Newshoggers.com

Portents of the police state

By Libby

Fascism doesn't arrive overnight. By design, it creeps in by increments. Every week brings something new.

A recently passed law requires that Texas computer-repair technicians have a private-investigator license, according to a story posted by a Dallas-Fort Worth CW affiliate.

In order to obtain said license, technicians must receive a criminal justice degree or participate in a three-year apprenticeship. Those shops that refuse to participate will be forced to shut down. Violators of the new law can be hit with a $4,000 dollar fine and up to a year in jail, penalties that apply to customers who seek out their services.

I can't think of any reason for this rule other than to shut down small entrepeneurs and to facilitate searches of your hard drive when you bring it in for repairs. I assume the PI license would validate evidence obtained in such a search in some way.

Even more disturbing is this wider surveillance program deputizing municipal employees and utility workers as quasi-Homeland Security agents.

Hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and even utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado and a handful of other states to hunt for “suspicious activity” — and are reporting their findings into secret government databases. [...]

“Suspicious activity” is broadly defined in TLO training as behavior that could lead to terrorism: taking photos of no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements or notes, espousing extremist beliefs or conversing in code, according to a draft Department of Justice/Major Cities Chiefs Association document.

A lot of room for interpretation in those rules. Think about that. They're building a citizen's surveillance system with such broad parameters that any ordinary dissenter could fit the profile.

This is how they build the state. No one thing is so alarming as to to seem worth causing a fuss over. But taken in the aggregate, it quietly grows into totalitarianism.

What conservatism has wrought

By Libby

Since Cernig has already flagged Andrew Bacevich's excellent op-ed this morning, let me send you to Shaun Mullen who has a bullet list of his own showing how the GOP's "Contract with America," designed to combat the 'destructive' influence of the dirty 'effin hippies, worked out for us. Go to the link for the full list, but here's a few of my favorites.

* Tax cuts for the rich at the expense of everyone else, including programs like Head Start that actually work.
* Economic policies the reward Wall Street and punish Main Street.
* Despite 9/11, a flimsy homeland security apparatus and a military that is focused not on defense but projecting American might.
* An energy policy predicated on foreign oil and global warming denial.
* Using their bully pulpit not to lead and inspire but to feign piety, sow fear and wage culture wars.

As for us dirty, 'effin, pot-smoking hippies, they solved that problem by throwing most of us into the now largest prison system in the world. Quite a legacy, but hardly one to be proud of. When I look at these lists I wonder why anyone would be willing to publicly admit they support the Republican party. It's become the antithesis of everything that once defined what made this country great.

Big Brother - Eyes in the Sky

By Libby

While we're busy fighting off FISA surveillance the White House has been quietly pursuing an even more disturbing domestic spying program that's said to be capable of taking very high-resolution photographs of buildings, vehicles and people.

A Bush administration program to expand domestic use of Pentagon spy satellites has aroused new concerns in Congress about possible civil-liberties abuses.

On Tuesday, the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment denying money for the new domestic intelligence operation—cryptically named the "National Applications Office"—until the Homeland Security secretary certifies that any programs undertaken by the center will "comply with all existing laws, including all applicable privacy and civil liberties standards."

Considering the administration's track record, I think we can safely assume that no matter what assurances they give, the chances are great that they will simply ignore the laws and do whatever the hell they want. Certainly, the DHS spokesmouth issues the all too familiar standard Bushspeak.

But Russ Knocke, a Homeland Security spokesman, told Newsweek that fears about the program are unfounded. "We've repeatedly met with Congress to answer questions about the NAO," he said. "As we have said, the purpose of the NAO is not to expand existing legal authorities. Rather, it will allow the government to better and more efficiently prioritize the use of scarce resources in support of major disasters, homeland security efforts and perhaps—in the future—law enforcement. We have also been clear that we would brief Congress before moving to support law enforcement. Efforts to further stall the NAO are misguided and keep us from making the best use of overhead imagery for a number of public safety and security missions."

Just as with every other Fourth Amendment breaching 'security program' this administration has foisted off on us from the Patriot Act onward, they need this to keep us safe from bad people and horrible disasters and the potential to use it to get around longstanding legal safeguards for use in ordinary law enforcement is so remote as to be barely worth mentioning. Just look at all the terrorists they caught under the Patriot Act and that was never used to circumvent the law.... oh wait. And how convenient that unlike that messy FISA datamining operation, existing case law seems to allow aerial surveillance without a warrant. Not that they would dream of using it for such purposes...

It's like watching a child grow up. If you see him every day, you celebrate milestones but you don't really see the incremental changes so much as someone who only sees the kid once a year and is amazed at how much he's grown. And just as you wake up one day and wonder how that darling little tyke suddenly became a surly teenager almost unnoticed, if we allow these programs to stealthily proliferate we'll wake up one day to a full grown police state. By then it will be too late to stop it.

I'm glad to see the funding blocked for now. I would like even more to see some legislation banning the use of the program for ordinary law enforcement, before it gets off the ground. [h/t to our invaluable researcher, Kat]

'Crap cannon' on tap for Denver

By Libby

So far, it's a just a rumor but activists planning rallies outside the Democratic convention are concerned that a crowd control weapon commonly known as the 'crap cannon', so named for its rumored ability to loosen the bowels, might be deployed by the police against them. That aspect may be overstated but it is clearly a metabolically disruptive weapon intended to affect large groups of people indiscriminately. Certainly a problem as there will surely be children and elderly people in the crowds and anyone just passing by and not involved in the protests would also be affected.

Cohen, who described Brown Note as a “sonic weapon used to disrupt people’s equilibrium,” cited eyewitness accounts of its use during free-trade agreement protests in Miami in 2003.

“I think these weapons were mostly intended for military use and so their use for dealing with innocent protesters seems highly inappropriate,” he said. “The idea that they might be field testing them on people who are doing nothing more than exercising their first amendment rights is disturbing.”

Even more disturbing is the " 'Active Denial System' or 'ADS,' a ray gun used to send high levels of microwave frequencies that cause a burning sensation the skin." This has been under development for some time now and it's also being rumored it will tested in Denver prior to being approved for use in Iraq.

It begins to sound less like crowd control and more like practice for martial law all the time. One can only hope these rumors are unfounded but with a $50 million federal grant for security, half of which the city intends to spend on equipment, they're obviously going to be on the streets with serious firepower. This purchase hardly made a dent in those funds.

Denver police are stocking up on guns that fire a pepper spray-like substance instead of bullets - a less-lethal weapon used to disperse crowds - in advance of the Democratic National Convention. The department recently ordered 88 Mark IV launchers and projectiles at a cost "in the low six figures," the company that makes the weapons stated in a news release Monday.

So what do you suppose they're buying with the rest of that money? The city refuses to tell for 'security reasons.'  Sound familiar?

