Alec Baldwin
huffingtonpost.com

My prediction for 2006 is a multiple, all connected politically. I predict that another barrage of fierce storms and hurricanes will so disturb the American people, that the Democrats will take the Senate in the ‘06 election and whittle away at the House in those races as well. Whether those storms can be attributed to global warming conditions or more normal meterological cycles will not matter.
Americans typically arrive, albeit slowly at times, at the sensible conclusion and wiill vote accordingly. This government, ferociously and blindly partisan, has been for sale since the 2000 election. Hastert and Frist are moral cowards who wanted to hide behind fealty to their President as a means of passing the buck and all of their responsibilities onto the administration. (The results have been disastrous. Only in this universe can a fool like Ted Stevens say that defeat of ANWAR drilling is the saddest day of his life. This tired old Oil Whore has been selling the American people and his colleagues a line of this nonsense for too long. Conservation and alternatives are the answer. Not letting corrupt pols like Stevens line the pockets of their contributors.)

Secondly. the resultant Senate turnover will give Democrats greater power to launch independent investigations. The current Frist-Hastert regime wouldn’t dream of doing anything to embarass the White House. No matter that honest, decent Republicans like Tom Kean have exhorted this administration regarding the 9/11 Commission’s findings. No matter that Republicans on that commission have stated that America is not safer since the formation of a Homeland Security Department. Not safer since the passing of the Patriot Act. The Commission’s recommendations have been ignored and America may suffer for it. But a looming Democratic Senate may cure that. And cure the Valerie Plame leak issue and the Iraqi pull-out issue and other issues, as well.

Thirdly, a Democratic Senate, and its influence on what may also be a diminished Republican majority in the House, will lead to Cheney’s impeachment. Many Democratic partisans and common Bush-haters dream of ending his second term prematurely. That will never happen, nor should it. Bush is the puppet of wealthy corporate interests and red-faced Christian conservatives who know the real power lies elsewhere. Besides, keeping Bush in office through the’08 election can only benefit Democrats. Every day Bush is in office pays dividends to his opponents. Bush’s incompetence is the gift that keeps on giving. Cheney, however, is truly the dark side of the Force. Nearly every controversy that this administration has created has Cheney’s fingerprints on it. Secret energy policy meetings that may have unduly influenced the California governor’s race? Cheney. Valerie Plame. a woman and mother who served her country and was maliciously outted in the press by way of that Hack/Weasal Robert Novak? Cheney. Lies about WMD and Iraqi-Al Qaeda links? Cheney. Nearly everywhere you look, you see Cheney directly or, more often, his shadow, ruining peoples lives, stealing their freedoms and liberties and/or destroying whole countries to serve his warped goals of an American foreign policy that seemed dated 25 years ago.

The seeds of Cheney’s impeachment will be sown in 2006. He will be impeached by 2008. And with him and this administration may go the destructive image of America not as global policeman, but as a corrupt policeman. A lawman not interested in the law but in pure power. Not interested in giving aid but in taking just about anything that’s not nailed down. Cheney represents a view of American political power that is old. Dead. Finished. And that, once buried, will lead to America beginning to assert its role within a new, cooperative global alignment. Not afraid to use its power, but not obsessed with flaunting it with everyone at every turn. Not a kinder, gentler US. Only a smarter one.
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Bill Maher
huffingtonpost.com

To me, the big event of ‘05 was George Bush demonstrating that the Era of Small Lies is over.

But not small thinking. Isn’t it stupid that he always has to try to appoint a Texan to everything? Attorney General, Supreme Court, education…is Texas where the great minds all are now and I missed it?

I would take some pride in saying “I told you so” to the people who just this year realized what a bonehead he is, but it was so fucking obvious from the beginning that I just can’t!

Maybe next election, people will start to think, who gives a damn if I want to have a beer with this guy?

Not to feed the idea that Arianna and I engage in logrolling, but it should be noted that this blog thing of hers was a very big event in 2005. And how perfect that the big story that she was way, way, way out in front of everyone on — and for months — the Judy Miller fiasco — was a story about how the media, even the media we most respect, is off its pedestal and there is a vital need for alternative news narrative.

And this is coming from someone who only recently started enjoying e-mail and the internet, and I’m sorry I missed out for so long. I am on the page with this technology thing, oh yes I am. I may have been a little late to the party, but I get it now, it’s all about the new technologies, and I try to convince everyone I know of that. In fact, just yesterday I fired off a telegram to a good friend of mine on just this subject — I had an epiphany about the joys and wonders of our modern instantaneous means of communication, and I went right down to the Western Union office and dictated it: “New technology the way to go — STOP”!

Oh, it was joyful. I hope you had a Merry Christmas. Yes, Christmas. I hate religion, but all that “holiday” shit is so annoying, every time I hear it I want to go join the priesthood. And I don’t even like kids.
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side note: for my buddy T.

dallasnews.com

The University of Michigan will remove Coca-Cola Co. products from campus, becoming the 10th school to enact a ban over an investigation of working conditions at bottling plants in Colombia.

University officials will stop selling Coke products on Jan. 1, spokeswoman Julie Peterson said today in an interview. Coca-Cola’s sales at the university were $1.4 million in 2005, she said.

Student activists are pressuring universities to stop selling Coca-Cola products because they claim the company has not done enough to stop violence against union workers in Colombia and won’t agree to the terms of an investigation. The International Labor Rights Fund has said Coca-Cola and two Colombia bottlers are “complicit in” anti-union violence toward employees.

Coca-Cola denies the charges and the company has agreed to a third-party investigation, spokeswoman Kari Bjorhus said today.

“We believe Coca-Cola is sincere in its desire to ensure fair labor practices and a safe working environment,” University of Michigan officials said in a Dec. 29 letter to Coca-Cola. The letter added that the company had not met its guidelines for an investigation so it would “temporarily suspend” Coca-Cola products from campus.
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Nonprofit Group Linked to Lawmaker Was Funded Mostly by Clients of Lobbyist

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer

The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.

During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners would not identify the money’s origins.

Two former associates of Edwin A. Buckham, the congressman’s former chief of staff and the organizer of the U.S. Family Network, said Buckham told them the funds came from Russian oil and gas executives. Abramoff had been working closely with two such Russian energy executives on their Washington agenda, and the lobbyist and Buckham had helped organize a 1997 Moscow visit by DeLay (R-Tex.).

The former president of the U.S. Family Network said Buckham told him that Russians contributed $1 million to the group in 1998 specifically to influence DeLay’s vote on legislation the International Monetary Fund needed to finance a bailout of the collapsing Russian economy.

A spokesman for DeLay, who is fighting in a Texas state court unrelated charges of illegal fundraising, denied that the contributions influenced the former House majority leader’s political activities. The Russian energy executives who worked with Abramoff denied yesterday knowing anything about the million-dollar London transaction described in tax documents.

Whatever the real motive for the contribution of $1 million — a sum not prohibited by law but extraordinary for a small, nonprofit group — the steady stream of corporate payments detailed on the donor list makes it clear that Abramoff’s long-standing alliance with DeLay was sealed by a much more extensive web of financial ties than previously known.

Records and interviews also illuminate the mixture of influence and illusion that surrounded the U.S. Family Network. Despite the group’s avowed purpose, records show it did little to promote conservative ideas through grass-roots advocacy. The money it raised came from businesses with no demonstrated interest in the conservative “moral fitness” agenda that was the group’s professed aim.

