You've Never Talked Nicely About The Moon, Why Do You Hate Nature

Joke Line went way over the edge yesterday, using language that would make Joe McCarthy proud to savage Glenn Greenwald, with additional slurs thrown in for good measure.

Twice in the past month, my private communications have been splashed about the internet. That such a thing would happen is unfortunate, and dishonorable, but sadly inevitable, I suppose. I ignored the first case, in which a rather pathetic woman acolyte of Greenwald's published a hyperbolic account of a conversation I had with her at a beach picnic on Cape Cod.

Stop it right there. That "pathetic woman acolyte" is aimai, I.F. Stone's grand-daughter, who had a conversation with Klein recently and wrote about it. Classy of Joke Line, who got famous by writing up other people's private conversations under an anonymous byline, to call the progeny of an actual journalist lineage a "pathetic acolyte". You know that author you like to read? Why are you such an acolyte? Pathetic! Aimai takes care of that one easily.

Joke then moves on to Greenwald. This is how he proves that the Salon writer "cares not a whit for America's national security."

For the past several years, Greenwald has conducted a persistent, malicious campaign to distort who I am and where I stand. He is a mean-spirited, graceless bully. During that time, I have never seen him write a positive sentence about the US military, which has transformed itself dramatically for the better since Rumsfeld's departure (indeed, he ridiculed me when I reported that the situation in Anbar Province was turning around in 2007). I have never seen him acknowledge that the work of the clandestine service—performed disgracefully by the CIA during the early Bush years—is an absolute necessity in a world where terrorists have the capability to attack us at any time, in almost any place. Nor have I seen [him] acknowledge that such a threat exists, nor make a single positive suggestion about how to confront that threat in ways that might conform to his views. Therefore, I have seen no evidence that he cares one whit about the national security of the United States. It is not hyperbole, it is a fact.

There's a backstory to this. Greenwald made Joke Line into a fool during the FISA debate, when he admitted that he had no idea what he was talking about but still bothered to pontificate about FISA as if an expert, claiming that Democrats wanted to give terrorists "the same rights as Americans". Joke was exposed as an idiot and a knave, and he's mad. He's carried this grudge for two years because Greenwald de-pantsed him in front of the whole Village.

So, he has decided to make the "I've never seen Glenn Greenwald thank his mailman - how dare he claim to support the postal service and other government programs!" argument. Putting aside the irrelevant fact that Greenwald has written favorably of the military, this is really about as low as a so-called "liberal" columnist can get, demanding the journalistic version of a national loyalty oath before being let into the club. This idea that Americans cannot criticize certain hallowed elements of our national security apparatus without first gravely intoning the deep respect and admiration we all have for them is about the silliest and also the most dangerous sentiment I've seen expressed in a long time. Joke Line has been called "the liberal media" for so long he longer has to think about reflxively slobbering all over the institutions of authority, like a Pavlovian dog he does it by nature. And thus it becomes natural to slam opponents in the terms of whether or not they sufficiently meet the same standard of creepy hero worship. Jim Henley takes this where it appears to be going.

You may think that we already live in a country where everything is “Veterans Memorial” This or “American Legion” that, but we have not begun to express adequate appreciation for our armed forces, clandestine services and military contractors. I think we should start by renaming Joe Klein as Armed Forces Triple Canopy Memorial Oh Dark Thirty Klein. Glenn Greenwald will be Flag Day COIN Enhanced Interrogation Greenwald. It is a little-known fact that IOZ’s real name is Ronald Forward Operating Base Reagan Military Roethlisberger, so that’s one. This blog’s name shall immediately and henceforth be “Pentagon Yay!”

To Klein this is simply an expression of rage against someone who got the better of him two years ago. He fell in the punchbowl and now he wants to beat up the guy who laughed the loudest. Moreover, Klein wants to shut the velvet rope of the private DC club he and his pals have enjoyed for so long, so he figures he'll marginalize Glenn Greenwald by painting him as an America-hating extremist (the true colors really come out in times like these) so he can nibble on cocktail weenies in peace.

Greenwald's response is restrained, given the circumstances.

Up With Chuck

Earlier this week, Chuck Todd made a tiresome argument about how investigations into lawbreaking in the Bush Administration would be politicized and therefore shouldn't be done because it would distract the nation from the important business of whittling health care down to nothing. Todd decided to respond to Glenn Greenwald's criticism of his opinions on this matter, and the result was a fairly remarkable conversation that offers a window into the mind of the typical Villager, unable to divorce anything from political day-to-day combat, unable to view anything through something other than a partisan lens, unable to determine right from wrong. The one question that Todd fails to answer throughout the interview is why believers in the rule of law are supposed to care about how investigations and/or prosecutions of members of the Bush Administration make certain people inside the Beltway feel. Here's just a sample, but the whole thing goes like this, so give it a read:

GG: Let me ask you this question: The United States is a party to a treaty - I don't know if you ever read it or not, it's called the Convention Against Torture - and one of the things it does is it obligates all signatories to the treaty to prosecute any acts of torture. And it was signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988, and when he transmitted that treaty to the Senate, explaining what that treaty does, he wrote, quote, "Each state party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory, or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."

Do you think the U.S. should be bound, is bound by that treaty? And, I want to ask you: with regard to the question of whether or not we follow that treaty, why do you describe that as nothing more than, quote "cable catnip".

CT: Alright. The "cable catnip" comment was this. This issue, whenever you see the words Cheney and intelligence pop up, and when I use the phrase 'cable catnip', it is when something becomes, whether the two polarized parts of our political society, are very entrenched in their views on this, and believe the other side is completely irrational on it. And so, that's, whenever you have an issue like that, that's what I describe as 'cable catnip'. Because it becomes something that is easy to put on television, because you can find a left versus right, which is something that cable embraces to a fault, and I'm in this business but I'm, I work my butt off trying to stay out of the left versus right fights and try to stay analytical and stay on the reporting end of things.

And so, that's when I describe an issue as cable catnip. I am not sitting here and saying - and I respect the passion on this, and I don't want to somehow sit here saying that on the right I've been accused of somehow just assuming that our national security is nothing more than cable catnip, or that torture of detainees is somehow relegated to cable catnip. That is not what I'm describing when I say cable catnip, but I want to put that aside.

To go back to your question, of course, any treaty we sign, the United States government is obligated to stand by it. Now, the controversy has been, and what we're trying to figure out - and what I think where the Justice Department is trying to figure out, and where this whole debate has been about - is whether they found a legal way to somehow abide by this treaty or not.

GG: And isn't that--

CT: ...abiding by the treaty--

GG: And isn't the best thing to do to immunize that question from political considerations is to say to a prosecutor, the way that we do with every other accusation of crime: take a look at the pure legal issues here, ask: "were crimes committed; is this the kind of case that indictments are appropriate for, where people should be put on trial," and then just have this be treated like every other accusation of crime, which is the prosecutor taking a look?

CT: I agree, in a perfect world - Glenn, in a perfect world, yes. And if you could also guarantee me, that this wouldn't become a show trial, and wouldn't be put, and created so that we had nightly debates about it, that is the ideal way to handle this.

GG: Why not? What's wrong with nightly debate about whether our government committed crimes?

CT: Because then it becomes, then you do politicize the issue, to the point of where you won't - the fact is, public opinion was on the opposite side of the argument as you. That doesn't mean public opinion should...

Mr. Todd "respects the passion" but cannot divorce the plain fact of law, in the Convention Against Torture, from the media back and forth. Then there's the idea that the Bush Administration "found a legal way" to somehow abide by the treaty. In other words, as long as they find a functionary - every Administration has their own John Yoo - to bless their actions, they can break the law in virtually any way they want. A permission slip from the Office of Legal Counsel, no matter how flawed the reasoning, can enable violations of the spirit, color and the plain fact of the law.

