Hope For A Restored Set Of Civil Liberties

For those in Southern California, I'm actually on a panel tonight about civil liberties and the first 100 days of the Obama Administration, with the Pasadena chapter of the ACLU. The location is:

NEIGHBORHOOD UNIVERSALIST CHURCH
301 North Orange Grove Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91103
7:30pm

In general, I think the civil liberties changes in the Administration are shaping up as kind of a mixed bag. I appreciate the quality and character and commitment to justice of many of Obama's nominees for top positions, in particular Dawn Johnsen at the Office of Legal Counsel. At the same time I'm troubled by the lack of concern for past crimes and instead this insistence on "moving forward," as if deterrence is not a part of criminal justice. Yesterday, Obama's transition vowed to order the closure of Guantanamo immediately. Today, we hear that the closure could take up to a year:

But experts say it is likely to take many months, perhaps as long as a year, to empty the prison that has drawn international criticism since it received its first prisoners seven years ago this week. One transition official said the new administration expected that it would take several months to transfer some of the remaining 248 prisoners to other countries, decide how to try suspects and deal with the many other legal challenges posed by closing the camp.

People who have discussed the issues with transition officials in recent weeks said it appeared that the broad outlines of plans for the detention camp were taking shape. They said transition officials appeared committed to ordering an immediate suspension of the Bush administration’s military commissions system for trying detainees.

In addition, people who have conferred with transition officials said the incoming administration appeared to have rejected a proposal to seek a new law authorizing indefinite detention inside the United States. The Bush administration has insisted that such a measure is necessary to close the Guantánamo camp and bring some detainees to the United States.

Mr. Obama has repeatedly said he wants to close the camp. But in an interview on Sunday on ABC, he indicated that the process could take time, saying, “It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize.” Closing it within the first 100 days of his administration, he said, would be “a challenge.”

Good and bad here as well. There is the power of the symbolism in breaking with the past and ordering closure, as well as rejecting the extra-legal options of indefinitely detaining people on US soil or continuing the flawed shams that Bush has been using as military commissions. However, trying detainees in federal courts and accepting evidence gained through torture that would otherwise be inadmissable is abhorrent. So we still don't know which way he's going to go. As Anthony Romero says in the article, “Just like we need specifics on an economic recovery package, we need specifics on a ‘justice recovery package.”

There is some good news to report, however. Not only is Obama committed to reversing several executive orders made by the Bush regime, he is going to express his legal opinions in public instead of making more secret laws.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) said he’s been informed that President Obama will support his proposed legislation to make public some opinions from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which issued some of the Bush Administration's most sweeping claims of executive power. Obama also has promised to limit President Bush's practice of using "signing statements" to amend legislation.

"Every day we get indications that they're serious about reversing the abuses of the Constitution," Feingold, a harsh Bush critic, told Politico. Feingold said he thinks Obama is likely to issue executive orders rapidly reversing Bush policies, and others have indicate that those will likely cover the interrogation and detention of terror suspects, and keeping the records of past presidents secret.

"I don't know in what order or how fast" Obama’s executive orders could come, he said. "It'll be important that a couple of them be done immediately, and I think they will be, to show there's a strong break from the current policy."

It's going to be hard to get an executive to willingly give up power. But if the means by which he seeks to maintain or expand them is public, then pressure can be far more effective in dialing the worst abuses back.

See Greenwald for more on all of this. And see me, if you can, tonight in Pasadena.

Gitmo, Over And Out

Today happens to be the seventh anniversary of the opening of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, which Scott Horton calls a "concentration camp." And on this day, Barack Obama's advisers are leaking that they will move to close it down by executive order immediately.

Advisers to President-elect Barack Obama say one of his first duties in office will be to order the closing of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

That executive order is expected during Obama's first week on the job — and possibly on his first day, according to two transition team advisers. Both spoke Monday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Obama's order will direct his administration to figure out what to do with the estimated 250 al-Qaida and Taliban suspects and potential witnesses who are being held at Guantanamo.

My first thought is that this is very strange. Yesterday on "This Week," Obama said that it would be "more difficult than a lot of people realize" to close Gitmo. Now there's this leak that it will be closed immediately. Perhaps they will order the closure while working out the more knotty issues at the same time.

Federal judges in Washington have ordered the release of at least 23 prisoners, ruling there were no grounds to detain them. Three were sent home to Bosnia last month.

About 200 other habeas corpus challenges are working their way through the courts.

However, experts say, political and legal will is not enough to surmount the complex diplomatic and security issues that must be resolved before the prison is closed: where to send those facing prosecution, whether a new court should be created to try them and what to do with those against whom the U.S. has little evidence but deep suspicions.

"The easy part is putting the detainees on a plane and flying them away. The hard part, and the part that is so important to get right, is the policy decisions," said Rear Adm. David Thomas, commander of the prison and interrogation network.

There is a little more of that "limits of the imagination" stuff at work here. Other countries in Europe have offered to take some detainees. Consider what Anthony Romero, ACLU Executive Director, has said on this:

While the next steps might be politically charged and require courage, they are not fundamentally complicated. Each detainee's case must be reviewed by the new Justice Department. If there is evidence of criminal conduct – and one would hope that, after all these years, the government with its vast resources in the Defense Department, the Justice Department, the CIA and FBI would have collected untainted evidence against those detainees it claims are dangerous or guilty -- detainees should be prosecuted in our traditional courts, which are the best in the world and fully capable of handling sensitive national security issues without compromising fundamental rights. If there is not, detainees should be repatriated to countries that don't practice torture. Fundamental and transformative change is neither incremental nor tentative.