In addition to the million-dollar payment involving the London law firm, for example, half a million dollars was donated to the U.S. Family Network by the owners of textile companies in the Mariana Islands in the Pacific, according to the tax records. The textile owners — with Abramoff’s help — solicited and received DeLay’s public commitment to block legislation that would boost their labor costs, according to Abramoff associates, one of the owners and a DeLay speech in 1997.

A quarter of a million dollars was donated over two years by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, Abramoff’s largest lobbying client, which counted DeLay as an ally in fighting legislation allowing the taxation of its gambling revenue.

The records, other documents and interviews call into question the very purpose of the U.S. Family Network, which functioned mostly by collecting funds from domestic and foreign businesses whose interests coincided with DeLay’s activities while he was serving as House majority whip from 1995 to 2002, and as majority leader from 2002 until the end of September.

After the group was formed in 1996, its director told the Internal Revenue Service that its goal was to advocate policies favorable for “economic growth and prosperity, social improvement, moral fitness, and the general well-being of the United States.” DeLay, in a 1999 fundraising letter, called the group “a powerful nationwide organization dedicated to restoring our government to citizen control” by mobilizing grass-roots citizen support.

But the records show that the tiny U.S. Family Network, which never had more than one full-time staff member, spent comparatively little money on public advocacy or education projects. Although established as a nonprofit organization, it paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to Buckham and his lobbying firm, Alexander Strategy Group.

There is no evidence DeLay received a direct financial benefit, but Buckham’s firm employed DeLay’s wife, Christine, and paid her a salary of at least $3,200 each month for three of the years the group existed. Richard Cullen, DeLay’s attorney, has said that the pay was compensation for lists Christine DeLay supplied to Buckham of lawmakers’ favorite charities, and that it was appropriate under House rules and election law.

Some of the U.S. Family Network’s revenue was used to pay for radio ads attacking vulnerable Democratic lawmakers in 1999; other funds were used to finance the cash purchase of a townhouse three blocks from DeLay’s congressional office. DeLay’s associates at the time called it “the Safe House.”

DeLay made his own fundraising telephone pitches from the townhouse’s second-floor master suite every few weeks, according to two former associates. Other rooms in the townhouse were used by Alexander Strategy Group, Buckham’s newly formed lobbying firm, and Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), DeLay’s leadership committee.

They paid modest rent to the U.S. Family Network, which occupied a single small room in the back.
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by Clay Risen
The New Republic

In mid-October, TNR published a guide to the 15 worst hacks in the Bush administration. And while we were happy to see President Bush pull the Supreme Court nomination of our top hack, Harriet Miers, soon after the issue hit newsstands, we harbored few illusions that he had actually followed our advice. If anything, with Andy Card reportedly now waiting in the wings to be the next Treasury secretary, Bush seems to be growing more, not less, fond of hacks.

That might explain why Hector Barreto, the head of the Small Business Administration and our sixth-worst hack, still has a job. Two months ago we highlighted his poor management of post-9/11 small-business loans, his failure last year to inform the White House that his loan monies were running out (resulting in a temporary suspension of new loans), his utter lack of management experience prior to taking the SBA job, and his incompetence in the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina.

But that was before the SBA’s failings along the Gulf Coast became fully apparent. While most of the criticism of post-Katrina efforts has focused on FEMA, it is actually the SBA that will oversee the bulk of the disaster assistance. FEMA is there to offer immediate help; the SBA is, supposedly, there for the long haul. And not just for businesses: Despite the agency’s moniker, of the 320,000 loan applications it received from the affected regions by mid-December, only 40,000 were for business purposes; the rest were for homeowners who, after receiving temporary help from FEMA and state agencies, are turning to the SBA for assistance rebuilding their lives and livelihoods.

In early October the SBA had received 12,000 small-business applications, of which it had approved only 76. At the time, Barreto claimed that the process would take a while to get up and running but that things would soon improve. Alas, at a November 8 hearing of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, Chair Olympia Snowe of Maine criticized Barreto for processing a mere 10 percent of the 28,540 small-business-loan applications he had received by that point, and approving just 3 percent. A month later that percentage stood at 5.7 percent, while the number of loan applications had jumped to 37,214. Including homeowner loans, the SBA has processed only about one-third of all the applications received, while it has approved about 20 percent (compared with its normal approval rate of roughly 50 percent). Meanwhile, despite increasing its loan-processing staff by 20 percent, the agency, as of early December, was moving applications at less than half its rate in the wake of the 2004 hurricanes, according to USA Today. “The SBA’s disaster loan program is aptly named,” Snowe said.

Barreto has proffered numerous excuses: a new computer system that has yet to come fully online, the scale of the Gulf Coast destruction, the relative poverty (and lack of financial acuity) of the region’s inhabitants. And anyway, Barreto contends, the SBA can’t just hand out cash–like any lender, it has to hold to certain credit standards. Fair enough. But Barreto has steadfastly refused to relax those standards for small-business owners and homeowners who have literally lost everything–and thus regardless of their determination or goodwill are unlikely to meet normal standards of credit-worthiness. As Walter Isaacson, co-chair of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, told National Journal, the SBA “is not treating this as an emergency situation.”

Further evidence of the SBA’s willful incompetence came in November when Barreto announced his opposition to a bipartisan bill that would, among other things, provide $450 million in “bridge” loans–i.e., short-term loans to help businesses meet immediate cash-flow needs. Though a similar program proved successful after September 11, Barreto summarily dismissed the idea this time around, instead offering a different, more market-oriented plan, the Gulf Opportunity Pilot Loan Program (GO loans, for short). The plan, which quickly went into effect, provides a federal guarantee of 85 percent on commercial loans to hurricane-hit small businesses. Barreto promised that GO loans would “unleash the liquidity and expertise of commercial banks.” But apparently, few other than Barreto thought this is a good deal–by mid-December, a meager 20 GO loans had cleared. The problem is that the GO program is a bad deal for both sides of the loan: Even with an 85 percent guarantee, most banks simply don’t see a profit in Gulf Coast applications; meanwhile, the interest rates on the loans are capped at about 13 percent, an unfavorable rate in any case but particularly prohibitive to applicants with empty pockets (normal SBA loans carry rates between 4 and 6 percent).

The SBA’s failure along the Gulf Coast cannot be understood without an appreciation for just how low small business ranks on the president’s agenda. Not only has he repeatedly blocked congressional requests for funding increases at the SBA, he has overseen a 60 percent cut in its funding since he took office. (No wonder, then, that the SBA scored last in a survey of morale at 30 government agencies by the Partnership for Public Service.) And despite evidence of fraud by large companies under the Small Business Act–such as creatively “redefining” themselves as small companies–the feds have yet to prosecute a single violator. Bush has also gone after a variety of relatively small but extremely beneficial programs outside the SBA–most recently calling for a 50 percent cut in funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program, a Commerce Department initiative that helps small manufacturers train their workers. And all this from a man who in 2000 asserted, “I understand small business growth. I was one.”

Is all this Barreto’s fault? Of course not. But as Washington’s official advocate for small business, it seems only fair to expect a bit more from him. Then again, pushing back against a White House determined to undercut his agency would deprive him of the one asset that keeps him in office: unquestioning loyalty. In the surreality of the Bush administration, Barreto can stay at the SBA only as long as he acquiesces in its dismantling.

Clay Risen is an assistant editor at TNR.