Todd talks about a perfect world as if those who demand accountability and justice are just wild-eyed idealists who don't understand the hard-bitten truth of how the world works. On the contrary, we know how it works, and we find it to be a problem. We understand that the Administration would be reluctant to wade into the actions of their predecessor. We get that the media will try to block holding top officials accountable by bemoaning the partisanship that they put on display every night. We get that the right would have a screaming hissy fit against whoever dared to investigate or prosecute one of their own. We understand that the entire dynamic in Washington is wired to prevent holding any member of any Administration to the same standard as someone in Poughkeepsie who committed a crime.

We just have a problem with it.

If Todd has his way, we will hear more stories - like the tale of a CIA Supervisor bragging about using fire ants on a detainee - of perfidy, that scar us around the world, and we will just move along.

Digby has more thoughts

Trying Hard Not To Understand

This has been amply discussed, but the ignorance is so strong that I'm compelled to add my voice. The FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) made a public ruling yesterday on a case involving a challenge to the 2007 Protect America Act. In it, they ruled that the 2007 law, which authorized certain kinds of surveillance, did not violate the Fourth Amendment. They are not the final word on the matter, and their ruling is subject to Supreme Court review. But they ruled that the kinds of warrantless surveillance explicitly authorized in the PAA was Constitutional.

This, of course, has NOTHING to do with Bush's unconstitutional and illegal warrantless wiretapping plan, which he undertook without the consent of Congress shortly after September 11, 2001. There has been no ruling whatsoever on the legality of going forward with that program despite it being contrary to federal statute. Nevertheless, this has not stopped the denizens of the insaneosphere to go all two snaps up and a circle and claim that Bush has been "vindicated". What's depressing is that traditional media figures like The New York Times' Eric Linchtblau - who has been following this issue and should know better - are parroting the same nonsense. Glenn Greenwald documents the atrocities:

Is it really that hard -- especially for people who pretend to be experts in this controversy -- to tell the difference between (a) whether the President had the authority to eavesdrop on Americans in violation of a Congressional statute and (b) whether the Congress is constitutionally permitted to enact a statute authorizing warrantless eavesdropping? Apparently it is hard, because hordes of right-wing advocates, including those who claim to be "legal experts," are falsely claiming today that the FISA court did (a) (namely: found that the President had the power to order warrantless eavesdropping in violation of a statute), rather than what the court actually did: (b) (found that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit Congress from legalizing warrantless eavesdropping).

Since Lichtblau's article was placed online, a copy of the actual decision became available (here - .pdf). The only question it addresses -- as I explained earlier today -- (here) is whether the Protect America Act is constitutional under the Fourth Amendment (see also Anonymous Liberal's update here). That's the only issue it addresses. It has nothing to do with the core of the NSA scandal: whether George Bush acted properly by ordering eavesdropping in violation of the law.

But if you are a reader of right-wing Bush followers, you would have been fed today a completely alternative reality in which the FISA Court "vindicated" Bush's so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program."

Russ Feingold makes essentially the same comment here:

“The recently declassified decision by the FISA Court of Review in no way validates or bolsters the president’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program. The decision, which only addressed surveillance authorized by the Protect America Act (PAA) enacted in August 2007, did not support the President’s claim of constitutional authority to violate the law. Nor did the decision uphold the constitutionality of the PAA in all cases, but rather it upheld only the Act’s application in this particular case. Finally, it is my view that the Court’s analysis would have been fundamentally altered if the company that brought the case had been aware of, and thus able to raise, problems related to the government’s implementation of the law, about which I have repeatedly raised concerns in classified settings.”

It's expected for the mouth-breathers on the right to engage in triumphalism over this. But for the media to be so completely clueless is just frustrating, though expected in many ways as well. Of course, Vaughn Walker is still going to make a ruling in the Al Haramain case, so watch them write some "just when you thought it was legal..." narratives to cover their own bad reporting.

Of Course You Know, This Means War Crimes

I read with interest Digby's post about potential Congressional inquiries into Bush Administration abuses, as well as Bush's own efforts to pre-emptively pardon his whole team and use executive privilege even after leaving the White House. I agree that this is an unlikely course of action for a President-elect already sounding notes of bipartisanship and unity, as well as a Congress which hasn't mustered the courage to challenge Bush on much of anything during his reign. Obama's as much as said this:

In addition, Mr. Obama has expressed worries about too many investigations. In April, he told The Philadelphia Daily News that people needed to distinguish “between really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity.”

“If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” Mr. Obama said, but added, “I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”

You'd have to basically play dumb not to assert that crimes have been committed. Based on what we already know, before launching the first investigation, we have a clear sense of what to call the abuses that have taken place. They are war crimes.

There are bound to be casualties when any nation veers from its domestic and international obligations to uphold human rights and international humanitarian law. Those casualties are etched on the minds and bodies of many of the 62 former detainees interviewed for this report, many of whom suffered infinite variations on physical and mental abuse, including intimidation, stress positions, enforced nudity, sexual humiliation, and interference with religious practices. Indeed, I was struck by
the similarity between the abuse they suffered and the abuse we found inflicted upon Bosnian Muslim prisoners in Serbian camps when I sat as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, a U.N. court fully supported by the United States. The officials and guards in charge of those prison camps and the civilian leaders who sanctioned their establishment were prosecuted—often by former U.S. government and military lawyers serving with the tribunal— for war crimes, crimes against humanity and, in extreme cases, genocide.

Patricia M. Wald, the writer of that foreward, served on the DC Court of Appeals and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. She was also appointed by the Bush Administration to serve on the President’s Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S. Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. This is not a DFH. This is a jurist who has examined the evidence.

So when people like Robert Litt seek to excuse these actions by the executive, it's very clear what they are excusing - war crimes.

Obama will have to do a careful balancing act. At a conference in Washington this week, former department criminal division chief Robert S. Litt asked that the new administration avoid fighting old battles that could be perceived as vindictive, such as seeking to prosecute government officials involved in decisions about interrogation and the gathering of domestic intelligence. Human rights groups have called for such investigations, as has House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.).

"It would not be beneficial to spend a lot of time calling people up to Congress or in front of grand juries," Litt said. "It would really spend a lot of the bipartisan capital Obama managed to build up."

If you're arguing that Bush Administration officials should be shielded and protected from prosecution in the name of comity and bipartisanship, you are saying that war crimes aren't actionable if the President or his staff commits them. Which is fine if you're Richard Nixon. But that's not the model people had in mind on Election Day, I gather.

Despite the persistent belief that partisanship is corroding the body politic, actually it's quite the opposite. It's "bipartisanship" - or at least the phony rhetoric of it, which is always practiced against progressive change and for the status quo - that has destroyed the rule of law in this country. As Glenn Greenwald notes:

This brazen defense of lawlessness articulated by Litt is now as close to a unanimous, bipartisan consensus across the political establishment as it gets. This is what has been advocated by everyone from David Broder to top Obama adviser Cass Sunstein. There are few things more difficult than finding someone of prominence in the establishment that disagrees with this view. Our political class has decided that high political officials -- particularly the President and those closest to him -- are literally exempt from the rule of law.

Nobody believes that "policy differences" should be criminalized. That's a strawman -- an obfuscating term -- erected by those who are defending presidential lawbreaking license without having the intellectual honesty to admit they're doing that. This is about having laws in place that clearly and explicitly say that "X shall be a felony," only to then watch as the President does X, and thereafter have our political establishment announce that it's more important to avoid partisan anger than it is to hold high political officials accountable under the rule of law.

Here, X = "eavesdropping on Americans with no warrants," and "torturing detainees," and "destroying evidence relating to investigations," and "interfering in criminal prosecutions for political purposes." Those are crimes -- felonies -- in every sense of the word, not policy differences. And they are all actions in which Bush officials have clearly engaged [...]

As political scientists have documented, one hallmark of tin-pot tyrannies is the belief that political leaders should be liberated from the constraints of law as long as that helps to achieve good results. That's the defining mentality of those who crave benevolent tyrants -- our Leaders have so many Good and Important Things to do for us that they can't be distracted and weighed down by abstract luxuries like upholding the rule of law. That's now clearly the prevailing consensus of our political establishment.