One wonders why they're anticipating so much mayhem in the first place. I don't know what groups are planning actions, but we've have dozens of demonstrations in the last four years without any large incidents of mass violence. Our law enforcement system is slowly being transformed from a public protection service into a quasi-military control force being used as a weapon against the citzenry. It's not good.

Zombie Bush will live forever

By Fester:

Paul Krugman in his column today notes that the Bush administration tax cuts and squanderous fiscal policy has produced a political poison pill that greatly reduces future option space:

I realized that the tax cuts enacted by the Bush administration are, in effect, a fiscal poison pill aimed at future administrations. True, the tax cuts won’t prevent a change in management — the Constitution sees to that. But they will make it hard for the next president to change the country’s direction.... Anyway, back to my main theme: looking at the tax proposals of the two presidential candidates, it’s remarkable and disheartening to see how effective President Bush’s fiscal poison pill has been in restricting the terms of debate.

And why be shocked at this realization. It is the same pattern of behavior that is driving the negoatiations for the Status of Forces agreement in Iraq --- lock the next admininstration into Bush's prefered course of action by creating institutional inertia behind a horrendous policy set.

And why be shocked at the SOFA --- it is the same pattern of behavior that we have seen with the changing criteria of Republican judges since the Reagan Era --- find reaonably pliant and pliable young judges without a whole lot of paper trail but the right right wing credentials and seat them on the court for thirty to forty years.

All of these steps are attempts to create gatekeepers and to charge economic, political and military rents even after the policy's support has collapsed. And it is a pattern of behavior that is to be expected.

The relevant question is how to deal with these rent seeking opportunities? I have little faith in the Democratic Congress to stand for its prerogatives by insisting that the SOFA as a full fledged security guarantee is and should be voted upon as a treaty in the Senate. I have little faith in the Congress in standing for the Constitution as Glenn Greenwald so ably demonstrates today.

I have little faith that these poison pills will be spat out and crushed in time's dust.

Your Subserviance is now required....

By Fester:

TSA has a new policy that is not a security policy.  It is a policy of ritualistic humiliation and subservience enforcement. 

Beginning Saturday, June 21, 2008 passengers that willfully refuse to provide identification at security checkpoint will be denied access to the secure area of airports. This change will apply exclusively to individuals that simply refuse to provide any identification or assist transportation security officers in ascertaining their identity.

This new procedure will not affect passengers that may have misplaced, lost or otherwise do not have ID but are cooperative with officers. Cooperative passengers without ID may be subjected to additional screening protocols, including enhanced physical screening, enhanced carry-on and/or checked baggage screening, interviews with behavior detection or law enforcement officers and other measures. [emphasis mine] (Via Outside the Beltway)

So if I am understanding this press release correctly the policy is that if an individual is nice and subservient to a TSA official, an arrangement can be made, but if the individual is perceived to be an asshole or insufficiently deferential to TSA, they are out of luck. 

This is not a security procedure unless there is an amazing model out that which proves all potential security threats are by definition visible and loud assholes.  We saw with the 9-11 hijackers that this is not the case; they attempted to blend in and not draw too much official attention to themselves.  We know how the KGB trained their NOCs to be normal and quiet but not too quiet individuals.

This is an absurd security policy. If it was a security policy, the workarounds available to cooperative passengers who forgot their ID would also be available to the non-cooperative individuals.   However it is a policy that asserts dominance.

BJ in a great post looking at Canadian stun gun usage also notes the same basic trend.  The use of force is increasing and the threshold of force utilization is decreasing:

But despite the new rules, the percentage of Taser incidents in which the weapon was fired multiple times crept up from 42 per cent in 2005 to 45 per cent in 2007.

The investigation also revealed that in 2,200 of the 3,000 RCMP Taser incidents between 2002 and 2007, the person the Mounties were dealing with was unarmed.[Emp Added]

It's clear that the Taser is being used more for pain compliance than for actual threats. 

Using a firearm is a very high cost action for a cop.  It is a life or death decision as cops are taught to aim for center of body mass which means the chest which means the aimpoint has a high probability of killing an individual.  However tasers, stun guns and pepper sprays have much lower costs of usage as they are probabilistically less likely to cause death or lasting injury.  This, unsurprisingly, means a much higher utilization of weapons in significantly less threatening situations.  It also lowers the cost of pain compliance and humiliation.

Ahh welcome to a world of fear and abuse of power enabled by fear.  Make sure your papers are in good order and the official is in a good mood....   

Oil Facts

By Ron Beasley

Once again we are hearing rants of outrage about the inability to drill in ANWR.  Yesterday Dyre Reports took a look at what impact drilling in ANWR would have today (and keep in mind if drilling were approved we would not see a drop for 7 to 10 years). 

ANWR is estimated to be able to produce two million barrels of oil a day. Since America uses about 20 million barrels a day thats a pretty impressive amount. The problem is that that the Alaskan pipeline can only transport 2.1 million barrels a day and its already moving an average of 650k barrels a day which means its remaining capacity for carrying oil produced from drilling at ANWR would be 1,450,000 barrels on average. Thats still a good bit. However the additional problem is that since crude oil's price is set by a world wide market that currently consumes roughly 90 million barrels a day. So even if all of ANWR's oil is used only by Americans (say through a clause in the drilling rights lease) then it would only offset an equivalent amount of imported oil (a good thing) however it would only represent a 1.6 percent increase in global supply thereby resulting in an equal price drop. With gas currently at four dollars a gallon that would only equal a 6.4 cent per gallon decrease in prices.

According to the Department of Energy the impact would be even less, less than 75 cents on a barrel of crude.  Of course by the time the first ANWR oil hit the market we will all be driving electric cars anyway.  Assuming the amount of oil is 10 billion barrels and that 2 million barrels can be pumped a day ANWR could supply 1.6 percent of the worlds oil supply for about 13 years.  If you think that ANWR may not be worth it you would not be alone.  The major oil companies have little or no interest in ANWR - it has been used as a political football over the years in an attempt to get what the oil companies really want, to drill on the continental shelf off of California and Florida.

The Wall Street Journal gives it away today:

While energy "independence" is an impossible dream, there's no doubt the U.S. has vast undeveloped fossil-fuel deposits. A tiny corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge contains an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil and would be the largest producing oil field in the Northern Hemisphere. Yet the Senate blocked that development as recently as last month. The Outer Continental Shelf is estimated to contain some 86 billion barrels of oil, plus 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Yet of the shelf's 1.76 billion acres, 85% is off-limits and 97% is undeveloped.

Did you get that?  eight times more oil in areas that are much easier (cheaper) to develop - that's what the oil companies want but that is being blocked, not by Congress but the States themselves.  That has resulted in an brand new blatant lie for the big oil Republican supporters.

Update

House Republicans vow push on oil drilling

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional Republicans vowed on Thursday to make a major push for more U.S. oil and gas drilling and in the process force Democrats to cast difficult votes at a time of skyrocketing gasoline prices.

With the November congressional and presidential elections looming, Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives are blaming each other for rising energy costs and gasoline prices that are topping $4 a gallon.