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Both Claimed That a President May Violate Congress’ Laws to Protect National Security

By JOHN W. DEAN
writ.corporate.findlaw.com

On Friday, December 16, the New York Times published a major scoop by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau: They reported that Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on Americans without warrants, ignoring the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

It was a long story loaded with astonishing information of lawbreaking at the White House. It reported that sometime in 2002, Bush issued an executive order authorizing NSA to track and intercept international telephone and/or email exchanges coming into, or out of, the U.S. – when one party was believed to have direct or indirect ties with al Qaeda.

Initially, Bush and the White House stonewalled, neither confirming nor denying the president had ignored the law. Bush refused to discuss it in his interview with Jim Lehrer.

Then, on Saturday, December 17, in his radio broadcast, Bush admitted that the New York Times was correct – and thus conceded he had committed an impeachable offense.

There can be no serious question that warrantless wiretapping, in violation of the law, is impeachable. After all, Nixon was charged in Article II of his bill of impeachment with illegal wiretapping for what he, too, claimed were national security reasons.

These parallel violations underscore the continuing, disturbing parallels between this Administration and the Nixon Administration – parallels I also discussed in a prior column.

Indeed, here, Bush may have outdone Nixon: Nixon’s illegal surveillance was limited; Bush’s, it is developing, may be extraordinarily broad in scope. First reports indicated that NSA was only monitoring foreign calls, originating either in the USA or abroad, and that no more than 500 calls were being covered at any given time. But later reports have suggested that NSA is “data mining” literally millions of calls – and has been given access by the telecommunications companies to “switching” stations through which foreign communications traffic flows.

In sum, this is big-time, Big Brother electronic surveillance.

Given the national security implications of the story, the Times said they had been sitting on it for a year. And now that it has broken, Bush has ordered a criminal investigation into the source of the leak. He suggests that those who might have felt confidence they would not be spied on, now can have no such confidence, so they may find other methods of communicating. Other than encryption and code, it is difficult to envision how.

Such a criminal investigation is rather ironic – for the leak’s effect was to reveal Bush’s own offense. Having been ferreted out as a criminal, Bush now will try to ferret out the leakers who revealed him.

Nixon’s Wiretapping – and the Congressional Action that Followed

Through the FBI, Nixon had wiretapped five members of his national security staff, two newsmen, and a staffer at the Department of Defense. These people were targeted because Nixon’s plans for dealing with Vietnam — we were at war at the time — were ending up on the front page of the New York Times.

Nixon had a plausible national security justification for the wiretaps: To stop the leaks, which had meant that not only the public, but America’s enemies, were privy to its plans. But the use of the information from the wiretaps went far beyond that justification: A few juicy tidbits were used for political purposes. Accordingly, Congress believed the wiretapping, combined with the misuse of the information it had gathered, to be an impeachable offense.

Following Nixon’s resignation, Senator Frank Church chaired a committee that investigated the uses and abuses of the intelligence derived from the wiretaps. From his report on electronic surveillance, emerged the proposal to create the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The Act both set limits on electronic surveillance, and created a secret court within the Department of Justice – the FISA Court — that could, within these limits, grant law enforcement’s requests to engage in electronic surveillance.

The legislative history of FISA makes it very clear that Congress sought to create laws to govern the uses of warrantless wiretaps. Thus, Bush’s authorization of wiretapping without any application to the FISA Court violated the law.

Whether to Allow Such Wiretaps, Was Congress’ Call to Make

No one questions the ends here. No one doubts another terror attack is coming; it is only a question of when. No one questions the preeminent importance of detecting and preventing such an attack.

What is at issue here, instead, is Bush’s means of achieving his ends: his decision not only to bypass Congress, but to violate the law it had already established in this area.

Congress is Republican-controlled. Polling shows that a large majority of Americans are willing to give up their civil liberties to prevent another terror attack. The USA Patriot Act passed with overwhelming support. So why didn’t the President simply ask Congress for the authority he thought he needed?

The answer seems to be, quite simply, that Vice President Dick Cheney has never recovered from being President Ford’s chief of staff when Congress placed checks on the presidency. And Cheney wanted to make the point that he thought it was within a president’s power to ignore Congress’ laws relating to the exercise of executive power. Bush has gone along with all such Cheney plans.

No president before Bush has taken as aggressive a posture — the position that his powers as commander-in-chief, under Article II of the Constitution, license any action he may take in the name of national security – although Richard Nixon, my former boss, took a similar position.

Presidential Powers Regarding National Security: A Nixonian View

Nixon famously claimed, after resigning from office, that when the president undertook an action in the name of national security, even if he broke the law, it was not illegal.

Nixon’s thinking (and he was learned in the law) relied on the precedent established by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Nixon, quoting Lincoln, said in an interview, “Actions which otherwise would be unconstitutional, could become lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the Constitution and the Nation.”

David Frost, the interviewer, immediately countered by pointing out that the anti-war demonstrators upon whom Nixon focused illegal surveillance, were hardly the equivalent of the rebel South. Nixon responded, “This nation was torn apart in an ideological way by the war in Vietnam, as much as the Civil War tore apart the nation when Lincoln was president.” It was a weak rejoinder, but the best he had.

Nixon took the same stance when he responded to interrogatories proffered by the Senate Select Committee on Government Operations To Study Intelligence Operations (best know as the “Church Committee,” after its chairman Senator Frank Church). In particular, he told the committee, “In 1969, during my Administration, warrantless wiretapping, even by the government, was unlawful, but if undertaken because of a presidential determination that it was in the interest of national security was lawful. Support for the legality of such action is found, for example, in the concurring opinion of Justice White in Katz v. United States.” (Katz is the opinion that established that a wiretap constitutes a “search and seizure” under the Fourth Amendment, just as surely as a search of one’s living room does – and thus that the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirements apply to wiretapping.)

Nixon rather presciently anticipated – and provided a rationalization for – Bush: He wrote, “there have been — and will be in the future — circumstances in which presidents may lawfully authorize actions in the interest of security of this country, which if undertaken by other persons, even by the president under different circumstances, would be illegal.”

Even if we accept Nixon’s logic for purposes of argument, were the circumstances that faced Bush the kind of “circumstances” that justify warrantless wiretapping? I believe the answer is no.

Is Bush’s Unauthorized Surveillance Action Justified? Not Persuasively.

Had Bush issued his Executive Order on September 12, 2001, as a temporary measure – pending his seeking Congress approval – those circumstances might have supported his call.

Or, had a particularly serious threat of attack compelled Bush to authorize warrantless wiretapping in a particular investigation, before he had time to go to Congress, that too might have been justifiable.

But several years have passed since the broad 2002 Executive Order, and in all that time, Bush has refused to seek legal authority for his action. Yet he can hardly miss the fact that Congress has clearly set rules for presidents in the very situation in which he insists on defying the law.

Bush has given one legal explanation for his actions which borders on the laughable: He claims that implicit in Congress’ authorization of his use of force against the Taliban in Afghanistan, following the 9/11 attack, was an exemption from FISA.

No sane member of Congress believes that the Authorization of Military Force provided such an authorization. No first year law student would mistakenly make such a claim. It is not merely a stretch; it is ludicrous.

But the core of Bush’s defense is to rely on the very argument made by Nixon: that the president is merely exercising his “commander-in-chief” power under Article II of the Constitution. This, too, is a dubious argument. Its author, John Yoo, is a bright, but inexperienced and highly partisan young professor at Boalt Law School, who has been in and out of government service.