Again, I don't expect much movement against Bush Administration abuses. The moles inside the Justice Department would probably obfuscate and leak and embarrass if anything was attempted, and by the way key Democrats are implicated in the abuses through their complicit silence. In fact, this Robert Litt character himself is defending intelligence officials in ongoing lawsuits and may seek to benefit from a lack of prosecution against his own clients. But it would be nice if anyone owned up to the truth - that "moving on" and "healing the divisions" of the previous eight years is tantamount to a get out of jail free card for war crimes.

Glennzilla 1, KO 0

Digby notes this blog-war between Keith Olbermann and Glenn Greenwald over Obama and FISA. It's pretty instructive. Olbermann basically hangs his hat on one aside comment from John Dean because he's really really smart, and then constructs this entire behind-the-scenes universe where Obama isn't objecting to the FISA bill because it's sloppily written and he'll still be able to prosecute the telecoms for criminal violations, just not civil ones, and he's doing the right thing by hiding this from everybody in the hope that "Republicans don't see the loophole."

You know, the loophole that Olbermann's been touting on his show nightly for a week.

Greenwald kind of eviscerates him on the substantive facts (there is deliberate immunization on only the civil liability, and Bush could pardon anyone for criminal but not civil charges, and furthermore just making up a story about Obama that you want to be right isn't anything but a justification), and John Dean himself basically comes down on the side of Greenwald. But I would add the fact that Keith Olbermann is a newsman. A reporter. He doesn't actually have to guess what Obama's thinking about this - he could use the full weight of the resources granted to him by NBC News and ASK him. Or ask someone connected to the campaign. There's no need for him to spin a yarn about this absent the facts.

Further, there are plenty of smart people out there who can pinpoint why this FISA bill is crap outside of the immunity provisions - Julian Sanchez is one of the better ones. Dean HIMSELF said on Olbermann's show that it was a win for the telecoms.

DEAN: Well, I think, you've got to give one for the terrorists on our Fourth Amendment. They really did some damage today in this so-called compromise, contrary to what the speaker said that really does hurt the Constitution. So, it's very troubling and it's not a good day for civil liberties, particularly.

To hang your hat on one comment about one portion of this bill and then rationalize Obama's Perfect Secret Plan reminds me of how neocons would claim that Bush struck bin Laden with a Patriot missile, but he can't tell anybody because he wouldn't want to make him a martyr, and this was all reported in the Guardian but they changed the story on the website, yadda yadda yadda.

Sorry Keith, but you need to take the blinders off. If you wanted to argue, like this former attorney, that the Patriot Act is the real problem and if we're depending on FISA to save the Fourth Amendment that we've already lost it, fine. That's a colorable argument. But the fantasy of Valiant Obama finding all the bad guys and stopping them with his Super-Heat Vision is, you know, just that. A fantasy. And the sooner you recognize it the better.

The Truth On Bush Immunity Setting In

The Washington Post channels me by figuring out that telecom immunity is really Bush immunity.

Nearly 40 lawsuits, consolidated into five groups, are pending before a San Francisco judge. The various plaintiffs, a mix of nonprofit civil liberties advocates and private attorneys, are seeking to prove that the Bush administration engaged in illegal massive surveillance of Americans' e-mails and phone calls after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and to show that major phone companies illegally aided the surveillance, including the disclosure of customers' call records.

If the cases are allowed to proceed, plaintiffs' attorneys say, the courts could review, in secret if necessary, any government authorizations for the surveillance. The process might also force the disclosure of government memos, contracts and other documents to a judge, outlining the legal reasoning behind the warrantless wiretapping program.

Perhaps most important, disclosures in the lawsuits could clarify the scope of the government's surveillance and establish whether, as the plaintiffs allege, it involved the massive interception of purely domestic communications with the help of the nation's largest providers: AT&T, Cingular Wireless, BellSouth, Sprint and MCI/Verizon. (Verizon Communications bought MCI in 2006.)

"I think the administration would be very loath for folks to realize that ordinary people were being surveilled," said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the lead lawsuit, against AT&T.

It's beyond clear that the entire brouhaha over FISA comes down to this: Bush wants to keep his lawbreaking secret, and shutting down the ability for courts to get to the bottom of it, sanctioned by the Congress, would do so. They don't want to save the telecoms from financial ruin, they want to stop discovery. In fact, it's very likely that the telecoms have already been indemnified. That's why their main trade group opposes blanket amnesty.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) strongly opposes S. 2248, the "FISA Amendments Act of 2007," as passed by the Senate on February 12, 2008. CCIA believes that this bill should not provide retroactive immunity to corporations that may have participated in violations of federal law. CCIA represents an industry that is called upon for cooperation and assistance in law enforcement. To act with speed in times of crisis, our industry needs clear rules, not vague promises that the U.S. Government can be relied upon to paper over Constitutional transgressions after the fact.

CCIA dismisses with contempt the manufactured hysteria that industry will not aid the United States Government when the law is clear. As a representative of industry, I find that suggestion insulting. To imply that our industry would refuse assistance under established law is an affront to the civic integrity of businesses that have consistently cooperated unquestioningly with legal requests for information. This also conflates the separate questions of blanket retroactive immunity for violations of law, and prospective immunity, the latter of which we strongly support.

This is about government cleaning up its own mess and sweeping it away. And the Democrats are eager to aid in that process, eliminating the possibility that Americans find out how much of their communications were gathered for surveillance, who requested the information, and who authorized the program. Glenn Greenwald gets this right:

The whole drama they started when they refused to pass the Senate bill by the deadline was never about anything substantive. They were just throwing a little petulant tantrum because they felt they were being treated unfairly again because they were given only a few days to comply with the President's orders, when they wanted a couple of weeks to comply.

And their irritation wasn't even directed at the President as much as it was at the Senate for being so unfair in waiting until the deadline to pass a FISA bill, thus giving the House only a small amount of time to capitulate in full (on CNN, Chairman Reyes refrained almost completely from criticizing the White House, instead reserving his criticism for the Senate over this procedural insult). The only "principle" the bulk of Congress believes in is the preservation of their own ceremonial customs. That's all this drama was ever about [...]

But what is somewhat baffling in all of this is just how politically stupid and self-destructive their behavior is. If the plan all along was to give Bush everything he wanted, as it obviously was, why not just do it at the beginning? Instead, they picked a very dramatic fight that received substantial media attention. They exposed their freshmen and other swing-district members to attack ads. They caused their base and their allies to spend substantial energy and resources defending them from these attacks.

And now, after picking this fight and letting it rage for weeks, they are going to do what they always do -- just meekly give in to the President, yet again generating a tidal wave of headlines trumpeting how they bowed, surrendered, caved in, and lost to the President. They're going to cast the appearance that they engaged this battle and once again got crushed, that they ran away in fear because of the fear-mongering ads that were run and the attacks from the President. They further demoralize their own base and increase the contempt in which their base justifiably holds them (if that's possible). It's almost as though they purposely picked the path that imposed on themselves all of the political costs with no benefits.

Because at the end of the day, they have a powerful interest in covering their own original sin: failing to speak up about rampant lawbreaking by the executive branch in the first place. Their first instinct in the face of this lawbreaking is to wonder how badly they will be blamed for it. And so they'd rather bury it so that they can feign outrage. Of course, the problem is exactly as Greenwald describes; the Democrats will ALWAYS be derided by Republicans for failing to protect America no matter what they do or what cover they provide. Why take such a stand for just a couple weeks if the eventual goal was going to be to immunize the President all along?

Talking From Ignorance

Greenwald gave a delicious takedown yesterday of these lunatics on the right that think that writing on the Internet gives them their own law degree, and that the can define "judicial activism" as "judges that rule in ways I don't like." I think it's a good cautionary tale that we should all live by; we need to assess the facts instead of assuming we have perfect knowledge of every situation that arises. I try to always consult the most expert sites when certain things come up (Greenwald on judicial issues, Juan Cole and Marc Lynch on the Middle East, etc).

Of course, this didn't stop Treason-In-Defense-Of-Slavery Yankee from stamping his feet and demanding that he knows all sorts of lawyerin' and judiciarin'. It's pretty amusing.

If a little less ignorance is the result of this battle, that'd be a good thing.