Republicans cited Democratic opposition to opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and more offshore areas to oil and gas exploration and drilling.

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said Republicans would try to raise public awareness and force more votes on the issue. He said Republicans would back a comprehensive approach of more oil and gas drilling as well as energy conservation and moves toward alternative fuels supported by Democrats.

"Over the next five months, House Republicans will fight every single day to hold Democrats accountable for their dismal record on producing more energy in our country," Boehner told reporters.

Bring it on.  It's going to be difficult when their own presidential candidate doesn't support it.  If they come up with one that includes Florida they write that state off in November.

GOP claim about Chinese oil drilling off Cuba is untrue

WASHINGTON — As Congress has debated energy policy over the past several days, an unusual argument keeps surfacing in support of drilling off the U.S. coastline and in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Why, ask some Republicans, should the United States be thwarted from drilling in its own territory when just 50 miles off the Florida coastline the Chinese government is drilling for oil under Cuban leases?

Yet no one can prove that the Chinese are drilling anywhere off Cuba's shoreline. The China-Cuba connection is "akin to urban legend," said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida who opposes drilling off the coast of his state but who backs exploration in ANWR.

"China is not drilling in Cuba's Gulf of Mexico waters, period," said Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Martinez cited Pinon's research when he took to the Senate floor Wednesday to set the record straight.

Even so, the Chinese-drilling-in-Cuba legend has gained momentum and has been swept up in Republican arguments to open up more U.S. territory to domestic production.

Update:  MojoBlog has more.

The Wall Street Journal article throws in another red herring, oil from shale.  As I pointed out in Oil Shale - a really bad idea for a serious problem the oil shale in the US cannot be developed.

There are of course several problems with oil shale production.

1. It is still a hydrocarbon and will do nothing to reduce our carbon footprint.
2. The environmental impact over several thousand square miles will be devastating.
3. The production requires water - lots of it.

I'm going to concentrate on number three today - that is enough to make it impractical.

The oil shale is located in the Green River formation which is located in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Colorado, which has most of the shale, already has a serious water problem which will only get worse over time.

More on this can be found here.

Gitmo Interrogators Told To Destroy Torture Notes

By Cernig

A military lawyer assigned as a defending counsel in the Gitmo trails has made a sworn affadavit that he saw documentation instructing interrogators to destroy their notes to stop them potentially being used to highlight the mistreatment of detainees.

William Kuebler, a lieutenant commander who is defending Omar Khadr, a Canadian national facing trial for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, said the classified instructions were included in an operations manual he was allowed to see by prosecutors last week.

The apparently wilful and officially sanctioned destruction of notes meant he would be unable to challenge supposed confessions given by Khadr, Kuebler said yesterday.

He told reporters the instruction was contained within a US military manual of standard operating procedures, or SOPs, for interrogators that was shown to him during a pre-trial review of possible evidence.

"The mission has legal and political issues that may lead to interrogators being called to testify … Keeping the number of documents with interrogation information to a minimum can minimise certain legal issues," the document was cited as saying in an affidavit signed by Kuebler.

The navy lawyer now plans to seek a dismissal of charges against 21-year-old Khadr, who was detained in Afghanistan aged 15.

Khadr, who faces a series of charges including murder for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a US special forces soldier in 2002, is set to be one of the first Guantánamo detainees to face a war crimes trial.

Kuebler said the way the interrogations were carried out was central to Khadr's case because prosecutors were relying largely on testimony obtained from him at Guantánamo, and earlier at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

"If handwritten notes were destroyed in accordance with the SOP, the government intentionally deprived Omar's lawyers of key evidence with which to challenge the reliability of his statements," Kuebler said.

Yet more evidence of this administration's contempt for the rule of law.

Heavy Handed Recruitment

By Cernig

Brandon Friedman has a must-read on how Army Career Counsellors are trying to intimidate veterans into re-upping by threatening that they can either go voluntarily or against their will - and if the Army has to come looking for them, they'll get combat tours.

How does he know? Well, for one thing, two of the counsellors came 'round to play good cop/bad cop with his mom.

Niiiice.

Media morons inartfully dodge their malfeasance

By Libby

While I remain completely unimpressed by McLellan's mea culpa, I'm liking that our malingering media are being forced to account for their own failures to inform the public of the deceits leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Not that they're taking the scrutiny particularly seriously. The major culprits are laughing it off and adding insult to injury.

Politico reporter Mike Allen, formerly of The Washington Post and Time, appeared yesterday on the show of right-wing radio host Mike Gallagher. The two of them guffawed together at how absurd are Scott McCellan's claims that the media was "deferential" to the Bush administration and then Allen said this:

ALLEN: And indeed, Scott does adopt the vocabulary, rhetoric of the left wing haters. Can you believe it in here he says the White House press corps was too deferential to the administration?

This was exactly the narrative they were plying back then that allowed this disaster to occur. Anyone who dared question the White House lies was a left wing hater and besides it's not their job to question authority. They were of the mind that they deserved their bloated salaries for mere stenography. And it wasn't just in the runup to the invasion that they failed us. They continued their fluffing right through the 04 elections. One had to go to the foreign press to find a functioning media. Take for instance, the attack on Richard Clarke, who blew the whistle on Bush's long pre-planned invasion of Iraq.

The swiftness and ferocity of the Bush White House's attack on Richard Clarke tells you two things: his story may be largely true, and the Bush administration is terrified that the American people will believe it. [...]

The White House did not let a single news cycle go by before questioning that the alleged encounter between the president and Clarke had ever taken place, assigning dark motives to a man who has served four presidents, three of them Republicans.

And the self-serving US media stars, along with their pet neo-cons, jumped right in with their long knives to stab Clarke in the back. Small wonder so few thereafter showed any similiar courage, although the knowledge of the deceptions was widespread.

"The conversation absolutely took place. I was there, but you can't name me," the witness said. "I was one of several people present. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that the president had Iraq on his mind, first and foremost." This former national security council official was too terrified to go on the record - he knows how vengeful this administration can be.

Former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill paid the price for truthtelling with his account of "how the Bush White House set its sights on Iraq from day one." Rumsfeld threatened him and when he failed to kowtow, he "instantly became the target of an investigation by his former department, which claimed that he had revealed state secrets."

Yet the facts were obvious and irrefutable. "The fact that the Pentagon pulled the fighting force most equipped for hunting down Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan in March 2002 in order to pre- position it for Iraq cannot be denied." After spending five months establishing rapport on the ground in Afghanistan, the elite unit was given two days notice to turn over their mission to those most ill-equipped to carry it out. But this was probably the most egregious failure.

Along with the redeployment of human assets came a reallocation of sophisticated hardware. The US air force has only two specially-equipped RC135 U spy planes. They had successfully vectored in on al-Qaida leadership radio transmissions and cellphone calls, but they would no longer circle over the mountains of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.

