Making Joe Lieberman Cry

Jane Hamsher reports that the Lieberman-Graham detainee photo suppression amendment has been dropped from the war funding supplemental, owing to pressure from liberal Democrats, who refused to vote for a bill that would undermine the Freedom of Information Act and increase executive power. They only got into that position because conservatives in the House refused to vote for a war supplemental that included increased funding for the IMF. But progressives took full advantage of the opportunity and struck the first blow against agglomerated executive power that I can remember in a long, long time.

The underlying bill doesn't much send a thrill up my leg either. But progressive Democrats saw a leverage point, picked it, and attacked until the forces supporting increased executive power had to give up. And that's a good thing. Hopefully they'll keep using this muscle.

...Here's how Huckleberry and Holy Joe will respond to this loss - with the equivalent of a temper tantrum:

"We strongly believe that the first responsibilities of government are the nation's security and the protection of those brave Americans who go into harm's way to defend it.

"The President has said that the release of the photos of detainees in US custody would 'put our troops and civilians serving our nation abroad in greater danger.' We agree with the Commander in Chief.

"We will employ all the legislative means available to us including opposing the supplemental war spending bill and attaching this amendment, which was unanimously adopted by the Senate, to every piece of legislation the Senate considers, to be sure the President has the authority he needs not to release these photos and any others that would jeopardize the safety and security of our troops.

"The release of the photos will serve as propaganda and recruiting tool for terrorists who seek to attack American citizens at home and abroad. We should strive to have as open a government as possible, but the behavior depicted in the photos has been prohibited and is being investigated. The photos do not depict anything that is not already known. Transparency, and in this case needless transparency, should not be paid for with the lives of American citizens, let alone the lives of our men and women in uniform fighting on our behalf in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

"Let it clearly be understood that without this legislation the photos in question are likely to be released. Such a release would be tantamount to a death sentence to some who are serving our nation in the most dangerous and difficult spots like Iraq and Afghanistan. It is this certain knowledge of these consequences of having the photos released that will cause us to vote against the supplemental and continue our push to turn our important amendment into law."

I didn't know you could actually hear crying in press release form.

I wouldn't slam Graham and Lieberman by the way. It certainly seems to me that they're running interference for the President. Direct the inquiries to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The Fight Over Executive Power

House leaders and the President are extremely worried that they will not get their supplemental war funding bill passed through Congress, and are whipping support among Democratic holdouts. There are a lot of moving parts and a lot of strange bedfellows.

First, a non-trivial part of the Progressive Caucus opposes any additional funding for Afghanistan, particularly given the vague, open-ended strategy put forward by the Administration. The current dynamic, where the US makes pretenses toward a counter-insurgency strategy and then steps up bombing campaigns to terrorize and inflame the local populations is anathema to a segment of the caucus.

Then, included in the bill are a tranche of money ($5 billion) for the IMF to use to lend to the developing world, an agreement that the President made at the latest G-20 summit. Almost all Republicans (and a few Democrats) oppose it and will oppose the entire supplemental as a result - because they support the troops.

Lastly and most important, attached to this bill is a truly heinous amendment written by Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham - but that's redundant - which would essentially rewrite the Freedom of Information Act and protect past abuses by keeping them secret.

It was one thing when President Obama reversed himself last month by announcing that he would appeal the Second Circuit's ruling that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) compelled disclosure of various photographs of detainee abuse sought by the ACLU. Agree or disagree with Obama's decision, at least the basic legal framework of transparency was being respected, since Obama's actions amounted to nothing more than a request that the Supreme Court review whether the mandates of FOIA actually required disclosure in this case. But now -- obviously anticipating that the Government is likely to lose in court again (.pdf) -- Obama wants Congress to change FOIA by retroactively narrowing its disclosure requirements, prevent a legal ruling by the courts, and vest himself with brand new secrecy powers under the law which, just as a factual matter, not even George Bush sought for himself.

The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 -- that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States." As long as the Defense Secretary certifies -- with no review possible -- that disclosure would "endanger" American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure. The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely. The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week.

Plenty of House Democrats are angered by the inclusion of this highly pernicious amendment. While reports allege that Nouri al-Maliki was the driving force behind preventing the release of the photos, and that he claimed "Baghdad will burn" if they're released - quite at odds with the assertion by the President that the photos show "nothing sensational." But this is clearly a precedent too far, providing the President the sole discretion to suppress information above and beyond federal statutes. Barney Frank and another slice of House progressives will not support this amendment. And if they hold firm against the President, they can succeed.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. -- who initially opposed the package and is now trying to help Democratic leaders raise support for it -- said he recently told Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that liberal Democrats would not likely support the package if it includes the Lieberman amendment.

"I made it clear to the administration that I believe that we can get liberals like myself who are against the war [to] vote for it because the IMF is so important, but not if the [Freedom of Information Act] exception is in it," Frank said.

Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., previously supported the supplemental but said she would not vote for the bill if it includes the amendment.

"There is no reason in the world for us to vote to suspend" FOIA, Slaughter said.

Nick Bauman has more, and views this fight as a first step for Congress to end the imperial presidency and the march toward official secrecy.