The Ron Paul Blind Spot

Glenn Greenwald was initially a conservative. He fully admitted that in his first book. Now his views are generally associated with the left, but his takes on civil liberties and a generally non-interventionist foreign policy have a place in the Libertarian Party as well. Given that I fully understand his appreciation of Ron Paul, who as I've said is attracting so much attention because he is the only one out there offering a real critique of US foreign policy, not just as it relates to Iraq but in totality (Edwards and Obama have actually done this to an extent as well, but they're not highlighting it in the same way).

But his long screeds against anyone who dares to bring up the more unseemly parts of Paul's platform is kind of bizarre. You don't just get to pick pieces of somebody's policies when you elect somebody, and Paul comes with the paleoconservative foreign policy views AND the destruction of Medicare, the Education Department, Social Security, and practically every other social program AND the frankly weird belief in the building of a NAFTA Superhighway AND the desire to nullify birthright citizenship AND the strong anti-abortion record (which kind of upsets the whole "individual freedom" thing) AND the free coinage and abolition of the Federal Reserve AND the openly racist statements that appeal to white supremacists AND the Defense of Marriage Act. It's a whole ball of wax. And while I think nobody discounts the importance of Paul's voice in the debate, making points that would otherwise go ignored about Iraq and foreign policy forced into the national debate, these other troubling aspects of his candidacy are not off-limits.

Ezra Klein responded to Greenwald here. I really don't think they disagree all that much. But Greenwald is, I have to say, being fairly petulant. And Dana Goldstein has more.

The Latest Twist on FISA: A New "Compromise" That's Anything But

Yeah yeah, I know, Joe Klein is an idiot and a dishonest hack, and Time Magazine did its best to shield him from criticism, even rejecting numerous counterpoints from Democratic legislators who took issue with Klein's smears. This is all well-documented. Unfortunately, it's also irrelevant to the new heart of the matter on FISA. Arlen Specter is pushing a bullshit "compromise" that actually does pretty much the same thing as telecom amnesty would do.

And voila! your wishy-washy compromise (Specter's statement; the bill):

"The legislation substitutes the U.S. in place of any electronic communication service company which provided communications in connection with an intelligence activity that was authorized by the President between September 11, 2001, and January 17, 2007, and designed to detect or prevent a terrorist attack against the U.S." [...]

But here's the killer:

"nothing in the bill is designed to increase or diminish the ability of the Government to assert the States Secret privilege"

Given that much of BushCo's motivation to give the telecoms immunity relates to BushCo's own exposure for illegally wiretapping Americans, and given that the telecom lawsuits were so important because they provided an angle around State Secrets, this pretty much sinks the lawsuits anyway.

In other words, the government becomes the substitute defendant in all the telecom lawsuits, the government can still invoke state secrets, meaning the lawsuits are very likely to be squashed, and ipso facto, the telecoms get away with lawbreaking. And more important, we never learn the extent of the spying on Americans.

There's a clause in there that leaves the telecoms on the hook for any spying prior to 9/11, but for the most part, this would be the end of any opportunity to reveal the breadth and scope of the President's warrantless wiretapping program. If Bush decided it was legal, then the telecoms get away scot-free.

And this will be voted on in the Senate Judiciary Committee TOMORROW.

So, as much as I agree that Joe Klein is a dick, I wish Glenn Greenwald would step away from that for a moment and back to the destruction of the rule of law that's about to occur under all of our noses. Substitution is just a kinder and gentler word for retroactive immunity. It's the kind of "bipartisan compromise" that the Broders of the world will love, but which is actually a far-right effort to indemnify participants in the surveillance of Americans. This has broad consequences for the surveillance state and the future of civil liberties. Mr. Greenwald, your country needs you. Refocus.

Joke Line, American Idiot

The Joke Line/FISA saga has reached car wreck proportions. It's painful to watch, and yet you can't look away.

To summarize, Klein wrote a pathetic piece for the Time print magazine, delivered to thousands of homes, about the new FISA bill, that included the demonstrable lie that the Democrats' bill would "give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans". When he was excoriated for buying Republican spin, he responded that telecom immunity is OK if they responded to direct orders from the President, which describes some different system of government, alien to the United States. Then he wrote this crappy correction wherein he admitted that he doesn't read the content of the subjects on which he reports.

But Klein, of course, never bothered to read the bill and still hasn't (even though he is published by Time to "report on" and opine about this bill). Instead, even now, he says that he has spoken with both Republicans and Democrats, and while Democrats insist that what he wrote was false, "the Republican Committee staff disagrees and says [his] reporting is correct."

In other words, Klein's GOP source(s) blatantly lied to him about what the bill does and doesn't do in order to manipulate him into uncritically feeding Time's readers the Rush Limbaugh Line -- namely, that Democrats are giving equal rights to Terrorists and preventing the Leader from eavesdropping on foreign Terrorists. And Klein dutifully wrote down what he was told in Time without bothering to find out if it was true and without ever bothering to talk to any of the bill's Democratic proponents. And no Time Editor knew enough or cared enough to bother correcting any of it. And thus, the unfortunate 4 million Americans who read and trust Time now think that the Democrats' FISA bill does the exact opposite of what it actually does.

After all of this - being burned by a source, buying Republican spin to repeat a lie - Klein then pulls the all-timer with this quote:

I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right.

So this guy is paid to write about subjects and inform his readers, and he's basically throwing up his hands and saying he really can't figure it out so we should all have pity on him? Incredible. There is no dispute over the meaning of the RESTORE Act. Klein created one in order to hide his blatant falsehoods. And now, when they are revealed, he claims he can't possibly know anything about it. This is the problem with American journalism; you have a bunch of lazy dilettantes who aren't really interested in policy, who rely on official sources for their own opinions and then pass them on without comment.

Thus, for now, I just want to ask that everyone ponder the extreme lack of professionalism and corruption required for someone like Klein to write the article that he did accusing Democrats of wanting to give Terrorists the same rights as Americans (therefore showing, as always, that Democrats can't be trusted on national security), and then -- once he is exposed for having spewed outright falsehoods -- he announces that he really isn't interested in bothering to find out (and isn't even capable of determining) if anything he wrote was accurate.

As my post earlier today here demonstrates, that is hardly unusual behavior for Time. But that doesn't make it any less flabbergasting, or repugnant. Doesn't it go without saying: if Klein doesn't have the time or background to understand what he's writing about, then he ought not to write about it? Doesn't anyone at Time agree with that?

Turns out that the editor of the piece for the print magazine doesn't take well to criticism, hanging up on Jane Hamsher within ten seconds (Get the same treatment by calling her at 212-522-2022!). And now one of the authors of the bill has taken notice.

Let me repeat: our bill gives the intelligence community the tools and flexibility it needs to listen to the conversations between those who wish to do us harm. This bill provides exactly what the Director of National Intelligence asked for earlier this year: it explicitly states that no court order is required to listen to the conversations of foreigners that happen to pass through the U.S. telecommunications system. It does not grant Constitutional rights to foreign terrorists.

What we have not agreed to do is give this or any other President a permanent blank check to spy on you, your family, the members of your congregation, or any other American citizen without any judicial oversight - a position shared by an overwhelming majority of Americans according to the latest public opinion surveys on the topic.

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

Look, Rep. Holt, Joke Line doesn't have the time to read your post. Just dress up as a Republican operative and write his column for him, that'll go much better.

In a sane world, this would be the end of Klein's career.

Joe Klein Takes Orders Well

Responding to criticism of yet another horrible article about FISA that proves he doesn't have even a little understanding of intelligence gathering and civil liberties, Joke Line pens this candidate for the worst line of the year:

It would also have taken a middle path on immunity for telecoms--no blanket immunity (as is currently provided in the Senate draft), but selective immunity to those telecoms who can provide written proof that they were acting in response to a direct order from the government. That seems fair to me.

Apparently the President is allowed to give a "direct order" that supersedes all legal precedent and the entire governmental system of the United States. Snipers can kill Nancy Pelosi as long as they were responding to a "direct order," I guess. Halliburton? Now a state and eligible for federal funding. That's a "direct order"!