We had AQ in our sights. We could have taken out bin Laden, actually won the so-called on terror right there, but Bush had other priorites, long in the planning. Back then, few expected our media to become so complicit in the lie, but they not only allowed the Bush administration to proclaim "it was the only qualified protector of national security," they actively persecuted the truthtellers on the administration's behalf. The Guardian said then that, "Sooner or later - and certainly before November - that truth will out." But it didn't out, it was buried in reams of White House press releases dutifully transcribed by a craven press corps too enamored of their own place on the guest lists of the powerful to do their duty to their profession or the American people.

Yesterday, Scott McClellan ran into Richard Clarke and apologized for denouncing Clarke's book at the time. That's not enough by a mile. He should set up on a street corner and apologize to every family who lost a loved one in this occupation, to every soldier who came home broken and to every Iraqi who lost everything to the lies he perpetrated in service to his former masters.

But really, that's even not enough. Almost the entire corporate media not only failed to tell the truth, they actively worked to destroy anyone brave to do so on the public record. There's no apology, no penance great enough to undo the damage and destruction caused by the negligence of McLellan and all those of his ilk in the punditry who enthusiastically 'created the reality' the White House demanded. In a sane world they would have long ago been relieved of their microphones and banished from civil society.

The New Crusaders

By Ron Beasley

Cernig touched on this below but I think it deserves a little more attention.

Iraqis claim Marines are pushing Christianity in Fallujah

FALLUJAH, Iraq — At the western entrance to the Iraqi city of Fallujah Tuesday, Muamar Anad handed his residence badge to the U.S. Marines guarding the city. They checked to be sure that he was a city resident, and when they were done, Anad said, a Marine slipped a coin out of his pocket and put it in his hand.

Out of fear, he accepted it, Anad said. When he was inside the city, the college student said, he looked at one side of the coin. "Where will you spend eternity?" it asked.

He flipped it over, and on the other side it read, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16."

"They are trying to convert us to Christianity," said Anad, a Sunni Muslim like most residents of this city in Anbar province. At home, he told his story, and his relatives echoed their disapproval: They'd been given the coins, too, he said.

The vast majority of the Iraqis already hate the American occupiers and this is like throwing gasoline on the fire.  Anything that further alienates the Iraqi population threatens the lives of US troops even more than they are threatened now.  The military says it will investigate but I'm sure the investigation will be like all the others and concentrate on some enlisted men. But it wouldn't have happened without the knowledge and help of a high ranking officer or two.  If they were to find that officer I would bet you would find someone with ties to some Christian Taliban group in the US.

The Blame Game

By Cernig

I confess I'm feeling a bit grumpy today - I'm irked by all the attention Scottie McLellan's tell-all memoir is getting.

I mean...yes, I read the Politico's report and I ruefully chuckled some at McLellan's smackdowns of the Bushies. But come on, get real.

McLellan and all the rest of the Bush administration's memoir-writers have, by and large, told us nothing of substance we didn't already know or suspect. Not one of them had the cojones to speak up while still part of the administration but they have all tried to shed blame themselves while casting it upon their former colleagues. At least we know that, if trials are ever opened at The Hague, it will be easy enough to get them all tattling about each other but did we really expect rats to act any differently? In the meantime, political chatterers have yet another distraction from what's going on right now.

I find it makes me nauseous - so much energy spent over exactly who lied where in the run-up to invading Iraq while so little is spent seriously examining the current narrative for attacking Iran running largely unchallenged in the stenographic media. "Deja vu all over again" doesn't even begin to cover it.

What privacy....

By Fester:

Just passing along two more pieces of depressing news on the expectation of privacy and civil liberties in a scared nation...

Via Angry Bear is an effort to require credit card processing companies to reconcile all accounts to catch under the table payments (usually less than $600/individual/year)

In an effort to track down unreported small business income, the U.S. Treasury is calling on Congress to create a sweeping new program that would require all credit card companies to report the income of all merchants to the Internal Revenue Service.

The proposal, raised in President Bush's FY2009 budget, would require credit card companies to report the aggregate transactions of all of their merchants (that is, all the businesses that have merchant accounts with the card companies and to whom credit card payments are made). The reports to the IRS would have to be tied to the Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) of the merchant. Many small businesses use their owners' Social Security Numbers as their TIN. A similar program aimed at Internet "brokers," including eBay and Amazon, which raised privacy concerns last year, seems to have been dropped from this year's budget proposal.

And from Spork, the enemies of the state extend beyond the small scale merchants and includes eight million undersirables:

Say hello to Main Core: According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect.

In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention. [emphasis added]

America's Waterloo

By Libby

I've been meaning to get to this story for a couple of weeks, but it's unfolded since then. David Neiwert covered the current status today and asks if this ICE raid is a harbinger of a police state. The short answer to that smart question, is yes and it's useful to look at how this raid went down. Two weeks ago the feds set up the operation in the aptly named town of Waterloo, Iowa.

Federal officials have imposed a news blackout at the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds in Waterloo, where they have leased almost the entire property through May 25. Tim Counts, a Midwest spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, declined to say Monday whether an immigration raid is pending that would use the fairgrounds as a detention center.

The Waterloo Courier on Sunday reported that contractors have installed generators adjacent to many buildings at the fairgrounds.In addition, windows on many buildings have been covered up, blocking views inside. A number of mobile-home-size trailers have been transported to the privately owned grounds.

The blackout included the state's US Senator.

At Grassley's request, his staff called ICE officials on Monday.

"During the call, the ICE officials would neither confirm nor deny anything to Senator Grassley's staff," said Beth Pellett Levine, a Grassley aide.

Then came the raid a few days ago.

Buses have begun arriving at the Cattle Congress grounds in Waterloo after hundreds were detained in an immigration raid on a Postville meatpacking plant today. Officials are not allowing media or others near the entrance. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have declined to say how many buses are being used in the raid on the Agriprocessors Inc. plant.

At least 300 people were arrested during the operation, the largest of its kind in Iowa, said Claude Arnold, a special agent with ICE. ... He said the two helicopters circling the complex were there to provide EMT support and to watch out for the agents on the ground.

A sub-contractor working at the complex said "he was on break at 10 a.m. when '200 agents' stringed into the complex." He was questioned and released but read this media description of the deployment.

Earlier this morning, a helicopter hovered over the scene, and a number of agents formed a perimeter around the Agriprocessors facility. Vehicles from ICE and at least eight cars and vans from the Iowa State Patrol were at the plant. There were also reports of two moving vans at the scene, along with an ambulance and two black Chevrolet Suburbans.

Sounds more like Baghdad than America to me. The only difference being these agents are probably wearing black instead of camouflage. But the main point is they refused to account to anyone for their actions. Today it was illegal immigrants. Tomorrow it could just as easily be political dissenters.

If you think I'm overstating my case, then read Kirk James Murphy, MD on his life with plants. Meaning government planted agitators in activist groups. They're not just watching us, they're infiltrating and they have databases -- massive databases -- on everyone.