To see the holes and fallacies in Yoo’s work – embodied in a recently published book — one need only consult the analysis of Georgetown University School of Law professor David Cole in the New York Review of Books. Cole has been plowing this field of the law for many years, and digs much deeper than Yoo.

Since I find Professor Yoo’s legal thinking bordering on fantasy, I was delighted that Professor Cole closed his real-world analysis on a very realistic note: “Michael Ignatieff has written that ‘it is the very nature of a democracy that it not only does, but should, fight with one hand tied behind its back. It is also in the nature of democracy that it prevails against its enemies precisely because it does.’ Yoo persuaded the Bush administration to untie its hand and abandon the constraints of the rule of law. Perhaps that is why we are not prevailing.”

To which I can only add, and recommend, the troubling report by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, who are experts in terrorism and former members of President Clinton’s National Security Council. They write in their new book The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right, that the Bush Administration has utterly failed to close the venerable loopholes available to terrorist to wreak havoc. The war in Iraq is not addressing terrorism; rather, it is creating terrorists, and diverting money from the protection of American interests.

Bush’s unauthorized surveillance, in particular, seems very likely to be ineffective. According to experts with whom I have spoken, Bush’s approach is like hunting for the proverbial needle in the haystack. As sophisticated as NSA’s data mining equipment may be, it cannot, for example, crack codes it does not recognize. So the terrorist communicating in code may escape detection, even if data mining does reach him.

In short, Bush is hoping to get lucky. Such a gamble seems a slim pretext for acting in such blatant violation of Congress’ law. In acting here without Congressional approval, Bush has underlined that his Presidency is unchecked – in his and his attorneys’ view, utterly beyond the law. Now that he has turned the truly awesome powers of the NSA on Americans, what asserted powers will Bush use next? And when – if ever – will we – and Congress — discover that he is using them?
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reuters.com/

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation to determine who disclosed a secret NSA eavesdropping operation approved by President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks, officials said on Friday.

“We are opening an investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified materials related to the NSA,” one official said.

Earlier this month Bush acknowledged the program and called its disclosure to The New York Times “a shameful act.” He said he presumed a Justice Department leak investigation into who disclosed the National Security Agency eavesdropping operation would get under way.

Justice Department officials would give no details of who requested the probe or how it would be conducted.

The disclosure of the covert domestic spying program has triggered concerns among both Democrats and Republicans, with many lawmakers questioning whether it violates the U.S. Constitution.

Several lawmakers have backed a planned hearing on the issue by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Republican from Pennsylvania.

Bush and senior administration officials have argued that the policy of authorizing — without court orders — eavesdropping on international phone calls and e-mails by Americans suspected of links to terrorism was legal and necessary to help defend the country after the September 11 attacks.

The White house has sought to play down the impact on civil liberties, saying the program was narrow in scope and that key congressional leaders were briefed about it.
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By KARL RITTER, Associated Press Writer
yahoo.com

STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Cheap Monday jeans are a hot commodity among young Swedes thanks to their trendy tight fit and low price, even if a few buyers are turned off by the logo: a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead.

Logo designer Bjorn Atldax says he’s not just trying for an antiestablishment vibe.

“It is an active statement against Christianity,” Atldax told The Associated Press. “I’m not a Satanist myself, but I have a great dislike for organized religion.”

The label’s makers say it’s more of a joke, but Atldax insists his graphic designs have a purpose beyond selling denim: to make young people question Christianity, a “force of evil” that he blames for sparking wars throughout history.

In more religious countries, that might raise a furious response, maybe even prompt retailers to drop the brand.

Not in Sweden, a secular country that cherishes its free speech and where churchgoing has been declining for decades.

Cheap Mondays are flying off the shelves at 400 kronor (about $50) a pair. Makers say about 200,000 pairs have been sold since March 2004 — and little attention has been paid to the grinning skull and dark texts such as “Over My Dead Body.”
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Cenk Uygur
HuffingtonPost.com
yahoo.com

A Republican called in to the show today and he was going on about the usual delusional things Republicans say these days. He has a secret e-mail that proves that Saddam did have a connection to al-Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission looked at over 2 million documents and talked to over 1,000 people who work in our government and experts in the field, and concluded there was no tie between Iraq and al-Qaeda – but this guy’s e-mail knows better than the 9/11 Commission.

Then it struck us. Republicans are beginning to sound like delusional Michael Jackson fans. Michael didn’t do it. All the evidence was fixed. The prosecutors were out to get him. The kid who could describe Michael’s penis in painful detail (the same one he paid $20 million to) was lying.

Saddam planned 9/11. He was in cahoots with al-Qaeda. There are weapons of mass destruction – in Syria and Russia (he actually said this – so that’s where the Russians got all those weapons). It’s naïve to think the US constitution could protect us. We have to give away some of our rights to be protected from the terrorists.

I thought these guys were drinking the Kool-Aid. But I now realize they’re drinking the “Jesus Juice” Michael was feeding the kids he wanted to feel up. You figure the Republicans still supporting this administration have to be high on something. Then I thought about what Rove has been feeding them and I don’t know why we didn’t make the connection before – it’s gotta be the Jesus Juice!

Most people saw the fans supporting Michael Jackson throughout his trial and cheering for him outside the courthouse as an embarrassment. That’s how most of the country and the rest of the world are beginning to see Bush supporters. The party is over and these guys keep going back up to Neverland.

No matter how much evidence you put in front of them, they will not waver. They love Bush, right or wrong. A little thing like an unjustified invasion or spying on Americans isn’t going to shake their faith. Take another swig of the Jesus Juice and everything will be fine.

Ignored Hurricane Katrina victims. No problem, pass the Jesus Juice. Ignored the constitution and did warrantless searches of American citizens. No problem, pass the Jesus Juice. Passed more tax cuts in the middle of an out of control, record deficit. No problem, pass the Jesus Juice. Never caught Osama and isn’t even trying. No problem, pass the Jesus Juice.

Remember as Nixon was being pushed out the door in lieu of impeachment, 25% of Americans still supported him. You just can’t shake some people, no matter how overwhelming the evidence. Michael just loves kids. OJ didn’t do it. Nixon meant well. And Bush is just trying to protect us. Pass the Jesus Juice.
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John Nichols
thenation.com

It is hard to complain about a year that began with George Bush bragging about spending the “political capital” he felt he had earned with his dubious reelection and ended with the president drowning in the Nixonian depths of public disapproval.

But the circumstance didn’t just get better.

A handful of elected officials, activist groups and courageous citizens bent the arc of history toward justice.

Here are this one columnist’s picks for the Most Valuable Progressives of 2005:

* MVP — U.S. Senate:

This is an easy category. While California Democrat Barbara Boxer deserves credit for refusing to go along with the certification of the dubious presidential election results from Ohio, and Arizona Republican John McCain merits praise for forcing the administration to back down from its pro-torture stance, there’s no question that Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold was the essential senator of 2005. He was the first member of the chamber to call for a timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq — a stance that initially was ridiculed but ultimately drew support from many of Feingold’s fellow Democrats and even a few Republicans. And he ended the year by forging a bipartisan coalition that beat back the Bush administration’s demand for the long-term extension of the Patriot Act, scoring one of the most significant wins for civil liberties that Congress has seen in years.