Greenwald smacks this down:

Seriously, in what country does Joe Klein live? Can someone please explain to him that in the United States, the President doesn't have the power to give "direct orders" to violate the law? And what kind of person who isn't in the military runs around talking about "direct orders" from the American President at all? That isn't how our country works. Presidents obviously don't have the power to give "direct orders" to anyone to break the law, let alone civilians and private companies. Why does that even need to be explained?

Klein also coins the phrase "civil liberties extremists." Come again? Are they for "extreme fairness"? "Extreme lack of racial profiling?" "Extreme suspicion of a powerful central government with no checks on its abilities?" "Extreme don't tase me, bro?"

I'd had a good stretch not reading Swampland. Damn Joke Line for writing something this stupid to pull me back in.

The Colonel's Secret Email Recipe

This Col. Steven Boylan/Glenn Greenwald scandal is insane. Greenwald got an unsolicited email from Boylan, who's St. Petraeus' top PR guy in Iraq, basically has a habit of writing threatening, belligerent emails to liberal bloggers and journallists who write things that run counter to his and his boss' agenda. There's a persistent pattern of this: Kevin Drum, Noah Schachtman at Wired, Greg Mitchell from Editor & Publisher. So Boylan's email to Greenwals fits that pattern. Only Boylan adamantly denies writing it. This despite Greenwald sending authenticated emails and this "disputed" one to computer experts who have basically attributed those emails to the same source. And ever AFTER this has all come out, Boylan is sending replies off to various commenters at Greenwald's place. The walls are closing in on this guy, and it's clear he's lying about the provenance of the initial email. I have no idea why he wouldn't just fess up and get it over with. Salon's Fahad Manjoo has plenty more.

Is the military's top spokesman in Iraq a loose cannon who routinely fires off angry, impetuous e-mails to bloggers who criticize the war and the spin surrounding it? Or is Col. Steven Boylan, instead, an innocent victim -- an online wallflower whose identity has been hijacked by a pro-war hacker who has managed to break into the most well-fortified space on the planet in order to taunt lefty critics? Neither scenario paints a comforting picture of the situation in Iraq -- and even though the e-mails in question are coming from military servers in Iraq, the military seems strangely uninterested in solving the mystery of who is writing them [...]

On Tuesday, I spoke to several e-mail experts who have compared the disputed Boylan message with other letters the colonel has sent. The experts tell a clear story: If the message is a fake, as Boylan claims, it is a very well-done fake. Experts say that anyone who forged the e-mail to Greenwald would have had to find a way to get into the military's network, either physically (by having access to Boylan's computer, say) or through some kind of hack.

Every e-mail message includes a trail showing how it was routed through the Internet to get from the sender's computer to the receiver's -- this information is included in what's called an e-mail's "header." Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher and Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly provided Salon with e-mail correspondence they've had with Boylan. Headers on those messages, as well as headers on other messages that Boylan has sent to Greenwald and a Salon editor, match the header of the disputed e-mail -- they all show Boylan's messages coming through the military's computers in Iraq.

It's enough to make you sad for Boylan... until you realize what's going on here.

The overarching point here is that the US military is becoming increasingly a political organization, using PR flacks to run interference against anyone who questions their policies. That's a danger for democracy, to be sure. Boylan has written columns for far-right mags like Human Events while employed giving the supposedly full picture in Iraq. This guy is a right-wing hack who got caught; but he's been at this a while, and I don't think the American taxpayer should be paying this guy to jump into blog comments and give a right-wing spin on things, which he believes is actually his job. He's a partisan operative:

In the fall of 2004, campaign reporters for the Los Angeles Times found Michelle Boylan and three Boylan children manning a Bush-Cheney phone bank in Wisconsin. "We're here because we think it's important to keep President Bush in office," Michelle Boylan told the Times.

Hell, I'm as partisan as the next guy. But this has now become embedded into the highest levels of the military, and honestly it colors almost everything they say with suspicion.

Let's give Greenwald the last word:

In his email with the reader who has asked that her name not be used, Boylan wrote: "I have my serious doubts that any of what has been said is real and I have no reason to engage Mr. Greenwald," and further wrote that "errors" in the email "indicates (sic) that whoever sent it if in fact it was really ever sent and I have my doubts, does not completely know my career timeline." He is, rather unmistakably, suggesting here that I fabricated the email.

I'll just note initially that this is exactly the kind of behavior that we have seen repeatedly over the last six years from political officials in the Bush administration -- lashing out at people who bring wrongdoing to light. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill left the administration and revealed embarrassing information about how Bush officials were planning an attack on Iraq before 9/11, and suddenly, Bush officials began whispering to reporters that he had committed crimes by removing classified documents which he used to write his book. Joe Wilson wrote an Op-Ed debunking falsehoods in the State of the Union address and suddenly he is the target of a vicious White House demonization campaign as well as a principal subject of a GOP-issued Senate Intelligence Committee report.

This is really bad, and the military needs to respond quickly.

Ideology vs. Progress, Take 1

I've noticed a LOT of situations recently where progressive ideology has bumped up against incremental change that would have real-world effects, and while I'm sympathetic to the ideological argument, I have to say that we need so much change right now that we cannot wait for the whole enchilada and must take the opportunities that present itself.

This first example appears to be a case of mistaken identity. The New York Times leads with a faulty headline and tries to make House Democrats' latest FISA proposal look like a capitulation.

Two months after vowing to roll back broad new wiretapping powers won by the Bush administration, Congressional Democrats appear ready to make concessions that could extend some of the key powers granted to the National Security Agency.

Bush administration officials say they are confident they will win approval of the broadened wiretapping authority that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed toward recess, and some Democratic officials admit that they may not come up with the votes to rein in the administration.

The reality is much more complicated. The Democrats in the House drafted a bill that is far better than the cave-in on FISA temporarily granted in August. I don't have the highest hopes that this is the version that will make it all the way to the President's desk, but there are some key elements here which reflect the concerns of the Progressive Caucus and the ACLU. I don't think there's anyone sharper on these issues than Glenn Greenwald, and here's his take:

To begin with, the bill to be proposed today by the House Democratic leadership actually contains some surprisingly good and important provisions.

That bill would compel the administration "to reveal to Congress the details of all electronic surveillance conducted without court orders since Sept. 11, 2001, including the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program." It would also require the maintenance of a data base to record the identities of all Americans whose conversations are surveilled. And it provides nothing at all in the way of amnesty or immunity for lawbreaking telecoms or administration officials. The bill introduced by House leadership is a bill the White House will never accept and would certainly veto, and it is vastly better -- in important ways -- than the atrocity they enacted in August.

It is important here to recall that there is actually an amendment to FISA that is at least arguably justifiable. Even the original FISA law never required warrants in order to eavesdrop on (a) foreign-to-foreign calls or (b) calls involving a U.S. citizen where the target was a non-citizen outside the U.S. (who just happened to call into the U.S.). But recently, technological developments resulted in such calls, even foreign-foreign calls, being routed through the U.S. via fiber optics, and a FISA court ruled this year that the language of FISA requires warrants for such calls.

Even civil libertarian stalwarts such as Russ Feingold agree that it was never the intent of FISA to require warrants for those categories of calls and that amending FISA strictly to fix that problem is justifiable. And the House bill (which, I should note, I have not been able to read yet because the bill has not been publicly released and people in DC love to keep things secret, but I have spoken with many people whose expertise I trust who have read it) makes that arguably necessary change. But the bill gives the White House little else, and imposes some important requirements that the White House would never accept.

It is definitely possible that this is all just deceit, that House leaders introduced this bill strictly to placate their Progressive Caucus and their base and that they have no real intention of fighting for these provisions, but instead will give Bush what he wants once Mike McConnell starts accusing them of Helping the Terrorists and they begin negotiating in secret again. But it seems that there are important House Democrats really ready to fight on these issues, to prevent Steny Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel (who unfortunately seem to be the real Speakers of the House) from conniving like they did in August to manipulate their caucus into supporting something far worse.