Who Needs Rules?

By BJ

Pretty much everyone should be well aware that Iraq War spending hasn’t exactly been a model of accounting discipline. Still, it’s nice to be reminded of the sheer scale of the incompetence.

A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.

The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the United States military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash. The audit was released Thursday in tandem with a Congressional hearing on the payments.

This is apparently in addition to the nearly nine billion in cash the US flew in on pallets earlier during the conflict. And I love the examples they give at the end of the article.

Examples of the paperwork for some of those payments, displayed at the hearing, depict a system that became accustomed to making huge payments on the fly, with little oversight or attention to detail. In one instance, a United States Treasury check for $5,674,075.00 was written to pay a company called Al Kasid Specialized Vehicles Trading Company in Baghdad for items that a voucher does not even describe.

In another case, $6,268,320.07 went to the contractor Combat Support Associates with even less explanation. And a scrawl on another piece of paper says only that $8 million had been paid out as “Funds for the Benefit of the Iraqi People.”

But perhaps the masterpiece of elliptic paperwork is the document identified at the top as a “Public Voucher for Purchases and Services Other Than Personal.” It indicates that $320.8 million went for “Iraqi Salary Payment,” with no explanation of what the Iraqis were paid to do.

Whatever it was, the document suggests, each of those Iraqis was handsomely compensated. Under the “quantity” column is the number 1,000, presumably indicating the number of people who were to be paid — to the tune of $320,800 apiece — if the paperwork is to be trusted.

I can’t know for sure, of course, but I’m willing to bet that a fair number of those examples were passed around the office for people’s amusement at the sheer ridiculous incompetence they show with taxpayers’ money.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that fraud was prevalent, but it does mean that any fraud that did take place will be almost impossible to track down and prove.

It also means that the Pentagon will be reluctant to prosecute any fraud it does track down, since such a serious lack of oversight makes the Pentagon itself at least partially culpable for any such actions. After all, under such circumstances, even a relatively honest person would be likely to take advantage of the system.

Controls, the saying goes, are there to keep honest people honest. Without them, nearly everyone strays, and the fact that oversight and spending controls have been allowed to lapse in just about every government function is one of the most pervasive legacies the Bush administration is going to leave the American people.

As usual Joe Lieberman is wrong

By Ron Beasley

Joe Lieberman like Bill Kristol and the entire Bush administration has been wrong about everything.  That didn't prevent him from taking the Democrats to task on the pages of the Wall Street Journal.  Today Senator Joe Biden does a good job of taking Mr Lieberman to task on those same pages.

On Wednesday, Joe Lieberman wrote on this page that the Democratic Party he and I grew up in has drifted far from the foreign policy espoused by Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy.

In fact, it is the policies that President George W. Bush has pursued, and that John McCain would continue, that are divorced from that great tradition – and from the legacy of Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Sen. Lieberman is right: 9/11 was a pivotal moment. History will judge Mr. Bush's reaction less for the mistakes he made than for the opportunities he squandered.

The president had a historic opportunity to unite Americans and the world in common cause. Instead – by exploiting the politics of fear, instigating an optional war in Iraq before finishing a necessary war in Afghanistan, and instituting policies on torture, detainees and domestic surveillance that fly in the face of our values and interests – Mr. Bush divided Americans from each other and from the world.

But it's Joe Conason who really explains what Joe Lieberman is all about in Joe Lieberman, ideological turncoat.

Despite his boundless pretensions, Sen. Joe Lieberman is not and has never been a font of foreign policy wisdom. His opinions derive as much from expedience and vanity as any consistent worldview. He will say whatever serves his ambitions at a given moment.

Running against antiwar Democrat Ned Lamont almost two years ago, for instance, he promised Connecticut voters that we were on the cusp of victory in Iraq. "I am confident that the situation is improving enough on the ground that by the end of this year, we will begin to draw down significant numbers of American troops," he said in October 2006, "and by the end of the next year more than half of the troops who are there now will be home." Within weeks after winning that election, of course, Lieberman was joining with Sen. John McCain, his friend and ideological ally, in support of sending 30,000 additional American troops to Iraq -- and bringing exactly none home.

Was he lying when he offered that false but comforting assurance in the heat of a Senate campaign? Was he simply unable to distinguish between reality and his own propaganda? A similar set of questions confronted readers of a Lieberman essay on foreign policy and the Democrats that appeared Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal, where we can expect the "independent Democrat" to appear often during the coming months as a turncoat surrogate for McCain -- because today he evidently hopes for appointment as a token Democrat in a Republican Cabinet, or even a second nomination as vice president, on the Republican ticket.

Lieberman's theme in the Journal essay, excerpted from a speech he delivered at an event sponsored by Commentary magazine, the leading neoconservative journal, is easily summarized and utterly unoriginal: Democrats were once patriotic and strong on defense, when Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy led the party, but they have lapsed (again) into weakness and vacillation during the Bush era. And Lieberman pillories Barack Obama for suggesting that he would sit down and talk with the leaders of Iran and other adversarial regimes and for failing to stand up to the party's overbearing liberal wing.

For someone who once considered himself a history scholar, Lieberman shamelessly falsifies not only the diplomacy of past and current administrations but also, by omission, his own political pedigree. His Journal essay opens with a lament about the condition of the Democratic Party and an idealized glance back at the "principled, internationalist, strong and successful" foreign policy of Roosevelt, Kennedy and Truman.

[......]

The Democrats have struggled over foreign policy since Vietnam, although Lieberman's indictment of a party that abandoned the president after 9/11 is just as dishonest as his failure to discuss his own evolution. Democrats stood in lock step with Bush when he invaded Afghanistan, and only began to break with him over Iraq, a ruinous war that was based on lies.

As for his complaint against Obama's willingness to engage with various dictators and despots, let's not forget that American leaders have done so whenever that suited their objectives -- whether secretly, as Ronald Reagan did with Iran, or openly, as George W. Bush has done with Kim Jong Il and Moammar Gadhafi.

But speaking of appeasement, nobody in this debate, including Obama, has ever praised Louis Farrakhan as unctuously as Lieberman did in 2000. Back then, when he was trying to win black votes, he said he looked forward to sitting down with the Nation of Islam leader -- and he set no conditions for that meeting.

Maybe John McCain should renounce Lieberman's support, too.

Joe Lieberman left the Democratic party  at a time it was ascending and joined with the neocons when their stock was plunging.  He knows full well he will have no power in the Democratic controlled Senate and his only hope to hold on to some relevancy is a McCain win and a place in his cabinet.

He's old but is he crazy?

By Ron Beasley

John McCain will be older than Ronald Reagan when he takes office.  We now know that the country was being run by Nancy Reagan (unofficially the first female President) and James Baker the III during Ronnie's second term because he was no longer up to the task.  It would only make sense that the American public has the right to know about not only McCain's physical health but his mental health as well.    In McCain's case his mental state is open to even more questions because of his five years as a POW in Vietnam.  Now we have already heard about his temper and since he sounds a lot like Dick Cheney I'm already inclined to think he's crazy.  But what do his medical records show?  Apparently we will never know.

