi's request. By making public comments in the middle of a contentious political debate, I gave the impression that I was becoming a partisan player."

5.6.2007 Glenn Greenwald:

One might point out that Iraq is a somewhat complex country, with seemingly endless inter-sectarian and intra-sectarian tensions and centuries of conflicts, shifting allegiances and competing agendas. But all you need to know is "We Win. They Lose." Among the incessantly unclear matters in that Brave Doctrine are (a) what "win" means, (b) who the "they" are, and (c) what it means when "they lose," but let's not have such petulant and defeatist nuances detain us.

"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."

5.4.2007 emptywheel:

Kyle Sampson has a binder of emails with all his WH correspondence on the firings in one place. Hmm. Am I the only one who remembers Sampson saying he didn't have a "file" on these firings? Is a binder the same as a file?

More importantly, why was that file not turned over in the document dumps--or even mentioned in the list of documents not turned over? It sure seems like they were responsive to the requests for documents?

And one more question. Did Sampson resign because he knew he had set McNulty up to lie? Or did he get fired because he wanted to turn over all those documents implicating Rove and Miers?

The city cannot prevent the public from seeing documents describing intelligence that police gathered to help them create policies for arrests at the 2004 Republican National Convention, a judge said Friday.

Reid's spokesman, Jim Manley, said that "if the president is serious about finding common ground on this divisive issue, he should support Sen. Reid's efforts to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies in this country." Reid and others are sponsoring legislation that would improve family planning services, require insurance companies to pay for birth control and provide effective sex education for young people.

When George W. Bush was running for president in 2000 as a new kind of Republican ­ the caring kind ­ he had a ready answer for those skeptical of his moderate views on immigration. “Family values do not stop at the Rio Grande,” he said, again and again. He was standing up for immigrants who come here seeking better lives for their children, and he repeated the message so often that it stuck.

Now, like so much else in Mr. Bush’s tattered slogan file, it’s in danger of coming unstuck. Negotiators struggling to draft an immigration bill in Washington are being pressured by the White House and Republican leaders to gut the provisions of the law that promote the unity of immigrant families in favor of strictly employment-based programs.

I won't support a supplemental spending bill that doesn't have binding language to redeploy U.S. troops from Iraq. There's a lot of talk right now about Democrats getting the President to sign a bill that only has benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet. But we're long past the point when just setting benchmarks was enough. Even if funding for the Iraqi government is conditioned on it meeting those benchmarks, that misses the main point -- which is that, whether or not the Iraqis meet their benchmarks, we need to get out of Iraq so that we can focus on the national security threats we face around the world. And if those benchmarks aren't binding, then they are nothing more than suggestions. The American people aren't asking us to offer suggestions to the Iraqis -- they are asking us to bring our troops out of Iraq.