I actually have fairly close ties to someone in the Justice Department working on what to do with the remaining Guantanamo detainees. There seems to be a lot of work here for a simple solution. We have had the debates over our justice system over 200 years. Those debates continue to an extent, but we have endlessly tried to perfect it so that they offer fair trials based on evidence without compromising civil liberties. There is simply no need to invent anything new. To the extent that "evidence" against detainees has been tainted because it was extracted through torture, that probably should have been considered before the torturing. Evidence obtained by torture is inadmissable in every civilized court in the world, and it would simply be unconstitutional to create a system that allowed it, not to mention distasteful. Glenn Greenwald has much more.

So in response, as it were, there's this leak that Gitmo will be closed immediately. The question, then, is will it be closed, or will it be "closed," pending some indefinite resolution sometime in the indefinite future.

Ya Can't Fight City Hall

So much for shrinking the size of the military budget.

President-elect Barack Obama appointed a defense contractor's executive Thursday to become the No. 2 official at the Defense Department, acknowledging that his choice appeared to break with his self-imposed rules to keep lobbyists at arm's length.

William J. Lynn III, Obama's choice for deputy defense secretary, is a former Pentagon official who now is senior vice president for government operations at Raytheon Co. Lynn hasn't been a registered lobbyist since July, meaning he can't personally lobby Congress or the White House. In the first three months of 2008, his lobbying team reported spending $1.15 million to influence issues involving missiles, sensors and radar, advanced technology programs and intelligence funding.

Obama's transition is calling Lynn the "exception" to his long-held policy of discouraging lobbyists who worked in the same field as their appointment from his Administration. But he's not fooling anyone. This is more revolving-door politics.

The military budget is strangling this nation. The US accounts for as much defense spending as the rest of the world combined. And the threats we face are not best countered by large weapons systems anymore.

Doesn't matter. That's why they call it a military-industrial COMPLEX.

It will be difficult for Lynn to avoid defense issues related to Raytheon, said James Thurber, who teaches lobbying at American University.

"I think it's impossible in our system not to have people that have been in the advocacy system," he said. "They're the people who know the issues and have the expertise." The key is for the administration to disclose those connections and avoid financial conflicts, he said.

The key is for everyone to acknowledge the problem - an extreme amount of power handed over to defense contractors. It's just as Eisenhower warned 50 years ago. Stephen Walt writes:

You'd think that this would be the ideal time to rethink our global military strategy and look for some savings in the defense area. I'm not talking radical disarmament, but I don't mean just canceling gold-plated programs like the F-22 or abandoning the chimaera of national missile defense. If America has to tighten its belt, shouldn't that include DOD?

Here's why it won't happen any time soon. As Cindy Williams, former director of the National Security division of the Congressional Budget Office and now a senior research scientist at MIT, points out in an as-yet unpublished paper for the Tobin Project, DOD is insulated from serious cuts by an array of impressive political advantages. First, its budget is more than 50 percent of all federal discretionary spending, and its sheer size gives it a lot of bureaucratic clout. Second, the Pentagon has a large domestic constituency: there are 1.4 million men and women in uniform, 850,000 paid members of the National Guard and Reserve, and 650,000 civilian employees. Forget GM, Ford and Chrysler: the Department of Defense is the largest single employer in the whole country. Now add the companies that provide goods and services for the military. Their employees amount to about 5.2 million jobs, which is a pretty impressive domestic constituency. And don’t forget those 25 million veterans, who are hardly shrinking violets when defense spending is concerned. Finally, a well-financed group of Beltway bandits and Washington think tanks stand ready to question the patriotism of any politician (and especially any Democrat) who tries to put the Pentagon on a diet.

So don't expect the military to take a serious budget hit anytime soon.

Sad, really. That's a sacred cow that is going to take years, even decades, to reverse.

Fighting Foreclosures, Not Entitlements

Some progressives are worried about this signal by PEBO (President-elect Barack Obama) that he will tackle entitlement spending at this time where fiscal spending takes precedence over the deficit, but I'm not. It's based on a direct question he was asked at yesterday's press conference, and his answer was pretty boilerplate. Whenever the chattering class hears the word "entitlements" from a powerful politician, they get a thrill up their leg. Doesn't mean anything's going to happen. And Medicare spending needs to go down as a portion of overall health care spending, so if he's just talking about a comprehensive health care policy, that's not really the same thing.

This part later in the interview is interesting:

In an interview later in the day with CNBC and The New York Times, Mr. Obama suggested that he would hold his economic stimulus proposal to the low end of the amounts that economists think will be necessary because it was likely to grow in size as it moved through Congress. He said that he intended to propose a broad overhaul of financial regulation by April, and that he was working with Congressional leaders on his promised plan to limit foreclosures in the wake of the mortgage crisis.

“We’ve got to prevent the continuing deterioration of the housing market,” he said.

That's good news on both fronts, IMO. The numbers he's throwing around are too small for the problem, so I certainly hope they expand. As for the part about the housing market, Kevin Drum sez that housing is still too overpriced and needs to deteriorate further. But in context, I think Obama is talking about foreclosures. And government ought to be creating incentives to limit those because they not only hurt housing prices but they cause major economic upheaval - a foreclosure costs the greater economy something like $250,000. So encouraging work-outs with homeowners to get them in a position to pay would be a step forward. Like the cram-down legislation working its way through the Congress.

Legislation designed to stem foreclosures by allowing bankruptcy judges to erase some mortgage debt will be introduced by Congressional Democrats on Tuesday, and hopes are high that it will pass after a similar plan failed last year [...]

The legislation would change allow bankruptcy judges to modify home loans in the same way that they currently may modify other unsettled obligations, such as credit card debt.

We simply ought to do this. And the fact that Sheila Bair, who has been pushing the most homeowner-friendly, foreclosre-stemming solutions to the housing crisis, will be staying at the FDIC, is more proof that foreclosures are going to be targeted by the incoming Administration. That's a good thing.