What's in John McCain's Medical Records?

He'll be releasing everything about his repeated cancer surgeries. But he won't release his psychiatric records which hold clues to the effect of his Vietnam captivity.

On Friday, after repeated pledges to do so going back more than a year, the McCain campaign is set to release new information about the Arizona Republican's health history. The release, according to the campaign, will cover the year 2000 forward, a period when McCain had three of his four skin cancers removed, as well as lymph nodes and part of a salivary gland. It will not, however, include McCain's psychiatric records, which McCain allowed a select group of reporters to examine in 1999 but have never been released to the public. The new information is unlikely to quash recurring questions about McCain's age, his bouts with cancer, or how his experience in Vietnam may have affected his mind.

So what do we know?

In 1999, McCain responded to the questions about his mental health by allowing selected reporters to peruse 1,500 pages of his health records dating back to his release from Hanoi in 1973. Reporters were not permitted to photocopy any of the documents. The reporters who looked at the records did not describe any mention of a PTSD diagnosis. However, they failed to note that it would have been impossible for McCain to receive such a diagnosis -- since the term "post-traumatic stress disorder" was not in use until seven years after McCain's release from captivity. The term first appeared in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980.

There are behaviors associated with the candidate that would be consistent with a diagnosis of PTSD. Author Robert Timberg mentions McCain's intense explosions of anger --- a hallmark sign of lingering mental trauma from war -- in his book "John McCain: An American Odyssey." Timberg describes the episodes as "an eruption of temper out of all proportion to the provocation." Timberg, who McCain has said "knows more about me than I do," wrote that McCain's sudden fury is a result of Vietnam coming "back to haunt him." McCain has himself described having an adverse reaction to the sound of jangling keys, which reminds him of his Vietnam jailers. McCain also told doctors that during solitary confinement he had strayed pretty "far out" and had referred to himself as "mentally deteriorating."

But there are some positive comments as well.

At the time, the campaign also released a statement by Dr. Michael M. Ambrose and Dr. Jeffrey L. Moore of the Robert E. Mitchell Center for Prisoner of War Studies, where McCain underwent a series of psychological tests and examinations between 1973 and 1993. "Senator McCain," the doctors wrote, "has never been diagnosed with or treated at the center for a psychological or psychiatric disorder. He has been subject to an extensive battery of psychological tests and following his last examination in 1993, we judged him to be in good physical and mental health." In a phone interview with the Associated Press, Ambrose said, "He had a very healthy way of dealing with his experiences."

But this should sound familiar - he's more like George W. Bush than we thought.

Enduring captivity also gave McCain another apparent psychological gift: a feeling of credibility. It finally allowed him to escape the shadow of his father, Jack, a four-star admiral who commanded the entire Pacific theater during Vietnam. "Although proud of his father, he has been preoccupied with escaping being in the shadow of his father and establishing his own image and identity in the eyes of others," O'Connell wrote on McCain's return from Vietnam. "He feels his experiences and performance as a POW have finally permitted this to happen." A 1979 doctor's note in McCain's records described this dynamic as "Oedipal rivalry."

Now seven and a half years of lunatic rule has just about destroyed this nation.  It won't survive four more.

Update

The New York Times has more

Torturing For China

By Cernig

Via FDL comes an ABC report which highlights how detainees at Gitmo were tortured by Chinese interrogators - or by US personnel at Chinese behest.

U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.

Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.

According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI agent reported a detainee belonging to China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators.

Susan Manning, a lawyer who represents several Uighurs still held at Guantanamo, said Tuesday the allegations are all too familiar.

U.S. personnel "are engaging in abusive tactics on behalf of the Chinese," she said Tuesday.

...An official authorized to speak on behalf of the Defense Department but who declined to be named confirmed it was Pentagon policy to allow officials from other countries to have access to interview their nationals at Guantanamo but declined to discuss the specifics alleged in the report.

According to Fine's report, the FBI agent said the Uighur detainee told him that the night before his interrogation by Chinese officials, "he was awakened at 15-minute intervals the entire night and into the next day." The detainee also allegedly said he was "exposed to low room temperatures for long periods of time and was deprived of at least one meal."

"The agent stated that he understood that the treatment of the Uighur detainees was either carried out by the Chinese interrogators or was carried out by U.S. personnel at the behest of Chinese interrogators," the report by the Department of Justice inspector general stated.

Fighting for "freedom and democracy", my ass.

Negotiation VS Appeasement

By Ron Beasley

When George W. Bush accused Barack Obama of being an appeaser  because he is willing to negotiate with enemies, alleged and real, he gave us an opportunity so see into the soul of the neocons and corporatists who have been in complete control of this country for the last seven and a half years.  Although I don't like to break things down to black VS white in this case it's appropriate - if you oppose negotiation you are in favor of perpetual war. Remember John McCain promised that there would be many more wars.  In an LA Times op-ed Peter Scoblic explains the historical fantasy of negotiation = appeasement argument.

In a speech to the Israeli parliament Thursday, President Bush took a swipe at Barack Obama for his willingness to negotiate with evil regimes.

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

But if there is anything that has been discredited by history, it is the argument that every enemy is Hitler, that negotiations constitute appeasement, and that talking will automatically lead to a slaughter of Holocaust-like proportions. It is an argument that conservatives made throughout the Cold War, and, if the charge seemed overblown at the time, it seems positively ludicrous with the clarity of hindsight.

The modern conservative movement was founded in no small part on the idea that presidents Truman and Eisenhower were "appeasing" the Soviets. The logic went something like this: Because communism was evil, the United States should seek to destroy it, not coexist with it; the bipartisan policy of containment, which sought to prevent the further spread of communism, was a moral and strategic folly because it implied long-term coexistence with Moscow. Conservative foreign policy guru James Burnham wrote entire books claiming that containment -- which, after the Cold War, would be credited with defeating the Soviet Union -- constituted "appeasement."

Instead, conservatives agitated for the rollback of communism, and they opposed all negotiations with the Soviets. When Eisenhower welcomed Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev to the United States in 1959, William F. Buckley Jr., the right's leader, complained that the act of "diplomatic sentimentality" signaled the "death rattle of the West."

I think it is necessary to look at what motivates the people that say this.  There are some who may actually believe it - a minority I would guess.  There are some who simply mimic the talking points.  But what about the rest?

We were warned about the rest by a Republican and retired general, Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address to the nation.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Since 1961 very little and at the same time a great deal has changed.  The most dangerous change has been the Industrial part of the equation.  It is even bigger and more powerful and now controls the media and as we saw in the lead up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq is often little more than a government propaganda source not unlike Pravda in the old Soviet Union.  The television journalists have been replaced by millionaire celebrity talking heads who's major concern is the welfare of their corporate employers and their own six and seven figure salaries.  They are cheerleaders for war because there is nothing like a war to increase viewer ship and at the same time increase the profits of the corporate parents.  Negotiation is bad because perpetual war is profitable.