* MVP — U.S. House:

There are plenty of members of the House who deserve credit for standing up to the administration on critical issues — from Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown, who led the fight against Central American Free Trade Agreement, to Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders, who was the point man in the battle to fix the Patriot Act, to North Carolina Republican Walter Jones, who courageously broke with the administration to oppose the war. And, of course, there was Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha, the decorated Vietnam veteran who forced the House to get serious about the war he called for a speedy withdrawal. But the essential member of the House in 2005 was Michigan Democrat John Conyers, the ranking member of his party on the Judiciary Committee. No one used their bully pulpit better in 2005 than Conyers, who gathered damning information about electoral irregularities in the 2004 Ohio presidential voting and then led the challenge to the certification of the results, held hearings on the Downing Street Memo’s revelations regarding the Bush administration’s doctoring of pre-war intelligence, and ended the year by moving resolutions to censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney for lying to Congress and the American people — and to set up a committee to examine the issue of impeachment.

* MVP — Executive Branch:

Yes, there was one. It’s Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the retired U.S. Army colonel who served as chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell until Powell exited the State Department in January, 2005. After leaving his position, Wilkerson began revealing the dark secrets of the Bush-Cheney interregnum, telling a New America Foundation gathering in October that during his years in the administration: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.” Wilkerson warned that, with “a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either,” the country is headed in an exceptionally dangerous direction. “I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita and I could go on back, we haven’t done very well on anything like that in a long time,” Wilkerson explained. “And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence.” That is truth telling of a quality and a scope all too rarely witnessed in the Washington of Bush and Cheney.

* MVP — Law Enforcement Branch:

While Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald deserved all the headlines and the credit he got for indicting I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the now former chief-of-staff for Vice President Dick Cheney and a key player in faking up the “case” for war with Iraq, Fitzgerald’s work is just beginning. His most important indictments are yet to come. The prosecutor who took the greatest risks and who secured the most consequential indictment of 2005 was Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who brought down House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The man who ran Congress for most of the Bush years has not been convicted — yet — but DeLay was forced to step down as majority leader and no one who watches Washington thinks he will ever regain that position. Earle got his man, and began the long process of cleansing a Congress that, after all these years of being run by a pest-control specialist, is in serious need of fumigation.

* MVP — Citizen Branch:

In August, when Democrats leaders in Washington were still talking about working with the Bush administration on Iraq — effectively leaving Americans who were growing increasingly ill-at-ease about the war without a voice in the chambers of power — the mother of a slain soldier followed Bush to his Crawford, Texas, ranchette and asked him to take a few minutes away from his month-long vacation to talk about the quagmire. Cindy Sheehan put the issue of the war back at the forefront of the national agenda, forcing even the dysfunctional White House press corps to start covering dissenters and getting D.C. Democrats to wake up to the reality that the American people had lost faith in the president and his military misadventure.

* MVP — Watchdog Branch:

The media did a slightly better job of monitoring political wrongdoing in 2005 than it did during the first four years of the Bush-Cheney presidency — when it actually would have mattered. But the real work of exposing the misdeeds of the administration is still being done by activist groups. And the most inspired of these in 2005 was After Downing Street, the coalition of groups that describes itself as “working to expose the lies that launched the war and to hold accountable its architects, including through censure and impeachment.” In conjunction with Progressive Democrats of America, the able activist group that seeks to create an actual opposition party in America, After Downing Street is pushing the political envelope in exactly the direction it needs to go. Check out their website at www.afterdowningstreet.org website and keep ahead of the action in 2006.
see original

by Harry Shearer
HuffPost

We’ve heard a lot about the stories of the CIA abducting suspects, sometimes on the basis of a mistaken name, airlifting them off to countries like Egypt for some “enhanced” interrogation. The practice is known as “extraordinary rendition”. Now come reports that the UK government may have been doing the same thing, using Greece as its torture chamber, in the wake of last summer’s London subway bombing.

The reports are being denied by Britain’s Foreign Secretary–what else is new?–but the story has so far picked up no coverage in the US. It does suggest that the Blair government, far from being Bush’s poodle, is deep in monkey see-monkey do mode. BTW: didn’t we have a revolution to avoid being treated the way the Brits treat people?

original article

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer

The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to former and current intelligence officials and congressional and administration sources.

The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved.

GST includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe. Other compartments within GST give the CIA enhanced ability to mine international financial records and eavesdrop on suspects anywhere in the world.

Over the past two years, as aspects of this umbrella effort have burst into public view, the revelations have prompted protests and official investigations in countries that work with the United States, as well as condemnation by international human rights activists and criticism by members of Congress.

Still, virtually all the programs continue to operate largely as they were set up, according to current and former officials. These sources say Bush’s personal commitment to maintaining the GST program and his belief in its legality have been key to resisting any pressure to change course.

“In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covert action,” said A. John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to 2004. “But this president, who is breaking down the boundaries between covert action and conventional war, seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty details of operations.”

The administration’s decisions to rely on a small circle of lawyers for legal interpretations that justify the CIA’s covert programs and not to consult widely with Congress on them have also helped insulate the efforts from the growing furor, said several sources who have been involved.

Bush has never publicly confirmed the existence of a covert program, but he was recently forced to defend the approach in general terms, citing his wartime responsibilities to protect the nation. In November, responding to questions about the CIA’s clandestine prisons, he said the nation must defend against an enemy that “lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again.”

This month he went into more detail, defending the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping within the United States. That program is separate from the GST program, but three lawyers involved said the legal rationale for the NSA program is essentially the same one used to support GST, which is an abbreviation of a classified code name for the umbrella covert action program.

The administration contends it is still acting in self-defense after the Sept. 11 attacks, that the battlefield is worldwide, and that everything it has approved is consistent with the demands made by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, when it passed a resolution authorizing “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks.”

“Everything is done in the name of self-defense, so they can do anything because nothing is forbidden in the war powers act,” said one official who was briefed on the CIA’s original cover program and who is skeptical of its legal underpinnings. “It’s an amazing legal justification that allows them to do anything,” said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues.

The interpretation undergirds the administration’s determination not to waver under public protests or the threat of legislative action. For example, after The Washington Post disclosed the existence of secret prisons in several Eastern European democracies, the CIA closed them down because of an uproar in Europe. But the detainees were moved elsewhere to similar CIA prisons, referred to as “black sites” in classified documents.

The CIA has stuck with its overall approaches, defending and in some cases refining them. The agency is working to establish procedures in the event a prisoner dies in custody. One proposal circulating among mid-level officers calls for rushing in a CIA pathologist to perform an autopsy and then quickly burning the body, according to two sources.

In June, the CIA temporarily suspended its interrogation program after a controversy over the disclosure of an Aug. 1, 2002, memorandum from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that defined torture in an unconventional way. The White House withdrew and replaced the memo. But the hold on the CIA’s interrogation activities was eventually removed, several intelligence officials said.

The authorized techniques include “waterboarding” and “water dousing,” both meant to make prisoners think they are drowning; hard slapping; isolation; sleep deprivation; liquid diets; and stress positions — often used, intelligence officials say, in combination to enhance the effect.

Behind the scenes, CIA Director Porter J. Goss — until last year the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee — has gathered ammunition to defend the program.

After a CIA inspector general’s report in the spring of 2004 stated that some authorized interrogation techniques violated international law, Goss asked two national security experts to study the program’s effectiveness.

Gardner Peckham, an adviser to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), concluded that the interrogation techniques had been effective, said an intelligence official familiar with the result. John J. Hamre, deputy defense secretary under President Bill Clinton, offered a more ambiguous conclusion. Both declined to comment.