All's Well That Ends Well For Those Complicit In Torture

After some damage control by the Obama transition team, Dianne Feinstein emerged satisfied with the choice of Leon Panetta for CIA Director. See if you can read between the lines on this one.

Emerging from a policy luncheon this afternoon, Senator Dianne Feinstein disclosed that she had spoken with Leon Panetta last night, after raising objections earlier this week about his qualifications to become the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Asked whether she planned to support his confirmation now — following telephone conversations initiated by both President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., she said: “I believe all systems are go.”

As far as the oversight made by Obama officials when they did not brief her on the on the selection of Panetta before the news leaked out, she said today: “I don’t really care about that. What I do care about is the agency, and that it faces many issues and it has many problems. And what I do care about is that the White House is given crisp, good, as much as possible factual, intelligence, and it is not what they want to hear necessarily but it is what the agency believes is the truth." [...]

She also noted, after speaking with both Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden and Mr. Panetta, that she believed there was a “high likelihood” that Mr. Panetta would surround himself with those who were knowledgeable about intelligence and had experience in the field. She said she would be meeting with him again next week. Specifically, when asked whether she had received assurances in these discussions that Stephen R. Kappes, the No. 2 at the agency, would remain in the job, the senator pursed her lips and wouldn’t comment directly.

In other words, the price for her support was keeping Stephen Kappes. This was clear from the Times story this morning, where transition officials assured reporters that Kappes would stay on.

While Panetta is a solid choice with all the right enemies (including some of the spooks who don't want to change their ways), Kappes stood mute in the face of torture and rendition and other illegal activities. I guess the Village thinks there's a chance that Kappes will help keep those bodies buried. If Panetta resigns in a year or two because he couldn't fight the institutional barriers, you'll know the reason why. And DiFi will have a big smile on her face.

The Final Indignity

It's not all that important, but I did note at the time that George Bush's refusal to open up Blair House for the President-elect so that he could allow his kids to start school at the beginning of the year was totally classless. What was unknown was what functions were being held in Blair House that were unable to be rescheduled to accommodate Obama and his family. Today we learned that the house guest was John Howard.

The White House offered the house to John Howard, the former Prime Minister of Australia who is set to receive a Medal of Freedom. Instead of arranging other accommodations for Howard’s one-night stay, the Bush administration told the Obama family to stay in a hotel for two weeks. (Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who are also receiving the Medal of Freedom, opted to find other accommodations.)

Last night on MSNBC’s “Countdown,” Bloomberg journalist Margaret Carlson revealed that when the White House turned down Obama’s request in early December, it had not yet even invited Howard to stay at the Blair House:

I reported…on December 11 and 12 that there were no foreign dignitaries booked into Blair House during that period of time. … I have the feeling they asked him [Howard] to come and stay so that there might be some plausible reason for not letting the Obamas stay there.

She also pointed out that Blair House has “119 rooms with 35 bathrooms. Howard wouldn’t even have to share a sink with the Obamas.”

The fact that Blair, Howard and Uribe are getting the Medal of Freedom for being good little lapdogs and doing what their Dear Leader told them is bad enough. That a one-night sleepover bumps the incoming President from the residence, forcing him to rework his family's schedule, is just the last of the petty insults that the country has put up with for the last 8 years. Not the worst thing Bush has done by any stretch, but maybe the most revealing of his character.

But outgoing Clinton staffers took all the W's out of the keyboards at the White House, so I guess this is just "getting even." Oh wait, that didn't happen.

The Panetta Saga

So now Joe Biden is acknowledging a mistake in the transition not informing the Senate Intelligence Committee chair about the choice of Leon Panetta for CIA Director, which was probably leaked, because there's no reason to intentionally antagonize the Committee Chair who will direct the confirmation hearings. I guess Obama talked it over with Feinstein, and apologized. Other committee members, including Ron Wyden, were consulted beforehand, suggesting that Obama really did want a break with the capitulationist elements of the Senate Democrats. Scott Horton considers this a plus.

So why would the Obama team, which has been so careful and thoughtful in approaching the nominations process, have failed even to consult the two Democratic senators who have the most to say about intelligence? I don’t think this was accidental. I read something else into it. The bottom line is that Jay Rockefeller was an abject failure when it came to intelligence oversight. His term as ranking member and then chair of the Senate intelligence committee was one in which Congress generally, and the Senate in particular, failed to live up to their Constitutional mandate. The intelligence community was steered by the Bush Administration into a series of criminal escapades. Effective congressional oversight would have exposed these failings and brought them to heel. But the Rockefeller-Feinstein record was little short of disastrous. I’m delighted that the Obama team didn’t consult them.

Feinstein, for her part, has commented further, saying that she understands the desire for a break with the past, but that she also wants the same guy working in Bush's CIA to stay on.

"I understand their thinking" in choosing Panetta, Feinstein explained, describing herself as "very respectful of the president's authority ... this is the man [Obama has chosen]."

I asked Feinstein whether her reticence about Panetta's lack of ties to the CIA would be mitigated by having Steven Kappes, her preferred choice for CIA director, stay on as the agency's No 2. "I believe very strongly" that Kappes should stay, Feinstein said, adding that Panetta's standing would be "very much enhanced" were Kappes to stay his deputy.

The entire point of the Panetta pick would be undermined by a #2 like Kappes. That would be a huge mistake IMO. And the idea that a CIA Director needs "experience" in intelligence matters flies in the face of history. Several good leaders at CIA had no intel experience whatsoever.

Meanwhile, Russ Feingold loves the Panetta pick.

I am pleased by reports of the nomination of Leon Panetta to be the next CIA Director. These reports indicate that President-elect Obama recognizes the need for fresh leadership for the intelligence community. Leon Panetta has a long and distinguished career in public service and there are few people of whom I have a higher opinion. He has been a strong voice opposing the interrogation practices authorized by the Bush Administration and he is well-equipped to restore our national security, which has been undermined by the current administration's policies. I look forward to closely examining his record, hearing his plans for protecting our nation against al Qaeda and other threats, and learning how he will help restore the rule of law after years of lawlessness that have undermined our national security.