This is the beginning of the fight, not the end of it. We have a decent House bill and the looming spectre of the original atrocity expiring, reverting back to the initial FISA law. There's no need to hurry this or to offer anything beyond that fix on foreign calls re-routed to the United States. The Progressive Caucus has really stepped up and we need to support them, and exert influence on the leadership to ensure that the Senate provisions, which will probably include retroactive immunity for the telecom industry, are nixed.

If the Democratic Congress capitulates yet again, there will be plenty of time and opportunity for all sorts of recriminations. I think it is quite encouraging that much of the "netroots" is now devoting its energies and resources not to supporting Democrats, but to opposing Congressional Democrats who merit defeat.

Just because the New York Times characterizes Democrats in an article as "nervous" and "soft" doesn't mean they are; it means the NYT is following the same script on Democrats that they have for 20 years. We shouldn't buy into it, we should actively work against it. And if it happens to turn out that way, we speak out. But it's far too early for such a thing.

UPDATE: The ACLU sees one flaw:

"The ACLU sees one major flaw in the RESTORE Act. As drafted, the RESTORE Act still allows for the US government to collect phone calls and emails from Americans without an individual warrant.

Program warrants - sometimes called basket warrants, sometime called blanket warrants - included in the draft bill are a crucial sticking point. There is no specific target when you use basket warrants, which contradicts the heart of the Fourth Amendment. Essentially, a basket warrant really means no real warrant.

The "umbrella warrant" issue is sticky and should be removed. Anything that nonspecific is open to abuse. But again, we're 95% of the way to a good bill, and if the President vetoes we get the original system back in place. I would consider offering the foreign re-routing fix as a single amendment and moving on, in that case.

UPDATE II: I should add here that there's a tension between being an informed citizen, which means reasing and analyzing with deliberation, and being a blogger, which means getting to something as soon as possible. There's also a bit of a bias that everything put out by Democrats is necessarily a stab in the back, to which I don't subscribe.

The Real Betrayal

As I've said over and over, it's going to be next to impossible to restore habeas corpus with this Congress and this President. Cloture on the Leahy-Dodd Amendment failed 56-43 today. They added a motion to reconsider, so it may still yet pass, but they'd need 67 votes to get past Bush's veto pen, and 290 in the House (people keep discounting that as if only the Senate exists, but you're not going to be able to get 290 votes for practically anything in the House). Yes, you could continue debate until the cows come home, but not only is it going to amount to nothing, but the education of the public has not been cemented to force passage. Democrats already let this go; constantly saying "we were tricked!" gets old fast.

The real betrayal here is the continuing betrayal of American values by both the Bush Administration and a pliant Congress, who always seem to be trying to fix what they could have blocked in the first place. Today comes news that Democrats may allow retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that allowed the use of their equipment to spy on Americans, the extent of which we still don't even know.

Chairman Conyers: “Let me put it like this: how many have been overheard? I mean you’ve got minimization techniques, you wouldn’t have it if somebody wasn’t being overheard?”

McConnell: “Sir I don’t have the exact number, I’ll be happy to try and get the number provided to you.”

Conyers: “That is very, very critical.”

We already know that FBI data mining was far more expansive than at first believed. Now the Director of National Intelligence can't admit how many Americans have had their privacy violated, and the Democrats want to let telecom companies off the hook for enabling that, telecom companies who both he and the new acting Attorney General have decades of ties with? Here's Glenn Greenwald:

The FISA capitulation, though, was probably even worse. It occurred when they supposedly control the Congress. They enlarged the President's powers under the very law that he has been violating for years. They gave the Bush White House what it demanded even though the White House continues to provide them with no meaningful information about what was done during all those years when they eavesdropped on Americans in secret. And Democrats passed the law in a frenzy, under the crassest and most transparent exploitation of the Terrorist Threat ("a Terrorist attack is about to happen in DC and the blood will be on your hands unless you pass the bill we dictate").

Granting retroactive immunity to telecom companies for past lawbreaking is so plainly unjustifiable, even dangerous, that it ought to require no real debate. That Congressional Democrats are even considering submitting to this demand, let alone that they are likely to do so, dispels any doubt about what they really are.

First, retroactive immunity turns the "rule of law" into an even greater mockery than it has been for the last six years. The central premise in granting immunity is that telecom companies did nothing wrong -- even if they violated the law -- because they cooperated with warrantless spying at the behest of the President.

But we don't actually live in a country where private actors are permitted to commit crimes and violate laws provided that the President tells them that they should. The President has no greater power to authorize others to break the law than he does to break the law himself. Quite the contrary, Article II of the Constitution imposes the opposite obligation: "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Lawbreaking is still illegal even if George Bush says it should be done. Does that principle really need to be explained?

Apparently, yes, and if the Democrats capitulate on this, they'll take ownership of all of the Bush Administration assaults on civil liberties and the rule of law.

This underscores what I think is a critical point that cannot be emphasized enough. In late 2005 and early 2006, when I and others first began writing about the assault on our Constitution from this administration in the wake of the NSA scandal and the Jose Padilla travesty, the overarching issue was lawlessness. The administration's most radical and disturbing "terrorism" policies were undertaken without any legal authorization whatsoever, and frequently, in direct violation of the law.

But over the past twelve months, that has become less and less true. On every front of executive power -- from surveillance to detention to interrogation -- what was previously covert, lawless radicalism has now become the legally authorized and Congressionally endorsed policy of the United States, on a bipartisan basis.

On a strictly quantitative level, it is true that Republicans have been more supportive than Democrats of these policies -- in the sense that more Democrats cast votes against them -- but Democrats have done nothing meaningful to stop any of it, even when they could. Indeed, paradoxically, Democrats have actively enabled and endorsed this extremism more and more as they have gained more power. As a result, what were the illegal policies of the Bush administration have become lawful as the result of a Congress which does nothing when executive lawbreaking is revealed except enact legislation to legalize the behavior.

Damn, Greenwald's Good

Here, Glenzilla eviscerates the talking point that an ad in a newspaper was suddenly going to turn every American backyard into a Gathering of Eagles. Turns out that nobody liked the war before Gen. Petraeus and Bush opened their mouths, and nobody likes it after, either, regardless of what the chattering class says.

In their world, the Republicans are always ascendent, Bush is always the Strong Leader, Democrats are always the sorry losers captive to their destructive Leftist extremists, and Americans are aching to support the War. They have been predicting endlessly that, any day now, all of this will be true again.

They actually thought that a newspaper ad was going to transform deeply entrenched views about the Republicans and the War because their friends Ed Gillispie and Tony Snow and Sean Hannity told them it would. The Rise of Petraeus the Good and the unmasking of the Evil MoveOn Left was going to change everything, back to its rightful place. It changed nothing, including the media itself, which will seize on some other event a few weeks from now to declare yet again the latest surging comeback for the President, the war and the right-wing faction which has followed him.

The biggest reason I feel confident about Democratic chances in 2008 is that nobody believes a word that Republicans say anymore. It's another one of the legacies of Bush.

Just Weights And Measures

Yesterday I managed to get myself to services for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The familiar rituals and rites of Judaism can be comforting but often lapse into rote recitation. But yesterday, the rabbi's sermon woke me up and put a new spin on the moral code that underpins all humanity, which is at the heart of not only Jewish teaching, but the foundational premises of our country, principles we are rapidly losing over the course of the Bush Presidency.

The rabbi talked about a little-remarked-upon section of the Old Testament. Leviticus is filled with a laundry list of commandments and guidelines for life in Biblical times. One section focuses on "just weights and measures."

35 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. 36 Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.

An ephah is a unit of dry measure, roughly equivalent to about 23 liters. The way that business was conducted in this time was that every shopkeeper would have their own ephah, and their own stone, and would parcel out portions of products based on how they filled the ephah or balanced against the stone. It was stressed in the Old Testament that you have ONE ephah, and that it be clean and untainted, so that the measure was the same everywhere anyone traveled. What was commanded was that you never substitute "ephah v'ephah": having one measure for some people, and a different measure for others.