The only apparent roadblock that could yet prompt significant change in the CIA’s approach is a law passed this month prohibiting torture and cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody, including in CIA hands.

It is still unclear how the law, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), will be implemented. But two intelligence experts said the CIA will be required to draw up clear guidelines and to get all special interrogation techniques approved by a wider range of government lawyers who hold a more conventional interpretation of international treaty obligations.

“The executive branch will not pull back unless it has to,” said a former Justice Department lawyer involved in the initial discussions on executive power. “Because if it pulls back unilaterally and another attack occurs, it will get blamed.”
The Origins

The top-secret presidential finding Bush signed six days after the Sept. 11 attacks empowered the intelligence agencies in a way not seen since World War II, and it ordered them to create what would become the GST program.

Written findings are required by the National Security Act of 1947 before the CIA can undertake a covert action. A covert action may not violate the Constitution or any U.S. law. But such actions can, and often do, violate laws of the foreign countries in which they take place, said intelligence experts.

The CIA faced the day after the 2001 attacks with few al Qaeda informants, a tiny paramilitary division and no interrogators, much less a system for transporting terrorism suspects and keeping them hidden for interrogation.

Besides fighting the war in Afghanistan, the agency set about to put in place an intelligence-gathering network that relies heavily on foreign security services and their deeper knowledge of local terrorist groups. With billions of dollars appropriated each year by Congress, the CIA has established joint counterterrorism intelligence centers in more than two dozen countries, and it has enlisted at least eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe, to allow secret prisons on their soil.

Working behind the scenes, the CIA has gained approval from foreign governments to whisk terrorism suspects off the streets or out of police custody into a clandestine prison system that includes the CIA’s black sites and facilities run by intelligence agencies in other countries.

The presidential finding also permitted the CIA to create paramilitary teams to hunt and kill designated individuals anywhere in the world, according to a dozen current and former intelligence officials and congressional and executive branch sources.

In four years, the GST has become larger than the CIA’s covert action programs in Afghanistan and Central America in the 1980s, according to current and former intelligence officials. Indeed, the CIA, working with foreign counterparts, has been responsible for virtually all of the success the United States has had in capturing or killing al Qaeda leaders since Sept. 11, 2001.

Bush delegated much of the day-to-day decision-making and the creation of individual components to then-CIA Director George J. Tenet, according to congressional and intelligence officials who were briefed on the finding at the time.

“George could decide, even on killings,” one of these officials said, referring to Tenet. “That was pushed down to him. George had the authority on who was going to get it.”
The Lawyers

Tenet, according to half a dozen former intelligence officials, delegated most of the decision making on lethal action to the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center. Killing an al Qaeda leader with a Hellfire missile fired from a remote-controlled drone might have been considered assassination in a prior era and therefore banned by law.

But after Sept. 11, four former government lawyers said, it was classified as an act of self-defense and therefore was not an assassination. “If it was an al Qaeda person, it wouldn’t be an assassination,” said one lawyer involved.

This month, Pakistani intelligence sources said, Hamza Rabia, a top operational planner for al Qaeda, was killed along with four others by a missile fired by U.S. operatives using an unmanned Predator drone, although there were conflicting reports on whether a missile was used. In May, another al Qaeda member, Haitham Yemeni, was reported killed by a Predator drone missile in northwest Pakistan.

Refining what constitutes an assassination was just one of many legal interpretations made by Bush administration lawyers. Time and again, the administration asked government lawyers to draw up new rules and reinterpret old ones to approve activities once banned or discouraged under the congressional reforms beginning in the 1970s, according to these officials and seven lawyers who once worked on these matters.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, deputy director of national intelligence, has described the administration’s philosophy in public and private meetings, including a session with human rights groups.

“We’re going to live on the edge,” Hayden told the groups, according to notes taken by Human Rights Watch and confirmed by Hayden’s office. “My spikes will have chalk on them. . . . We’re pretty aggressive within the law. As a professional, I’m troubled if I’m not using the full authority allowed by law.”

Not stopping another attack not only will be a professional failure, he argued, but also “will move the line” again on acceptable legal limits to counterterrorism.

When the CIA wanted new rules for interrogating important terrorism suspects the White House gave the task to a small group of lawyers within the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel who believed in an aggressive interpretation of presidential power.

The White House tightened the circle of participants involved in these most sensitive new areas. It initially cut out the State Department’s general counsel, most of the judge advocates general of the military services and the Justice Department’s criminal division, which traditionally dealt with international terrorism.

“The Bush administration did not seek a broad debate on whether commander-in-chief powers can trump international conventions and domestic statutes in our struggle against terrorism,” said Radsan, the former CIA lawyer, who is a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn. “They could have separated the big question from classified details to operations and had an open debate. Instead, an inner circle of lawyers and advisers worked around the dissenters in the administration and one-upped each other with extreme arguments.”

At the CIA, the White House allowed the general counsel’s job, traditionally filled from outside the CIA by someone who functioned in a sort of oversight role, to be held by John Rizzo, a career CIA lawyer with a fondness for flashy suits and ties who worked for years in the Directorate of Operations, or D.O.

“John Rizzo is a classic D.O. lawyer. He understands the culture, the intelligence business,” Radsan said. “He admires the case officers. And they trust him to work out tough issues in the gray with them. He is like a corporate lawyer who knows how to make the deal happen.”

These lawyers have written legal justifications for holding suspects picked up outside Afghanistan without a court order, without granting traditional legal rights and without giving them access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

CIA and Office of Legal Counsel lawyers also determined that it was legal for suspects to be secretly detained in one country and transferred to another for the purposes of interrogation and detention — a process known as “rendition.”

Lawyers involved in the decision making acknowledge the uncharted nature of their work. “I did what I thought the best reading of the law was,” one lawyer said. “These lines are not obvious. It was a judgment.”
Credit and Blame

One way the White House limited debate over its program was to virtually shut out Congress during the early years. Congress, for its part, raised only weak and sporadic protests. The administration sometimes refused to give the committees charged with overseeing intelligence agencies the details they requested. It also cut the number of members of Congress routinely briefed on these matters, usually to four members — the chairmen and ranking Democratic members of the House and Senate intelligence panels.

John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, complained in a 2003 letter to Vice President Cheney that his briefing on the NSA eavesdropping was unsatisfactory. “Given the security restrictions associated with this information, and my inability to consult staff or counsel on my own, I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse, these activities,” he wrote.

Rockefeller made similar complaints about the CIA’s refusal to allow the full committee to see the backup material supporting a skeptical report by the CIA inspector general in 2004 on detentions and interrogations that questioned the legal basis for renditions.

Some former CIA officers now worry that the agency alone will be held responsible for actions authorized by Bush and approved by the White House’s lawyers.

Attacking the CIA is common when covert programs are exposed and controversial, said Gerald Haines, a former CIA historian who is a scholar in residence at the University of Virginia. “It seems to me the agency is taking the brunt of all the recent criticism.”

Duane R. “Dewey” Clarridge, who directed the CIA’s covert efforts to support the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s, said the nature of CIA work overseas is, and should be, risky and sometimes ugly. “You have a spy agency because the spy agency is going to break laws overseas. If you don’t want it to do those dastardly things, don’t have it. You can have the State Department.”

But a former CIA officer said the agency “lost its way” after Sept. 11, rarely refusing or questioning an administration request. The unorthodox measures “have got to be flushed out of the system,” the former officer said. “That’s how it works in this country.”

Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times

A year ago, everyone expected President Bush to get his way on Social Security. Pundits warned Democrats that they were making a big political mistake by opposing plans to divert payroll taxes into private accounts.

A year ago, everyone thought Congress would make Mr. Bush’s tax cuts permanent, in spite of projections showing that doing so would lead to budget deficits as far as the eye can see. But Congress hasn’t acted, and most of the cuts are still scheduled to expire by the end of 2010.

A year ago, Mr. Bush made many Americans feel safe, because they believed that he would be decisive and effective in an emergency. But Mr. Bush was apparently oblivious to the first major domestic emergency since 9/11. According to Newsweek, aides to Mr. Bush finally decided, days after Hurricane Katrina struck, that they had to show him a DVD of TV newscasts to get him to appreciate the seriousness of the situation.

A year ago, before “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” became a national punch line, the rising tide of cronyism in government agencies and the rapid replacement of competent professionals with unqualified political appointees attracted hardly any national attention.

A year ago, hardly anyone outside Washington had heard of Jack Abramoff, and Tom DeLay’s position as House majority leader seemed unassailable.

A year ago, Dick Cheney, who repeatedly cited discredited evidence linking Saddam to 9/11, and promised that invading Americans would be welcomed as liberators – although he hadn’t yet declared that the Iraq insurgency was in its “last throes” – was widely admired for his “gravitas.”

A year ago, Howard Dean – who was among the very few prominent figures to question Colin Powell’s prewar presentation to the United Nations, and who warned, while hawks were still celebrating the fall of Baghdad, that the occupation of Iraq would be much more difficult than the initial invasion – was considered flaky and unsound.

A year ago, it was clear that before the Iraq war, the administration suppressed information suggesting that Iraq was not, in fact, trying to build nuclear weapons. Yet few people in Washington or in the news media were willing to say that the nation was deliberately misled into war until polls showed that most Americans already believed it.

A year ago, the Washington establishment treated Ayad Allawi as if he were Nelson Mandela. Mr. Allawi’s triumphant tour of Washington, back in September 2004, provided a crucial boost to the Bush-Cheney campaign. So did his claim that the insurgents were “desperate.” But Mr. Allawi turned out to be another Ahmad Chalabi, a hero of Washington conference rooms and cocktail parties who had few supporters where it mattered, in Iraq.

A year ago, when everyone respectable agreed that we must “stay the course,” only a handful of war critics suggested that the U.S. presence in Iraq might be making the violence worse, not better. It would have been hard to imagine the top U.S. commander in Iraq saying, as Gen. George Casey recently did, that a smaller foreign force is better “because it doesn’t feed the notion of occupation.”

A year ago, Mr. Bush hadn’t yet openly reneged on Scott McClellan’s 2003 pledge that “if anyone in this administration was involved” in the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity, that person “would no longer be in this administration.” Of course, some suspect that Mr. Bush has always known who was involved.

A year ago, we didn’t know that Mr. Bush was lying, or at least being deceptive, when he said at an April 2004 event promoting the Patriot Act that “a wiretap requires a court order. …When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.”

A year ago, most Americans thought Mr. Bush was honest.

A year ago, we didn’t know for sure that almost all the politicians and pundits who thundered, during the Lewinsky affair, that even the president isn’t above the law have changed their minds. But now we know when it comes to presidents who break the law, it’s O.K. if you’re a Republican.

The New York Times Company

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

The bouncer at my bar is named Ty. A native of New Orleans, he speaks with the slow drawl unique to the region, and he is huge. Not outlandishly huge, not freakishly huge, but definitely one of the larger specimens of human one is likely to meet. He works the door at my joint, as well as at another bar down the street a ways. Ty is smart, funny as all get-out and a marvelous spinner of tales.

Each night Ty works he regales my friends and me with stories of mayhem and bouncer-justice, of the drunken boobs stupid enough to think they can push him around at the other establishment. My bar, one gets the sense, is too peaceful for his tastes; he has never been forced to exercise his talents while working at my joint.

Ty and I have assiduously observed the tenets of that invisible sign which hangs over the door of every drinking establishment in America: “Thou Shalt Not Discuss Religion Or Politics In This Place.” The two reasons for this are straightforward: I don’t particularly relish the idea of discussing work when I am in my cups; also, Ty is an ardent Bush supporter, so the first reason becomes doubly significant. If I want to get frustrated and annoyed, I can just turn on CNN and listen to the Know-Nothings ply their wares.

A funny thing happened the other night, however – something that changed the whole dynamic of our relationship. I was passing by Ty, and he grabbed me by the arm to pull me aside. He knows what I do for a living, and wanted to discuss politics in defiance of the invisible sign. “What do you think of the Patriot Act?” he asked me.

“I think it’s a damned troubling thing,” I said after a moment. “There are aspects of it that have been on the books for years because of the War on Drugs. There are aspects of it that are brand new to American law. Overall, I think it is tremendously invasive and not in line with how we have done things in this country. As a Republican,” I said with a bit of the needle in my voice, “the issues of personal freedom and governmental interference should bother you.”

“I ain’t no Republican,” he said. “I’m an Independent. I think they’re all crooks.”

“Fair enough,” I said, “but you are a Bush supporter.”

“Yep,” he drawled. “So what parts of the Patriot Act don’t you like?”

“Well,” I said, “one scary part of it is Section 215, the thing people call the ‘Sneak-and-Peek’ provision. Section 215 says law enforcement can enter your house, search your stuff, bug your phone, bug your computer – and they never have to tell you they were there. The FBI could have 215′d their way into my house and I’d never know it. Hell, they could be there right now. All they need to do it is a warrant signed by a judge somewhere.”

“That ain’t right,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “But at least they have to talk to a judge.”

“Well,” I said, “have you heard about all this stuff with the National Security Agency spying on people here in America?”

“Little bit, yeah,” he said.

“You know that the NSA can spy on pretty much anyone, tap their phones, do total surveillance?” I asked, and he nodded. “Well, back in 2002, Bush told the NSA to start spying on Americans. Lots of them. But he did this without going through the FISA court.”

“FISA court?” he asked.

“FISA stands for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was passed in 1978,” I said. “After Watergate and all that craziness, they wanted to make sure our intelligence services weren’t being used by people in power to spy on Americans. If you want to get the NSA to spy on Americans, you have to get a warrant from what’s called the FISA court. They’re a few judges who hear arguments for special FISA warrants.”

“OK.”

“Now here’s one of the crazy parts with this Bush-NSA thing,” I said. “To get a warrant from this FISA court, you don’t need to have probable cause. You don’t need to have evidence. The FISA court has handed out more than 19,000 warrants since it was set up, and has only denied four. And they do it quickly, because obviously if you go before the FISA court for a warrant, you’re probably pressed for time. It’s the easiest court in America to get a warrant from. Bush totally blew past them, said he didn’t need warrants from the FISA court, and just had the NSA start spying away on Americans.”

Ty’s response to this was too profane to be printed here.

“Why the hell’d he do that?” he finally asked.

“Good question,” I said. “There are two probable reasons, neither of which are very comfortable. The first reason is that he and Cheney want to expand the power of the Executive Branch. Cheney, specifically, has always felt that the Executive let go of too much power after Watergate and Vietnam, gave too much power to Congress and the press, and these guys have been trying to get it back. So they decided that since we are ‘at war,’ they were going to do whatever they damned well pleased.”

“Seems smart,” he said.