This whole thing could be as simple as courtliness and some random fights in California (maybe going back to when Panetta and Jane Harman, who was up for the job, ran against one another for Governor in 1998). But the insistence on Kappes suggests this is a body-burying effort.

...Ezra Klein scores an interview with Sen. Wyden, who says that DiFi is about to introduce legislation to "end torture and close Guantanamo." Well, we shall see, but everyone trying to get to the left of one another on this issue is a good thing.

The Vestigial Organ

OK, let's get to the multiple events of yesterday. First of all, Tim Kaine will be named the DNC Chair, which appears to be the consolation prize for him not being made Vice President. Kaine's most memorable public appearance was an awful rebuttal to the State of the Union Address, but since then he has gotten marginally better, and was not terrible on the stump and in the media for Barack Obama. Typically the President handpicks the DNC chair, and the body is a different animal when the party is in power. Without the White House, the DNC was an activist body the last two cycles. Terry McAuliffe had no electoral success, but raised a crapload of money. Howard Dean implemented the 50-state strategy, got the party's technical chops up to the level of the Republicans, and successfully navigated two campaign cycles. With the White House, it becomes more of an organ of the President.

Kaine did oversee some very good party-building in Virginia, which has 2 more Democratic Senators, 3 more House members and the majority of the State Senate since he became Governor. And Virginia went blue in November for the first time since 1964. Jonathan Singer likes the choice.

Beyond that, in recent years the DNC Chairmanship has been split into two posts while the Democrats have controlled the White House, with a dignitary serving as General Chairman and a strategist running the day-to-day operations of the committee. Under Bill Clinton, this strategy predominated, with Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, Colorado Governor Roy Romer and then-former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell serving as General Chairmen -- the spokesmen of the party -- while others were left to handle the details. Indeed, this appears to be the thinking of Obama in tapping Kaine, also choosing the director of his battleground state strategy, Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, to run the committee's operations.

So I see the Kaine pick as a fine one and have few quarrels with it.

The key to me is whether he keeps the 50-state strategy in place. Coming from a state that benefited from those efforts, I hope he will see the value in it.

Vetting?

Bill Richardson has withdrawn himself from consideration for the Commerce Secretary job, particularly because of a grand jury investigation into a possible pay-to-play scheme in New Mexico state government.

A federal grand jury is investigating how a California company that contributed to Richardson's political activities won a New Mexico transportation contract worth more than $1 million. Richardson said in a statement issued by the Obama transition office that the investigation could take weeks or months but expressed confidence it will show he and his administration acted properly.

A senior Obama adviser said that when Richardson was nominated, he gave assurances that he would come out fine in the investigation and the president-elect had no reason to doubt it. But as the grand jury continued to pursue the case, it became clear that confirmation hearings would have to be delayed for six weeks or even longer until the investigation was complete, said the adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity about the discussions because they were private.

I find it very surprising that this transition team obsessed with vetting their appointees, armed with a massive application that's something like 70 pages long looking into all aspects of the public and private lives of those appointees, would go simply on Richardson's word that nothing was untoward in the investigation and that it would be wrapped up within weeks. Not to convict Richardson before the trial, but what corruption investigation fizzles like that? The probe was in a highly active stage at the time. It's simply not credible to think it would be over quickly, no matter what Richardson did or didn't do. He's stepping aside to avoid a delay that should have been fairly obvious at the time. I'm shocked that Obama's team would just let that go, and it speaks to a flaw in their process, where celebrity or the "team of rivals" approach trumps sound decision-making.

Steve Clemons has some thoughts on a replacement.

I think that the Obama team needs someone who understands the economy and the vital need to reinvest in high wage job growth creation, who understands the importance of redesigning America's domestic social contract between labor, firms, capital and government, and who is familiar with business -- and liked by labor.

There are very few who fit that bill, and Leo Hindery -- who was senior economic advisor to the John Edwards campaign and then was an economic advisor to the Obama campaign as well and authored the interesting book It Takes a CEO -- is a real stand out who the Obama team should consider for Commerce.

Don't know a whole lot about him.

UPDATE... The transition is playing the blame game:

Sources tell ABC News that Obama transition officials "feel that before he was formally offered the job of commerce secretary, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson was not forthcoming with them about the federal investigation that is looking into whether the governor steered a state contract towards a major financial contributor."

"Once the investigation became more widely known through national media reports last month... the Obama Transition Team realized the FBI would not be able to give Richardson a clean political bill of health before the new administration is ready to send his nomination up to the Senate for confirmation."

That's not Richardson's fault, that's the fault of the transition for taking Richardson at his word and not exploring the matter more fully. A politician is going to put him or herself in the best light. Major fail by the transition here.

BREAKING: Conservatives Don't Care For Liberals!

Is the Washington Post serious with this? Do they think it qualifies as news?

To some staunch conservatives watching President Bush relinquish the reins of power to President-elect Barack Obama, a few too many ardent liberals are now crashing the gates.

Some well-known Democratic activists are advising Obama on how to steer federal agencies, including a few whom conservative Republicans fought hard to keep out of power in the Clinton administration. They include Roberta Achtenberg, a gay activist whose confirmation as an assistant housing secretary was famously held up by then-Sen. Jesse Helms (N.C.), and Bill Lann Lee, who was hotly opposed by foes of affirmative action and temporarily blocked from the government's top civil rights job.

Conservatives fear that some of these Obama transition advisers are too far left on the political spectrum and are a sign of radical policies to come.

I think I figured out that conservatives would consider liberals too liberal sometime in the 2nd grade. I guess that's the reading level of the WaPo these days.