Propaganda is funny, but it's not a joke

By Libby

I haven't been digging into the DOD document dump myself but it is proving to be a treasure trove, as documented here by our resident wonks. Today TPM reveals the lighter side of the Pentagon's illegal domestic psyops campaign.

Back in June 2006 there's this email ...

hi. jed babbin, one of our military analysts, is hosting the michael medved nationally syndicated radio show this afternoon. he would like to see if general casey would be available for a phone interview any time between 3 and 6 pm. topics would be: status of operations in iraq and if troop levels should/can/will be reduced. ... please feel free to contact jed directly (contact info below) if the general can/would be available for the interview. this would be a softball interview and the show is 8th or 9th in the nation.

A short time later a press flack from the Office of the Secretary of Defense writes back ...

Hi Thanks for sending this. Just fyi, probably wouldn't put "softball" interview in writing. If that got out it would compromise jed and general casey.

If you happen to be harboring any stray doubts that the Pentagon also successfully co-opted the wingosphere into their game plan, TPM adds, Babbin is now the editor of Human Events Online.

I'd be more amused by this if I thought it would have any effect on diminishing the credibility of all these perpetrators of misinformation but considering the legacy media's determined avoidance of covering this gross fraud, I doubt if these revelations will filter out to the majority of the electorate. I expect they'll get the last laugh. They'll simply ride out the well deserved ridicule from the alternate media and continue to pummel the people with the propaganda.

Tainted by Torture

By Fester:

MSNBC is reporting that one of the military commission/tribunals has been cancelled against the alleged 20th hijacker as the entire trial and evidence chain has been tainted by torture:

The Pentagon has dropped charges against a Saudi at Guantanamo who was alleged to have been the so-called "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11 attacks, his U.S. military defense lawyer said Monday...

But in reviewing the case, the convening authority for military commissions, Susan Crawford, decided to dismiss the charges against al-Qahtani...

The attorney said he could not comment on the reasons for the dismissal until discussing the case with lawyers for the other five defendants. Officials previously said al-Qahtani had been subjected to a harsh interrogation authorized by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

This is what happens when we as a country lack the balls to follow our own rules and basic societal norms.  If the case against Qahtani was solid it could have been proven in the same damn way that the case against the original WTC bombers was proven --- meticulous work within a framework of law.  That worked and that increased the legitimacy and prestige of the United States because we acted with justice instead of vengeance.  We acted with restraint instead of fear. And that restraint strengthened us. 

This amazing lack of faith in American institutions still astounds be at times coming from such dime story patriots and nationalistic tinged messaging machines.  America 's restraint and faith in the rule of law is a strength and not a weakness.  Today torture is an embarrassment  whose stain can not be easily removed even as it lessens our credibility, legitimacy and moral orientation.  Grow some balls America, and believe in your principals again. 

Jamie Leigh Jones Gets Her Day In Court

By Cernig

Good news for the rule of law:

A Houston woman who says she was gang raped by co-workers at a Halliburton/KBR camp in Baghdad won a major court battle late Friday when a Texas judge ordered that she can bring her case to court instead of forcing her into secretive arbitration proceedings with Halliburton and KBR.

"We are ecstatic that [District Judge Keith Ellison] had the courage to uphold justice in this case," Jamie Leigh Jones'attorney Todd Kelly said after the decision.

And bad news for those who would wish to sidestep the law, even where such extreme circumstances are alleged, just to favor their own corporate bottom line.

After months of waiting for criminal charges to be filed, Jones decided to file suit against Halliburton and KBR.

KBR had moved for Jones' claim to be heard in private arbitration, instead of a public courtroom, as provided under the terms of her original employment contract.

Ellison, however, wrote in his order Friday that Jones' claims of sexual assault, battery, rape, false imprisonment and others fall beyond the scope of her employment contract.

"The Court does not believe that Plaintiff's bedroom should be considered the workplace, even though her housing was provided by her employer," Ellison wrote.

In arbitration, there is no public record nor transcript of the proceedings and Jones' claims would not have been heard before a judge and jury.

...Over the two years since she was allegedly attacked, no criminal charges have been brought in the matter.

That last fact should be a matter of shame for America every bit as abhorrent as any torture of detainees.

A Historic First

By BJ

I had meant to get to this earlier, because it bears repeating. [Via]

A Canadian captured in Afghanistan at age 15 can be tried for murder in the Guantanamo war crimes court, a U.S. military judge ruled in rejecting claims that he was a child soldier who should be rehabilitated rather than prosecuted.

Canadian prisoner Omar Khadr, now 21, is charged in the Guantanamo court with throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier during a firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.

The Kadr case was already shown to be a mockery of due process back in February when the military accidently released documents showing Kadr wasn't the only person alive when US soldiers entered the compound, but this ruling is more historic in it's own way.

His military lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, had argued in February hearings at the Guantanamo naval base that Khadr was a child soldier illegally conscripted by his father, an al Qaeda financier. He urged the judge to drop the charges, which carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.

The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, issued a ruling on Wednesday agreeing with prosecutors' position that the law authorizing the Guantanamo trials contained no minimum age.

Brownback's ruling clears the way for Khadr to be tried in the special tribunals created by the Bush administration to try non-U.S. captives it considers "unlawful enemy combatants" outside the regular civilian and military courts.

Kuebler called the ruling "an embarrassment to the United States" and said Canada would share in the embarrassment if it allows its citizen to be tried at Guantanamo. He said Khadr would be the first child soldier tried for war crimes in modern history.

Canada, of course, won't be doing anything about Kadr so long as we're led by folks who worship Bush and the neocons, something which embarrasses a great number of us all on it's own. This will add a considerable stain.

Aren't we all proud to live in countries willing to allow this historic first?

Derbyshire On Conservative Cravenness

By Cernig

I'm becoming quite a fan of John Derbyshire over at NRO. Partly that's sympathy for his self-appointed task of telling the theocrats and fans of Executive Power where to get off - he's not going to be thanked for it by a Republican movement entirely co-opted by those two trends. Mostly it's because he makes sense.

Today, he's reviewing Gene Healy's new book and on the way lambasting the Bush cheerleading section who for so long have enabled the Imperial Presidency. He describes that enabling as "craven".

In part that cravenness is a sincere and patriotic reaction on the part of people who have convinced themselves that our country faces an existential threat. In part, too, it is a response to the sheer seductive appeal of great power, which few of us can resist. It is also, though, the consequence of a long historical development. Gene Healy:

In the 1970s, while liberals were having second thoughts about the need for a powerful, activist presidency, conservatives were warming up to the idea. Nixon had hardly governed as a conservative, but in some ways — serving as "tribune" of the "silent majority," aggressively impounding funds and asserting control over administrative agencies — he showed conservatives how the office could be used to serve their political ends.