The rabbi made a strong statement paralleling this commandment for just measures with our present policies on immigration. "You deal with the person in front of you, and you have mercy on them and deal with them and provide for them and care for them as you would anyone else." This is not a political accomodation but a moral imperative; to do any different would be to put our thumb on the scale. And then the rabbi paused, and said, "I should stop there but I won't. For I must not be silent about torture." This is also a violation of "ephah v'ephah." He said that locking up suspects indefinitely and coercing their confessions through prohibited tactics is a sin against God, an "abomination," as the Old Testament calls it, and one that was held in the highest seriousness to Hebrew scholars. "We know a lot about that other thing called abomination," he said, a clear reference to the oft-used line by conservative Christians that homosexuality is an "abomination." Unlike sexuality, using separate ephahs for separate people CANNOT be rectified through penance. It is as serious a sin as there is in Judaism. And this is perhaps because it gets at the very heart of the measure of a man. If we cannot treat others the same, no matter what the circumstances, we have no basis to call ourselves moral human beings.

The United States has their own "ephah," called the Constitution. We cannot profess to follow the rule of law while breaking it whenever convenient. We not only damage our credibility, but we do violence to the ancient concept of just weights and measures. For six and a half long years we have seen an Administration throw morality out the window while claiming to have the word of God on their side. They have eliminated the Great Writ of habeas corpus, they have spied on their fellow citizens without warrants, they have incarcerated terror suspects at Guantanamo and secret prisons indefinitely and without charges, they have nullified federal statutes through the questionably legal means of signing statements, and more. And we cannot stand idly by while they use one ephah for their friends and allies, and another ephah for anyone they deem a threat, be it militarily or politically. We must stand up for just measures.

This week, the ACLU of Southern California, in partnership with Calitics, is launching The Campaign for Our Constitution. It is an aggressive effort to restore our Constitution and our civil liberties and reverse the extreme policies of the Bush Administration that have made us less safe and called into question just what freedom we're supposed to be fighting for abroad. Bloggers, constitutional scholars and activists are joining together in the fight to recapture basic constitutional values. There are going to be a lot of action items you can take in the future, but for now I want to give you the schedule for the coming weeks.

The campaign officially kicks off Monday, Sept. 17, with a conference call with Salon.com contributor and New York Times bestselling author Glenn Greenwald. He will discuss the future of the Constitution with Cenk Uygur, co-host of Air America’s “Young Turks” morning show, and take members’ questions. The conference call is open to anyone who RSVPs through www.ourconstitution.net.

In the next month, the campaign will hold conference calls on Sept. 20 with Dr. Drew Westen, an Emory University psychologist, Huffington Post contributor, and author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation” and on Oct. 4 with John Dean, former White House counsel for Richard Nixon and author of the new book “Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches,” just released by Viking Press. There also will be a free screening and discussion with director Robert Greenwald (“Outfoxed,” “Unconstitutional”) in Hollywood on Sept. 25.

“Southern Californians are itching for a fight,” said ACLU/SC field director Susanne Savage. “The U.S. Constitution is our core issue. We intend to lead a campaign that will expose the sad truths about our government’s policies, inspire people to act and give our electeds the political cover they need to stop legislating out of fear.”

There is no more important issue for our country moving forward than to regain the sense of justice and truth that's been sorely missing for too long. Please visit OurConstitution.net and see what you can do to help. We can and must return this nation to one where there are just weights and measures.

The Lobbyist/Media Complex

I had a head-shaking moment while having the unfortunate experience of watching CNN a few minutes ago. Ed Henry did an update on his "exclusive" report (which consists of him reading IraqSlogger scoops) about Iyad Allawi's hiring of a GOP lobbying firm to promote the overthrow of the Iraqi government and his installation as Prime Minister (OK, Henry didn't completely put it that way, but that's essentially what's going on). Blitzer and Henry then let slip what that lobbying firm is doing with all that money, and how it's working.

Henry mentioned that Ambassador Robert Blackwill, an envoy to Iraq for the President, was running the Allawi account, yet still believed the Administration tripe that they have nothing to do with this lobbying effort. Henry even called Blackwill's efforts "working against the President." Really? Where's the evidence for that? Because White House spokesmen say so?

But here was the revelation. Henry said:

Now, what are these lobbyists doing for three hundred thousand bucks? So far they're sending out emails to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, their staff, some people in the media, that are essentially just clips that have already been out there in newspapers like the New York Times, attacking Nouri al-Maliki, saying that he hasn't stepped up, things that have already been in the public domain. Not bad work if you can get it, $300,000 to be sending out those media clips. They'll obviously be doing some other lobbying, but not bad work, Wolf.

And then Blitzer added:

He had an op-ed in the Washington Post over the weekend, which I read in the actual hard copy of the Washington Post, but then a day later, I got the email from a Dr. Iyad Allawi, and I had no idea where that was coming from, but you've cleared it up for me.

Later on, Blitzer announced that Allawi would be appearing on this weekend's CNN Late Edition.

Here we have the entire lobbyist-media complex that infects Washington groupthink like a horrible disease laid out for all to see. Interest groups pay lobbyists to get attention to their cause. Lobbyists pay media organizations to plant stories or print op-eds. Then they highlight these stories to the more lazy broadcast media, who chases the story like an errant soccer ball. It's all a well-known practice to those in Washington, but not to the vast majority of those media consumers. They actually think the stories with the most importance rise to the top, not the stories with the most money behind them. There is no reason for someone like Iyad Allawi, who's already failed miserably in his post as Prime Minister, should get any coverage from the traditional media.

In this case, the lobbying is on a major issue, and is designed to change both public opinion and the opinions of lawmakers. It should be no surprise that the lobbyists immediately take to planting articles and hectoring the media as the initial part of their strategy. I think there needs to be some walkback here. How was the Washington Post editorial board persuaded to print that editorial by Allawi in the first place? Did money change hands? What role did this lobbying group play in stories about the Maliki government's troubles in the first place? Where is the information for these stories coming from? Is Phillip Zelikow, who is still seen as an objective Expert on Iraq in media interviews, but who is also being paid by Allawi to degrade Maliki's stature, helping distribute anti-Maliki information to media outlets?

Glenn Greenwald asked a lot of these questions today, directly, to the GOP lobbying firm, BG&R:

I have placed several calls to BG&R today as well, and they claim that nobody responsible for answering press inquiries is available and they do not return messages. For any intrepid journalists who can obtain information from them, among the key questions are:

(1) Does Zelikow, as indicated by Chairman (Rep. Vic) Snyder, have a formal consulting relationship with the Bush administration itself to shape Iraq policy?;

(2) Did Zelikow disclose to ABC News that his firm was being paid by Allawi before agreeing to be interviewed about Iraq's future, in which he insinuated that the Bush administration was working to oust Maliki?

(3) Did BG&R have any role to play in having Fred Hiatt publish Allawi's Op-Ed two weeks ago, proclaiming Maliki to be the cause of Iraq's problems?

With the revelations by CNN, it's important that we keep asking these questions and get some real answers. Right now, a blog is driving this story for the simple reason that this reveals the traditional media to be totally ethically compromised when reporting on events like Iraq. The blogs need to keep doing the driving so we can understand what's happening here.

Surging Toward Propaganda

I would call this Glenn Greenwald interview with Michael O'Hanlon nothing short of devastating. In it, Greenwald gets O'Hanlon to admit that he was not a "critic of the war," as practically every media outlet characterized him when he and Ken Pollack wrote their "the surge is working!" op-ed for the New York Times. In fact, as O'Hanlon says, "I was not a critic of this war. In the final analysis, I was a supporter," which you thought would have merited a mention on any of the television appearances they made.

Greenwald also gets to the truth about the "fact-finding" trip that O'Hanlon and Pollack took to Iraq that served as the evidentiary basis for their op-ed, a trip that was planned entirely by the US military:

GG: I just want to ask you some questions about the trip that you just took. Whose idea was that trip? How did that trip arise and who planned it?
MO: Well, I have wanted to go back to Iraq for a long time. I feel it’s- I've been there once in September 2003 - it behoves anybody who's working on this issue a lot of the time as I've been for a few years trying to get some on-the-ground experience and observations. And so I've been trying to get back for a couple of years and I started putting in these requests a little bit more assertively -

GG: Who did you put them in with?