The entire article is one long, meaningless example of working the refs. As for those conservative gripers, what's the phrase I'm looking for?... oh yeah, ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.

Full-Court Press

Faced with expected Republican obstructionism, Barack Obama is going to use his greatest asset right now, a honeymoon period with soaring approval ratings, as he campaigns for the stimulus.

President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to lead a full-scale marketing blitz to pass the massive new stimulus package that he says is needed to revive the slumping economy and put the nation on the course he laid out during his campaign.

Obama will move to Washington this weekend, checking into a hotel with his family. In the remaining weeks of the transition, and after he is sworn in, he will use the bully pulpit to make the case for passage of a stimulus package of up to $775 billion, an aide said.

Obama, now in Hawaii on vacation, may travel outside Washington after Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, while others in the new administration scatter across the country to explain in minute detail the scope and purpose of the stimulus plan, said David Axelrod, a senior advisor to the president-elect.

"We'll fan out, and this will be a public process," Axelrod said in an interview. "We'll make clear to people why we need to do what we're doing, why it's the size it is, what the individual component parts are, and why they are an important part of the equation in terms of short-term recovery."

Obama, he said, "wants the American people involved in this discussion."

Obama's approval ratings, as I said, are very high, and the more districts he visits and the more Senators he targets, the better a chance the stimulus package has of succeeding. Hopefully he will use this time not only to demand that the bill is passed, but to make the argument - to use his rhetorical skills to advocate for fiscal stimulus and discredit the wrongheaded conservative ideas of the past. 81% of the public believes he can "get things done" as President - the stimulus package is a crucial step to see how much his political capital is worth.

Political Appointee Whines About Politicization

I was happy enough to discover that the Obama transitionwill dismiss 90 political appointees at the Pentagon after Inauguration Day. But as Billmon notes (ahh, it's so could to write that), the icing on this cake is that it brings back to the spotlight the pathetic Pentagon career of Jim O'Beirne.

Those calls and emails were followed up by an email from Jim O'Beirne, the special assistant to the secretary of defense for White House liaisons, who expressed exasperation that Gration informed the employees directly instead of letting O'Beirne's office know first.

"With regard to the process, I am unable to provide an explanation," O'Beirne wrote on Tuesday in the email, which was obtained by The Hill. "I played no part in it, and I will not speculate why matters were handled as they were."
A spokesman for the Pentagon said Gates was "absolutely satisfied" with the way the transition was handled.

O'Beirne is uniquely responsible for one of the biggest clusterfucks of the entire Bush era - the irresponsible and nakedly ideological hirings at the Coalition Provisional Authority shortly after the invasion. He was the guy that asked applicants their views on Roe v. Wade to make sure they were able to build the traffic system in Baghdad. As Billmon says,

In other words, Jim O’Beirne did as much as anyone in the US government -- and more than most -- to turn the first few years of the Iraq occupation into a complete clusterfuck, thereby contributing to the deaths of thousands of US troops and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Iraqi civilians. All for the greater political glory of George W. Bush and the Republican Party. And now he’s throwing a hissy fit because "the opposition" is getting an early start on shoveling the cow crap out of the stable?

"O'Beirne made it clear in the email that in some cases of dismissal, he thinks the employee's politics played a role in their being let go."

What can you say? Your modern conservative movement: Clueless, humorless, self-absorbed assholes, right to the bitter end.

The only regret here is that all 250 political appointees aren't being led to the door right away, though obviously with two wars we can't leave the entire cupboard bare immediately. Hopefully there will be an expedited hiring process, with the first casualty, one would hope, to be Jim O'Beirne.

Emanuel's Power-Grabbing Mistake

I agree with the consensus that the Blagojevich/Obama "scandal" was basically manufactured, and the media ran with it because scandalmongering is really all they know, but I find it hard to continue with the story without acknowledging that Rahm Emanuel is implicated, though on a level wholly separate from Obama's Senate seat. Indeed it is becoming more and more clear that Emanuel wanted help from Blagojevich in making sure Rahm's House seat would be available to him after he finished his stint as White House Chief of Staff.

In addition to talking with Gov. Blagojevich about who would fill President-elect Barack Obama's Senate seat, Obama's newly minted chief of staff had something else on his mind: his own congressional seat.

Just after accepting the top post with Obama, Rahm Emanuel discussed with Blagojevich the possibility of keeping his congressional seat "warm" for him for a couple of years, the Sun-Times has learned.

Emanuel expressed interest in returning one day to his elected position because he was on track to become U.S. House speaker, the Sun-Times previously reported [...]

Days after Emanuel and Blagojevich spoke about Emanuel's seat, the governor is overheard telling aides on secret wiretaps he wanted Emanuel "to get the word today," about raising money for the governor and that when "[Emanuel] asks me for the Fifth CD thing, I want it to be in his head." The "Fifth CD" was a reference to Emanuel's 5th Congressional District seat.

Blagojevich couldn't appoint a successor to Emanuel. But he held the seat before Rahm did, and between the two of them, there is plenty of local power that could be leveraged.

This business with IL-05 wasn't included in the Obama transition report about contacts between their office and Blagojevich's. Marcy Wheeler thinks that was a real mistake because it's bound to come up more and more as this scandal drags on. In fact, Blagojevich's lawyers want Emanuel to testify in the impeachment hearings, where that contact could certainly re-emerge:

In a dramatic development in the ongoing impeachment proceedings, lawyers for Gov. Rod Blagojevich want two key aides to President-elect Barack Obama and U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. to testify before the House impeachment committee.

Sources tell CBS 2 that a letter sent by Blagojevich's lawyers to committee chairman, State Rep. Barbara Currie, asks that the committee subpoena Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and Jackson.