Hence the oxymoron of “national greatness conservatism.” Hence conservative acquiescence in the most repulsive and obscene spectacle in our national political life today: the State of the Union extravaganza, in which the president offers us preposterously grandiose assurances of protection, provision, and moral guidance, these declarations of benevolent omnipotence punctuated by standing ovations and cheers form the assembled legislators after every declarative clause. Hence also the transformation of a proper respect for the president’s office to a style of groveling adulation more appropriate to the court of an oriental despot. Healy offers a particularly stomach-turning example.

Robert Draper, a journalist granted unique access to [George W.] Bush in 2006 and 2007 to write the president's biography, notes that in every cabinet meeting since White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten took over for Andy Card in 2006, Bolten has begun by looking at Bush and saying, "Thank you for the privilege of serving today." At no point, it seems, did Bush thank Bolten for his deference and then tell him to cut it out.

I have not so far heard that White House functionaries walk backwards away from the Presidential Presence, as is done in the royal courts of Britain and Japan, or get down on their knees and knock their heads on the floor in a full formal kowtow, as was the rule in Imperial China, but surely such protocols cannot be many years away.

That republican manners have decayed to a level of servility that would have embarrassed Elagabalus, is bad enough. That modern conservatives have accepted, even helped enable the process, is very depressing indeed. The belief in existential danger is no excuse. Even if we are all going to be murdered by fanatical terrorists, which I don't for a moment believe, let’s at least die like free citizens of a free republic.

As in matters of style, so in matters of substance. Don’t conservatives ever stop to wonder about the future development of the trends they have helped set in motion? Gene Healy:

[C]onservatives seemed incapable of imagining that anyone other than George W. Bush would ever wield the new powers the administration was busily forging.

The whole essay is wonderful stuff, exposing the pork-loving, messiah-worshipping underbelly of Bush Republican claims to fiscal responsibility and rugged individualism for the fictions they are. The only way it's going to win Derbyshire any GOP fans is if each manages to convince themselves it's other people, not they, that they see being reflected in Derbyshire's mirror. Mind you, that kind of mental gymnastics comes as second nature to them.

However, I'm just cynical enough to feel that this is simply a window of opportunity, occasioned by Bush's lame duck status, for Derbyshire and others to vent. Soon enough, either McCain or a Dem will be in office. If the latter, all the sins of big gub'mint and a royalist tendency will be blamed on that Dem as if Nixon and Bush had never occured. If the former, all the dutiful Republican drones will suddenly rediscover their love of corporate nanny-statism and supreme executive power.

So when do we get the microphone?

By Libby

It's only Monday but the NYT already gets the failed media award of the week for journaistic malpractice with this joke of an op-ed gathering. They invite the 'experts' to explain how the mission in Iraq can be accomplished. Leaving aside that the stated mission of deposing Saddam was accomplished years ago, the point is they only invited the ususal cabal of the always wrong whose 'learned' advice got us into this mess in the first place.

Tristero calls it. We still don't have a voice in this debate. For the love of all that is holy, would it be too much to ask to give the people were were right from the beginning a chance to weigh in once in a while? Or ever?

Oh Baby, Ohio

By Libby

It happened 38 years ago, today.



Rest in peace Kent State Four.

Uncanny Predictions From 2001

By Cernig

Our intrepid researcher Kat has pointed out a remarkable set of predictions from January 17th, 2001, via a link in John Cole's comments:

Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

...Bush swore to do "everything in [his] power" to undo the damage wrought by Clinton's two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street.

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"

On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further.

...Turning to the subject of the environment, Bush said he will do whatever it takes to undo the tremendous damage not done by the Clinton Administration to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He assured citizens that he will follow through on his campaign promise to open the 1.5 million acre refuge's coastal plain to oil drilling. As a sign of his commitment to bringing about a change in the environment, he pointed to his choice of Gale Norton for Secretary of the Interior. Norton, Bush noted, has "extensive experience" fighting environmental causes, working as a lobbyist for lead-paint manufacturers and as an attorney for loggers and miners, in addition to suing the EPA to overturn clean-air standards.

Bush had equally high praise for Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft, whom he praised as "a tireless champion in the battle to protect a woman's right to give birth."...Continued Bush: "John Ashcroft will be invaluable in healing the terrible wedge President Clinton drove between church and state."

...Bush concluded his speech on a note of healing and redemption.

"We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two," Bush said. "Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there's much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it."

The source of this uncanny bit of prediction which should, in a fair world, have telephone psychics retiring in shame? The Onion, a satirical website.

In 2001 it was satire. In 2008 it's a dark and precise summary of the Bush Years.

War Crimes And Fourth Branch Privilege

By Cernig

Rather predictably, Dick Cheney's office is claiming that any and all members of Cheney's staff are immune to Congressional investigation for any and all of their actions - including possible high crimes and misdemeanours. To do this they're creating a hybrid of Cheney's previous claim that he's neither fish nor fowl - neither part of the legislative nor executive arms of government - and yet is covered by executive privilege.

The lawyer for US vice-president Dick Cheney claimed today that the Congress lacks any authority to examine his behaviour on the job.

The exception claimed by Cheney's counsel came in response to requests from congressional Democrats that David Addington, the vice-president's chief of staff, testify about his involvement in the approval of interrogation tactics used at Guantanamo Bay.

Ruling out voluntary cooperation by Addington, Cheney lawyer Kathryn Wheelbarger said Cheney's conduct is "not within the [congressional] committee's power of inquiry".

"Congress lacks the constitutional power to regulate by law what a vice-president communicates in the performance of the vice president's official duties, or what a vice president recommends that a president communicate," Wheelbarger wrote to senior aides on Capitol Hill.

The exception claimed by Cheney's office recalls his attempt last year to evade rules for classified documents by deeming the vice-president's office a hybrid branch of government - both executive and legislative.

The Democratic congressman who is investigating the legal framework for the violent interrogation of terrorist suspects, John Conyers, has asked Addington and several other top Bush administration lawyers to testify. Thus far all have claimed their deliberations are privileged.

Conyers has threatened subpoenas and Addington and the rest will ignore those too. This is what comes of the Dems blinking every time the Bush administration has asserted executive privilege and dared them to take such matters to the Supreme Court. The administration has  gambled that no-one had the political will for such a protracted struggle and they've been correct. It's now highly doubtful that Conyer's committee could resolve such a contest before Cheney and the rest leave office. After that, no-one will have the political will to pursue the matter further as a new President and Congress will want to get on with new stuff, not be tied down by old.

And so there will be no comeback, no justice for these war criminals, forthcoming from the U.S. system. Unless, and this is my fervent hope, a Dem President and Congress finally ratifies Bill Clinton's wish that America join the International Court. Then when that court investigates and applies for axtradition of Bush, Cheney and the rest, the sitting president can  step aside, talking highly about "respect for the due process of law", and let others clean the filth of the Bush Torture Years from America's historical record.