MO: To the military, starting in about the spring.

GG: And then, at some point they accepted and said that they would organize a trip for you?

MO: Yeah. I think the trip was ultimately originally scheduled for other people as well. I think it's public knowledge that Tony Cordesman was also on our trip, and I think he had plans to go before Ken and I managed to get ourselves invited as well, but --

GG: Why did you need the permission of the U.S. military in order to go? Why couldn't you just go yourself?

MO: I suppose I could have, but I was hopeful that someone could help take care of my security, for one thing. I'm not going to try to sound more heroic than I am. And also I wanted to talk to a lot of military personnel and get their impressions.

The itinerary was developed by the DoD, and it's not unlike the itineraries developed for visiting dignitaries like Congressmen, which Jim Webb has rightly called "dog and pony shows." I don't know if the group had air cover and tank cover like John McCain did in his Baghdad stroll, but any implication that O'Hanlon and Pollack saw the real Iraq is dubious. What's more, there was another member of the delegation, Anthony Cordesman, and he was not nearly as impressed about the success of the surge:

From my perspective, the US now has only uncertain, high risk options in Iraq. It cannot dictate Iraq’s future, only influence it, and this presents serious problems at a time when the Iraqi political process has failed to move forward in reaching either a new consensus or some form of peaceful coexistence. It is Iraqis that will shape Iraq's ability or inability to rise above its current sectarian and ethnic conflicts, to redefine Iraq's politics and methods of governance, establish some level of stability and security, and move towards a path of economic recovery and development. So far, Iraq’s national government has failed to act at the rate necessary to move the country forward or give American military action political meaning.

The reasoning for the military buildup was to make room for a political solution. That hasn't happened at all, and so I don't see how you can characterize the overall mission as anything but a failure. The military is doing a fine job in a situation beyond their control with a mission that they are helpless to complete. And certainly, the words of a couple of war supporters who spent eight days with a handpicked group of military and personnel shouldn't sway anybody. It's shameful that the media allowed this fiction to perpetuate.

UPDATE: British Parliament jumping ship as well. It's so clear that the current policy is unable to meet whatever goals the Bush Administration has set out.

Yearly Kos: Friday Sessions

The panels and discussions on this day could be spread out to an entire week. You kick yourself for missing certain things that are all happening at the same time. But here's a snapshot of what I saw today so far:

• Wes Clark was on fire in the morning keynote. He implored the President to stop hiding behind David Petraeus, screaming "This is YOUR war!" He put his emphasis on engaging our so-called "enemies" instead of isolating them, saying that the problem is the failure of leadership in the region, which leads us to spending $100 billion dollars a year in Iraq when bridges are falling down in Minneapolis.

• The panel on "Evolution & Integration In The Blogosphere" was illuminating. Instead of just being a self-regarding session about how to break out and become a big-time blogga, yo, it was a productive session about expanding reach through state and local blogging, as well as reaching out to other blogospheres (mommy bloggers, food bloggers, even gossip bloggers) that aren't necessarily political but have ideas that the progressive movement can plug into. In addition, there was good discussion on increasing access to broadband (which would open up poor and rural areas) and increasing diversity in the progressive blogosphere, as well as innovating technology.

• I saw Rick Perlstein speak on framing the debate. He essentially read a review of his that he wrote about an FDR book, which had a lot of good stuff in it, but wasn't a panel discussion so much as a book reading. Key quote: "There are more people who have bosses than who ARE bosses."

• The "Future Leaders" panel featured 7 Democratic candidates who lost by a hair in severely red areas in 2006, and who are all running again: Charlie Brown, Darcy Burner, Larry Grant, Eric Massa, Scott Kleeb, Dan Seals, and Gary Trauner. Massa in particular has been generating a lot of buzz on the convention floor, but I thought all of them were excellent. I spoke briefly with Gary Trauner (WY-AL) and was very impressed by his passion and his belief in progressive values, particularly on tax fairness.

• The lunchtime keynote was Andy Stern of the SEIU in conversation with Harold Meyerson. I've seen Stern speak a couple times before and have read his book, so much of it was familiar. But he's really a must for working people to listen to. He's whip-smart and he understands the revolutionary economic changes that have unsettled working people. Look him up, buy the book.

• The "Blogs vs. MSM" was certainly the panel of the day. Mike Allen of the Politico and Jay Carney of Time were matched up with Jill of Feministing and the great Glenn Greenwald. Allen and Carney were going out of their way to blow smoke up Greenwald's ass ("What Henry Waxman is to Congress, Glenn Greenwald is to the blogosphere"), and Greenwald would sit there stone-faced, and then launch into a relentless attack on the facts of how the traditional media conducts the discourse of the country. In other words, he ignored the niceties and focused on the facts, which is what all of the journalists being assailed by him should do as well. He mentioned that 70% of Americans in 2003 still believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11, and how recently 44% of Americans could identify John Edwards as the guy who got a $400 haircut, and the reasons involved with those perceptions. He mentioned how in 2006, after the NSA wiretapping scandal was advanced, the media would not declare that the situation was a violation of the law, but they would discuss the issue in political terms, discussing how this would be "a good issue" for Republicans. What we need are journalists who are referees, willing to confront those who they report, willing to be adversarial and skeptical. Bloggers do NOT want the media destroyed, or to become partisan. We just want them to do their job better.

My issue was one of resources. The media is being forced to do more with less, and because they are general assignment reporters and generally not experts on subjects, they cover for this by opening up that well-worn rolodex. And by and large, that rolodex reflects a range of opinion from The New Republic to Free Republic. They laud the blogosphere for its expertise (expertise that Jay Carney said he "didn't know" about), but never use that expertise in their articles, preferring to have bloggers gnash their teeth on the sidelines. Why aren't the bloggers part of the expert rolodex if they are so good on particular issues.

I do give Allen and Carney credit for coming into the lion's den, but Greenwald definitely got the better of them. The guy's a master.

• I saw my friends hekebolos and thereisnospoon in discussion with George Lakoff about the "Overton Window," the idea of setting up fully progressive positions to move the debate to the left. Lakoff began by dismissing the entire idea, which made for a really interesting discussion. Personally, I think the best way to think about these ideas is to not think about them at all. I think Democrats worry too much about HOW they should act instead of just acting. It's the Hamlet complex.

• Right now I'm in an Israel/Palestine and Middle East policy discussion featuring Juan Cole of Informed Comment and a writer for Bill Maher. "Intellectual mountaintop air so high I had to keep swallowing to keep my ears popping," to quote one of my favorite writers, Peter DeVries.

Press A Little Slow On The Uptake

I suppose it's good news that the traditional media is starting to understand the fact that this insistent use by the White House of the phrase "Al Qaeda" to describe every single enemy in Iraq is an explicit attempt to link the occupation of Iraq to the events of 9/11. McClatchy was predictably the first to figure this out, on Tuesday. And now the Grey Lady gives us the same story, albeit with the framing device of "Critics assert" that this is what's happening, instead of, you know, this is actually what's happening.

In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”

It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown. On Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq.

But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership.

There is no question that the group is one of the most dangerous in Iraq. But Mr. Bush’s critics argue that he has overstated the Qaeda connection in an attempt to exploit the same kinds of post-Sept. 11 emotions that helped him win support for the invasion in the first place.

It's a pretty good story, and I particularly liked this paragraph, which puts it bluntly.

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not exist before the Sept. 11 attacks. The Sunni group thrived as a magnet for recruiting and a force for violence largely because of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which brought an American occupying force of more than 100,000 troops to the heart of the Middle East, and led to a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.

AQI is an Iraqi group that uses the name Al Qaeda but is a Baathist and Sunni militant HOME-GROWN phenomenon. Good for the NYT for pointing this out. And in the broader context of Al Qaeda's resurgence (more on that tomorrow), it's an important point.

Here's the thing, though. Glenn Greenwald had this story on June 23. The traditional media is just getting around to it? It's not like Greenwald had unlimited resources and a wizard-like knowledge of Mesopotamia. He was just paying attention. And so he scooped the press by three weeks.