Blagojevich is merely riding the scandal wave by pushing focus onto the more enticing aspects of the probe, like Emanuel and Jackson, rather than the repeated and numerous proposed pay-for-play schemes with local hospitals, the Chicago Tribune, etc.

The press clearly wants to extend this story and now they have a vehicle - focusing on Emanuel's conduct and trying to get that to rub off on Obama. I really hope that it was worth it to Emanuel to potentially damage an incoming President just because he was more interested in his personal aggrandizement and hopes for becoming House Speaker.

Fortunately, there's another committed progressive looking at the IL-05 seat, one who would be the polar opposite of Rahm Emanuel if he wins. Labor lawyer and author Thomas Geoghegan is exploring a run, and he has a long record of fighting for working people and exposing Republican hypocrisy. His single piece of proposed legislation, to allow workers to sue management in court for union-busting activities, is enough on which to hang a whole campaign, if you ask me.

And the Story Is?

I don't know what to say about the Obama transition report about his team's contacts with Gov. Blagojevich. They claimed there was nothing untoward on their part and the report confirms it. It's an internal report and so if it said anything different then we'd have a whole new kind of self-incriminating elite running things in the White House come January. At the same time, the whole speculation is tiresome, and while a continuance of it is concerning, I think this is a case of the traditional media punching themselves out. The futile search for "questions" to be followed by more "questions" is dwarfed by the severity of the financial crisis, and the fact that Patrick Fitzgerald moves at his own deliberate pace means that this is not a story that will be fed by a trickle of leaks.

I'm sure I'm not contemplating the lengths to which the traditional media will stoop to undermine a new President, or how they can spin endless amounts of bullshit about essentially nothing, but this story isn't really poised to catch fire from my viewpoint (though I could be wrong). Before this report came out, sizable amounts of people think Obama's team was "involved" (whatever that means) in discussions with Blago's people and it didn't change their opinion of Obama a bit. What will constrain Obama's ability to govern is a Republican phalanx dedicated to obstructionism, not this non-event.

UPDATE: See also. I don't know if AdNags is necessarily right, but what's important is that he THINKS he's right, which means there's a possibility that the enduring narrative will be "The GOP can't lay a glove on Obama." This furthers a "Republicans in disarray" meme as Nagourney extracts quotes of them sniping at each other. And people like me will be able to say "keep trying with this stuff, it's not working."

The Strange Disappearance of Howard Dean

This is a great piece by Ari Berman of The Nation about Howard Dean. For all the thoughts in early 2005 that Dean would be an erratic chair of the DNC, he came in with a very tightly focused plan and he enacted it brilliantly. He wanted to strengthen state parties, implement the technology necessary to reach voters, and put organizers in the field throughout the country, surmising that most of life is showing up and that you have to offer Americans everywhere a choice. It succeeded pretty well.

It almost feels like ancient history, but "four years ago the Democratic Party was in a very different condition," Doctor Dean says at the beginning of his talk at the Y. Republicans had just retained the White House, gained four seats in the Senate and three in the House, and held twenty-eight governorships. Bill Frist was Senate majority leader, Dennis Hastert was House Speaker, George Bush's approval rating was at a healthy 50 percent and Karl Rove planned a "permanent Republican majority." It was "not a fun time to be a Democrat," Dean cracks.

How quickly things change. Four years later Democrats elected Obama with 67 million votes. They picked up seven seats in the Senate (with Minnesota still pending at press time)and twenty-one in the House, and they hold sixty of ninety-nine state legislative chambers. Obama's extraordinary campaign and Bush's remarkable mishandling of the country's domestic and foreign policies deserve much of the credit for the Democratic Party's resurgence, but so does Howard Dean. Before virtually any major politician, Dean not only sensed that the era of Republican ascendancy could be stopped but also how to do it, first through his trailblazing though unsuccessful presidential campaign of 2004, and then through his forceful stewardship of the party as DNC chair since 2005. "Dean gave the party a mission and a focus," says Paul Tewes, a top Obama strategist who ran day-to-day operations at the DNC during the general election. "That's a big deal when you're out of power." DNC member Donna Brazile calls Dean "one of the unsung heroes of this moment."

So unsung, in fact, that he has nothing to do now. Dean was never well-liked by the Beltway press (it's shocking how little he appeared on television despite being the DNC chair) or the Democratic establishment, and with people like Rahm Emanuel (who publicly sparred with Dean) back in power, Dean has basically been nudged out. The organizers in the states are on a leave of absence and nobody knows if that investment will continue. Obama basically emulated Dean's 50-state strategy and he might feel he can do it by himself now without any use of the former chair's strategies (I think the states like having the organizers, and the state party chairs will be very vocal in asking for it to continue).

It would be a mistake. Dean not only has a continued following among the grassroots, but he obviously has the skill to recognize how to pull off a national strategy to take back the country for Democrats and progressive values. That would come in handy as a governing strategy, don't you think?

Boyz In The LaHood

So the second Republican has been tapped for President-elect Obama's cabinet - former Illinois Congressman Ray LaHood as Transportation Secretary. In past Administrations, the Transportation Secretary hasn't been that powerful a job and has been a dumping ground for the inevitable token member from the opposite party. Heck, even Bush had Democrat Norman Mineta installed there. However, with the focus on infrastructure improvements being central to Obama's economic recovery platform, and with a lot of that going to rail and transit, DOT might be more important this time around. And it's being handed to a Republican. Of course, there's an open question about how involved LaHood would be on those infrastructure issues, rather than the normal work of DOT, a lot of which involves air travel.

The reception has been mixed. Streetsblog is not impressed.

We've been calling around to Congressional staffers, advocates and insiders to get a better sense of what Obama's appointment of Ray LaHood as transportation secretary means for those pushing for sustainable transport, smart growth, livable streets. While no one is giving up hope on the Obama administration a month before the inauguration, the general consensus is pretty clear. As one insider summed it up: "It's a real read-it-and-weep moment."