“Maybe,” I said, “but that’s a different debate. Ask yourself this, though. Imagine a Democrat wins the White House in 2008. These Bush guys will have left this Democrat with outrageously broad powers. His people can spy on whom they like, because Bush did it. They don’t have to get warrants, because Bush did it. They can lie to the press, because Bush did it. They can bulldoze Congress, because Bush did it. That make you comfortable?”

“Hell no,” he said.

“Right,” I said. “Too much power is too much power, no matter who is in power. The separation of powers is there for a reason.”

“So what’s the other reason you think he didn’t get the FISA warrants?” he asked.

“That,” I said, “is actually the scarier part. Like I said, FISA has given out those 19,000 warrants and has only denied four. It’s incredibly easy to get a warrant from them. The only reason they’re there at all is to safeguard your privacy and mine, to make sure some crazy maniac in the White House doesn’t start spying on Americans, on personal enemies, on you and me. The NSA can do that, so the FISA court is there as a firewall.”

“OK,” he said.

“So maybe,” I said, “Bush didn’t go to the FISA court because he knew they wouldn’t give him the warrants. Maybe he didn’t go to the FISA court because he wanted to spy on enemies like Patrick Fitzgerald, like Joe Wilson, like Cindy Sheehan, like Tom Daschle or Harry Reid, or anyone else who was messing with him. Maybe he didn’t go to the FISA court because he knew the surveillance he wanted was illegal, but he was damned well going to do it anyway.”

“That ain’t right,” said Ty, his face reddening.

“Now take this all one step further,” I said, “since you asked about the Patriot Act. Think about that Section 215 and the sneak-and-peek stuff. I told you they need to see a judge first to come into your home, to search and bug your stuff. But this whole NSA deal shows that Bush and these guys don’t give a hoot in hell for judges, warrants or the process of law. They’re going to do what they want to do, warrant or not. We’ve got a situation now where Bush and his people could not only be ordering the surveillance of Americans, but could also be authorizing home invasions, and all without any kind of warrants and oversight. What does that sound like to you?”

“Fascism,” he said without hesitating.

“This is the reason,” I said with a smile, “why I don’t talk politics at the bar. I have a way of going on and on until the paint peels. But let me ask you one last question.”

“Shoot,” he said.

“As a Bush supporter,” I said, “how far are you willing to go to support the guy? How much individual liberty, how many laws, are you willing to give up to Bush before we lose the country? How far is too far?”

Ty didn’t have anything to say at first. “This,” he finally muttered, “is too damned far.”

At that moment, a crowd of people came into the bar, and Ty had to check their IDs. I went back to my beer.

Drip, drip, drip.

original article

By Kristin Jensen and Jonathan D. Salant
Bloomberg.com

Washington – US President George W. Bush calls indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff “an equal money dispenser” who helped politicians of both parties. Campaign donation records show Republicans were a lot more equal than Democrats.

Between 2001 and 2004, Abramoff gave more than $127,000 to Republican candidates and committees and nothing to Democrats, federal records show. At the same time, his Indian clients were the only ones among the top 10 tribal donors in the US to donate more money to Republicans than Democrats.

Bush’s comment about Abramoff in a Dec. 14 Fox News interview was aimed at countering Democratic accusations that Republicans have brought a “culture of corruption” to Washington. Even so, the numbers show that “Abramoff’s big connections were with the Republicans,” said Larry Noble, the former top lawyer for the Federal Election Commission, who directs the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics.

“It is somewhat unusual in that most lobbyists try to work with both Republicans and Democrats, but we’re already seeing that Jack Abramoff doesn’t seem to be a usual lobbyist,” Noble said.

Abramoff, 46, is under investigation by a Justice Department-led task force; he has already been indicted in Florida in a separate case involving the purchase of a casino boat company. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has set up a Web page, dubbed “Glass Houses,” featuring pictures of Democratic senators and a tally of funds they took from Abramoff or his associates.

In the last week, two Democrats have said they’re returning donations from Indian tribes represented by Abramoff and from his associates. Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota – the top Democrat on a committee investigating the lobbyist – gave back $67,000. Senator Max Baucus of Montana is returning $18,893.

Mostly Republicans

Between 2001 and 2004, Abramoff joined with his former partner, Michael Scanlon, and tribal clients to give money to a third of the members of Congress, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, according to records of the Federal Election Commission and Internal Revenue Service. At least 171 lawmakers got $1.4 million in campaign donations from the group. Republicans took in most of the money, with 110 lawmakers getting $942,275, or 66 percent of the total.

Of the top 10 political donors among Indian tribes in that period, three are former clients of Abramoff and Scanlon: the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe of Michigan, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians of California. All three gave most of their donations to Republicans – by margins of 30 percentage points or more – while the rest favored Democrats.

Directing Donations

Abramoff faces allegations that he bilked the casino-owning tribes out of millions of dollars and attempted to corrupt public officials. E-mails released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee during a year of hearings offer evidence that he directed the tribes to donate funds to specific lawmakers.

Abramoff’s tribal clients continued to give money to Democrats even after he began representing them, although in smaller percentages than in the past.

The Saginaw Chippewas gave $500,500 to Republicans between 2001 and 2004 and $277,210 to Democrats, according to a review of data compiled by Dwight L. Morris & Associates, a Bristow, Virginia-based company that tracks campaign-finance reports. Between 1997 and 2000, the tribe gave just $158,000 to Republicans and $279,000 to Democrats.

The Republican senatorial committee is sending information out to state campaigns and to all Republican press secretaries on Capitol Hill about the Democrat-Abramoff connections, spokesman Brian Nick said. The cover sheet asks, “They Don’t Know Jack???” in red ink and features a picture of Abramoff surrounded by Democrats including Dorgan and Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Reid’s Response

Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said the senator is still considering whether to return the $60,000 in donations he received from Abramoff associates and clients. The money includes contributions that came from Abramoff’s former employer, Greenberg Traurig LLP, a lobbying and law firm with multiple issues in Congress.

Bush, in the Fox News interview, said of Abramoff: “It seems to me that he was an equal money dispenser, that he was giving money to people in both political parties.”

White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said yesterday that Bush was making the point that Abramoff’s links weren’t exclusively Republican. “The president was referring to press reports showing Mr. Abramoff, his clients and associates have contributed to both Democrats and Republicans alike,” Healy said.

‘Bending over Backwards’

“Republicans are bending over backwards to exaggerate the links” between Democrats and Abramoff, said Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “This is a Republican scandal that involves Republican lawmakers doing favors for a Republican lobbyist.”

Scanlon, Abramoff’s former partner, has pleaded guilty to attempted fraud and corruption of public officials and is cooperating with the Justice Department’s investigation. His plea agreement refers to efforts to corrupt US lawmakers, including a “Representative No. 1,” identified by lawyers in the case as Ohio Republican Robert Ney.

The other names most frequently mentioned in connection with Abramoff are both Republicans: DeLay, a one-time friend who has cut off contact with the lobbyist, and Senator Conrad Burns of Montana. Burns, who is facing criticism in his home state for being the top recipient of Abramoff-related donations, said on Dec. 16 he planned to give back to the tribes about $150,000 in contributions from Abramoff, his associates and tribal clients.

In the Florida case, in which Abramoff has already been indicted, prosecutors allege that he and partner Adam Kidan conspired to defraud lenders when buying SunCruz Casino Ltd. in 2000. Kidan pleaded guilty Dec. 15, and his lawyer said he’s willing to testify against Abramoff.

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