The photo suppression bill is an abomination that is reminiscent of the worst Bush-era excesses. It gives the executive branch the power to withhold an entire category of information from public scrutiny without any review. This law is Example A of the theory of the Presidency that says citizens should just trust the benevolent executive to do the right thing. Even in you oppose releasing some of the photos, I don't see why you would want to give the White House the power to unilaterally decide what's best. It says a lot about the Congress that members are willing to give Obama this kind of power. It says a lot about Obama that he supports this bill. Thank God for Barney Frank.

Jane Hamsher has an action item. To be clear, there's an easy way out of this - the President can ask the conference committee to strip the photo-suppression amendment, at which point passage would be fairly secure on a party-line vote.

First Up: Ethics, Transparency

I guess it makes sense that these orders come early, as soon as his staff shows up for work on the first business day, and ethics reform has been an Obama strong point since he came to Washington. So this was the big news made today, which is fine, although it's entirely internally directed.

With the national celebration over and the hard work beginning, President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed executive orders and announced new ethics limiting lobbyists' influence in his administration.

He suggested he'd release more public information than former President George W. Bush under the Freedom of Information Act. He also imposed a pay freeze on senior staff earning more than $100,000 a year, saying that given the economic crisis, "It's what's required of you at this moment." Obama made those announcements at a swearing-in ceremony for White House staff at the Old Executive Office Building.

"Public service is a privilege," he said in explaining the thinking behind the new ethics rules, on which he said he was briefed last week before his swearing in.

"It's not about advantaging yourself. It's not about advancing your friends or your corporate clients. It's not about advancing an ideological agenda or the special interests of any organization. Public service is simply and absolutely about advancing the interests of Americans."

The memorandum outlining in particular the new transparency policy is here. Openness in government is an important principle, and I appreciate this amount of care that has gone into it. Freezing senior staff money is not going to save the government a lot, and it may discourage high-priced lawyers from public service, but I suppose there's a symbolic benefit. I like the prohibition of executive branch personnel from accepting gifts from lobbyists, and the closing of the revolving door between K Street and the White House. Pam from Pandagon has the full report.

This won't save lives, but if it reduces the power and influence of special interests and brings the office of the Presidency out into the open a little more (it could hardly be more secret than the Cheney Administration) it's a positive.

This Week In Torture

Just because there are other things happening in the world today, I wanted to highlight some recent developments in the moral outrage that is this Administration's practice of torture.

Today an appeals court ordered the Defense Department to release all known photos depicting detainee abuse by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Seymour Hersh and others have noted for years that the images from Abu Ghraib are just a sampling of the evidence that the military has in their possession, and now the government must release them. Kudos to the ACLU for having the persistence to uncover what has been done in America's name; this ruling is significant for the future of Freedom of Information Act requests in general as well as revealing the truth about torture in particular.

A few days back, the American Psychological Association prohibited its members from participating in any detention facility that requires them to operate in violation of international law. This is a major ruling from the APA, and it came from a vote of its membership. They had been at the forefront of

The APA was the focus of attention when it was revealed during military commission hearings in Guantanamo this summer that military psychologists belonging to Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs), known as "Biscuit teams," took part in crafting the techniques used to torture and mistreat prisoners there.

The ACLU’s Jennifer Turner, who observed Mohammed Jawad’s hearing, where much of this information about the role of military psychologists was revealed, wrote in August:

Since 2002 BSCT psychologists have evaluated prisoners’ fears and psychological weaknesses to craft individualized blueprints for torture and other mistreatment, which they passed on to the interrogators. For instance, a Guantánamo psychiatrist advised interrogators to exploit one detainee’s severe phobia of the dark by deliberately keeping him almost totally in the dark.

Of course, those psychiatrists who have resigned from the APA will continue to staff the BSCT teams at Guantanamo and elsewhere. And I'm sure the military is paying handsomely for them.

This is of course supposed to be John McCain's major break with George Bush. The old warrior, his body broken from torture at the hands of the Viet Cong, stood up and said no to his party and extracted major concessions from the President. Except it's all bullshit.

McCain served four years in the House and has been in the Senate almost 22 so far. But he, too, has authored fewer than a half-dozen major laws. Trying to fix immigration counts for something, but nothing passed. So while McCain deserves credit for the landmark 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill, the only other major law on which his office says his "name appears" (Palin's standard) is the "McCain Amendment" prohibiting torture in the armed forces. But that has little meaning because of a bill this year, supported by McCain, that allows torture by the CIA. Under longstanding government practice, military intelligence officers can be temporarily designated as CIA officers ("sheep-dipped" is the bureaucratic lingo) when they want to go off the Army field manual. In other words, the government can still torture anyone, any time. McCain caved on an issue he insists is a matter of principle.

It's the ultimate act of dishonor for McCain to knowingly allow Americans to do unto others what was done unto him.

My Moment of Grudging Acknowledgment of the Democratic Majority

We wouldn't see the phasing out of the incandescent light bulb under a Republican Congress.

We wouldn't see a lot of interest in reversing the cruel injustice whereby the Pentagon was asking for bonuses back from wounded soldiers.

We wouldn't see strong oversight of incidents that shock the conscience, like what seems to be a culture of rape in Iraq inside KBR/Halliburton.

And we wouldn't see the overwhelming rejection of state secrecy in a Congressional bill to revamp and reform the Freedom of Information Act.

They've done a tactically poor job, they haven't held the Republicans accountable for their obstructionism, and their continued funding of the disaster in Iraq is a moral crime. But there is at least SOME difference between the parties.