The selection of a downstate Illinois Republican with close ties to highway lobby stalwart Caterpillar Inc. is being taken by many as a clear sign that progressive transportation policy is, for now, nowhere near the top of the Obama's agenda.

"Obama still hasn't made the transportation - land use - climate connection," Petra Todorovich, director of Regional Plan Association’s America 2050 program said. "It's clear he's thinking about these things in separate categories." For Todorovich and other advocates, the LaHood pick was the second shoe to drop this week. The first piece of bad news arrived on Monday when Obama trotted out his "green dream team," his appointments to key environmental, energy and climate posts, and the transportation secretary was nowhere to be found.

Friends of the Earth is a little more hopeful:

“Congressman LaHood’s challenge is great. He must ensure U.S. transportation policy supports, rather than undercuts, the Obama administration’s goals on energy and climate change. This means he must work closely with Obama’s nominees for the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency, and with Obama’s new energy and climate czar, Carol Browner.

“While his overall record on energy and environment issues is poor, LaHood has in recent years broken with many in his party to support crucial investments in passenger rail and public transportation, and he is a member of the Congressional Bike Caucus. These are reasons to hope that he may be open to the visionary transportation policy that is needed to move our country forward.

“Friends of the Earth looks forward to working with Congressman LaHood to bring about such a policy.”

I think it's clear that Obama doesn't connect green policy and transportation policy, but it's probably because his green thinking outweighs the thinking on transportation. I don't think LaHood will have much of a power center. He is moderate for a Republican, and he has promoted expanded rail and transit funding in recent years, so I don't think he'll be an obstacle to that either. At some point, however, Streetsblog is right: to truly remake our energy future we need to provide options to alter the way we live - with smart growth, proper land use and livable streets. The era of suburban sprawl cannot continue because our efforts on reining in greenhouse gas emissions will collapse. DOT actually could play a valuable role in setting that policy, but Obama doesn't want to go there. His urban background, however, suggests he understands the importance of it, both for the economy, the environment and quality of life. So we'll see.

...just to round out the cabinet, there's former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk as US Trade Representative. I think it was clear with Xavier Becerra's remarks when he turned down the job that Obama didn't really think trade was a first- or second-order priority, and he didn't connect trade to our larger economic problems, so this may be another area where the pick doesn't entirely matter since that policy will be attacked from a different angle.

Blinding Me With Science

Politico has a piece today on Obama's cabinet being a middle-of-the-roader's dream. I guess that's true, and it's not entirely unexpected. Obama always told us who he was throughout the campaign, despite the hopes of those inclined to spin his cultural uniqueness into obvious progressivism.

But I would argue that this centrism is not uniform throughout the cabinet. In the green and labor spaces, the cabinet does live up to the promise of idealists for the most part. Hilda Solis is a fiery progressive at Labor, and all of the environmental picks are pretty solid. Most of all, we have a President who clearly values science and pays attention to scientific reason. That's a major change from the past eight years. The Presidential Science Advisor is going to be a Harvard physicist, and the head of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) will be a marine biologist and MacArthur genius grant recipient.

John P. Holdren, a Harvard physicist best known as a strong proponent of cutting greenhouse gas emissions and a specialist on energy technology policy and nuclear nonproliferation, has been chosen to be Mr. Obama’s science adviser, according to two people close to Dr. Holdren and one person involved in the decision [...] Also, Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist at Oregon State University and longtime contact of mine on marine conservation issues and climate, will be nominated by Mr. Obama to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Dr. Holdren has long been pressing for prompt action to curb greenhouse gas emissions and advance research on non-polluting energy sources. He has told me in the past that he consciously eschewed getting involved with the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to maintain an independent view of the science.

This is how Dr. Holdren described his stance to me in 2007: “I am one of those who believes that any reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date look at the evidence makes clear that civilization has already generated dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system…. What keeps me going is my belief that there is still a chance of avoiding catastrophe.”

You can add this to Dr. Stephen Chu, the new Energy Secretary, and you have a cadre of scientists who understand the very real dangers for planetary sustainability that come with continued burning of harmful greenhouse gases. We have to reduce the CO2 burden on the planet and come up with a new energy future that doesn't just reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but on fossil fuels entirely. A recent climate study by the American Geophysicist Union makes it clear that an American return to native fuels like coal would be disastrous for the world.

Some commentators have argued that falling reserves of oil and gas will automatically limit CO2's rise.
But at an American Geophysical Union meeting, researchers said reserves of coal dwarfed those of other fuels.

It was even possible oil's demise could trigger an acceleration in emissions through more coal use, they added.

"We can replace oil with liquid fuels derived from coal," said Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University in California.

"But these liquid fuels emit even more carbon dioxide than oil, so the end of oil can mean an increase in coal and even more carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, and even more rapid onset of dangerous climate change."

In the past, there would be nobody in the highest reaches of government to stop the headlong rush to boost parochial interests by burning coal as somehow a way to mitigate the effects of climate change and get us off oil. But now, we have an Energy Secretary who has called coal a nightmare.

Carbon capture and storage research is still in its early stages, said Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist announced by Obama this week as his nominee to run the U.S. Department of Energy. Real-world projects to pump millions of tons of carbon dioxide might also be rejected unless scientists show it can be done safely, Chu said during an April speech.

"Coal is my worst nightmare," said Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Stanford University professor.

Chu noted that coal is the current "default option" for meeting growing energy needs in the United States, China and India. But coal is also firing continued increases in worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, even at a time when scientists say the need to dramatically reduce those emissions is critical.

"We have lots of fossil fuel," Chu said during a talk outlining his views on energy policy. "That's really both good and bad news. We won't run out of energy, but there's enough carbon in the ground to really cook us."

This is a return to SCIENCE driving policy, instead of policymakers driving a truck through science and doing whatever they want. Nothing about that is middle of the road.

...I just want to make it clear that I am not advocating living in a cave, in case you were wondering.

Neither Kinder Nor Gentler

The news that anti-gay bigot Rick Warren will be delivering the invocation at the inauguration of Barack Obama really sucks. Not necessarily because I think the invocation is such a great platform - quick, name the last ten people to do it! - but because of the likelihood that Warren will be tapped for other responsibilities when Obama becomes President, and will subsequently become the face of religion in America. And while I don't have a problem working with pastors, even those in the evangelical movement, on the common ground issues like AIDS prevention and poverty, Warren is not the one that Democrats should be elevating. He's a snake charmer who is just as extreme as a Falwell or a Robertson. Here's PFAW's release:

Pastor Warren, while enjoying a reputation as a moderate based on his affable personality and his church's engagement on issues like AIDS in Africa, has said that the real difference between James Dobson and himself is one of tone rather than substance. He has recently compared marriage by loving and committed same-sex couples to incest and pedophilia. He has repeated the Religious Right's big lie that supporters of equality for gay Americans are out to silence pastors. He has called Christians who advance a social gospel Marxists. He is adamantly opposed to women having a legal right to choose an abortion.

I'm sure that Warren's supporters will portray his selection as an appeal to unity by a president who is committed to reaching across traditional divides. Others may explain it as a response to Warren inviting then-Senator Obama to speak on AIDS and candidate Obama to appear at a forum, both at his church. But the sad truth is that this decision further elevates someone who has in recent weeks actively promoted legalized discrimination and denigrated the lives and relationships of millions of Americans.

Liberals just aren't going to see eye to eye with Rick Warren. There's no compromise to be made. This is a guy who recently agreed that Iran needs to be "taken out" in language that is not discernible from a mullah. This guy does not need to be made the kinder, gentler face of the evangelical movement, in a cynical play for support that will not be forthcoming. It's a big mistake.

Industry Moles

The Obama transition team is having people organize house parties to give their thoughts on health care reform. They are open, deliberative processes. So of course the insurance industry is seeking to sabotage them.

The health insurance industry is encouraging its employees and satisfied customers to attend. A trade group representing some of the nation’s largest health care businesses, including drug companies, is organizing several meetings. The American Medical Association and other medical societies are encouraging doctors to get involved.

The Maine Medical Association will convene a community discussion on Dec. 30. Group Health Cooperative of Seattle has sent e-mail messages to 35,000 subscribers encouraging their participation, and one of its doctors plans to lead a session next Tuesday.

The meetings, originally envisioned as a way to make good on Mr. Obama’s commitment to “health care reform that comes from the ground up,” could thus turn into living-room lobbying sessions involving some of the biggest stakeholders in the health care industry.

In general this is highly unlikely to really accomplish anything; it's a lot easier to bullshit politicians than your friends and neighbors, especially when everyone has personal experience interfacing with our broken health care system. I think that it's a very positive sign that the industry thinks they have to show up to these things at all. In another time, community meetings would not be seen as a threat to their business model. What this signals to me is that the industry is worried about the seriousness of the Obama team to overhaul health care, and they're trying whatever they can think of to subvert it.

Ultimately, I think they'll have to relent, but they'll key in on one element of the plan and target it for elimination: the public option. My own qualified support for what's been floating around in Democratic circles - the shared responsibility plan that is not single payer - relies on that public option (as well as serious, legitimate cost controls). If it goes, that would be a major setback to reform and would make the overall plan little more than a forced market funneling consumers to insurers.

Republicans also debated whether one aspect of Obama's health care proposal, giving people the option of buying a public health care plan, would weaken the private insurance market.

Mark Hayes, a Republican health policy adviser to the Senate Finance Committee, said Republicans have concerns because the government plan might have access to price controls and other tools not available to private insurers. This could lead to lower premiums in the government plan, which would cause most consumers to migrate out of the private market, he said.

"Over time the effect the government option could have [is an] erosion in the private market, [making] other choices not available," Hayes said.

Calling this government-backed plan one of the "radioactive fault lines" that has developed in discussions on the overhaul, McDonough suggested Democrats would be willing to look at other options.

"What is the purpose behind the proposal? The purpose . . . is [public plans are] one of the most important devices out there to provide cost accountability," McDonough said. "Maybe there are other way to achieve those ends."

Ezra explains that McDonough is John McDonough, Ted Kennedy's senior health adviser. He appears to be bargaining away the public option EXTREMELY early. Given this, I don't see why insurers are so keen on astroturfing the community meetings. They may have already won.

This would be a good question for the next round of "Open for Questions" at the President-elect's website.

Vilsack.

In his eleventy-teenth press conference (probably more than the current President has done since 2006), Barack Obama will announce today that Ken Salazar will be the Secretary of the Interior, and Tom Vilsack will be the Secretary of Agriculture. I went over Salazar yesterday. Vilsack is probably a better pick than a couple of the others floated for this job, but as a former Iowa governor it's unlikely he'll do anything but the status quo on corn policy, which is easily the worst part of our food policy (If I wasn't clear enough, I'm talking about ethanol and biofuels, which expend more energy than they produce). I agree with Mick Kristof that the name ought to be changed to the Department of Food. We are not nearly the agricultural society that we were when the Department was launched, and a focus on food would be much more relevant to, er, the eaters. Our food policy, where we pay subsidies to farmers not to grow and subsidize the corn growers beyond all reason, is very out of whack. Industrial factory farms and their lobbyists set the policy. We could limit subsidies to the richest farmers and create a new food culture based on eating locally and supporting organic farming. A good manifesto for a saner food policy is here.

I don't think Vilsack is going to promote this drastic a change. I'm sure he's competent, and hopefully open to new ideas, but I don't see a revolution on the horizon. That said, his name is fun to say!