Observations on current events

Trading Freedom For Security:

The Independent (UK) - Surveillance UK: why this revolution is only the start
"The new national surveillance network for tracking car journeys, which has taken more than 25 years to develop, is only the beginning of plans to monitor the movements of all British citizens. The Home Office Scientific Development Branch in Hertfordshire is already working on ways of automatically recognising human faces by computer, which many people would see as truly introducing the prospect of Orwellian street surveillance, where our every move is recorded and stored by machines..."


The Rule of Law:

Corporate Crime Reporter: report122805
"Federal and state prosecutors are increasingly offering major corporations – including Adelphia, Computer Associates, KPMG, Merrill Lynch, Monsanto, Sears, Shell, WorldCom/MCI – special deals – known as deferred prosecution or non prosecution agreements.
Under these agreements, prosecutors agree not to criminally prosecute the corporation to conviction in exchange for cooperation against culpable executives, implementation of corporate monitors, and fines.
That’s according to a report released today by Corporate Crime Reporter.
The report – titled Crime Without Conviction: The Rise of Deferred and Non Prosecution Agreements – details 34 such agreements – 17 deferred prosecution agreements and 17 non-prosecution agreements.
'It used to be that major corporations caught committing serious crimes would be brought to justice – convicted of a crime and sentenced,' said Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter. 'No longer.'
Now, under a policy implemented by the Department of Justice since 2003, major corporations caught committing serious crimes are not convicted of a crime and sentenced.
In fact, no major corporation caught engaging in accounting or securities fraud has been convicted since the Arthur Andersen conviction in June 2002..."

U.S. Assistant AG William E. Moschella writes Sen. Pat Roberts, Sen. John D. Rockefeller, Rep. Peter Hoekstra and Rep. Jane Harman about how the President can do whatever he wants.

John Dean: George W. Bush as the New Richard M. Nixon
"...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...
...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,'..."

Blairwatch: Calling All Bloggers: These Documents need publishing
"The UK government has been quick to deny that we practice, or tolerate the practice of Torture. So it is perhaps not suprising that they are determined that you should not see the following documents...
...Craig Murray was the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, untill his complaints and protest at the use of intelligence gained by torture got too much for Jack Straw and the Foreign Office, who set about attempting to unsuccessfully smear him, and to successfully remove him from office...
...The Foreign Office has had the draft of Craig's book for clearance for over 3 months now, and they are doing everything they can to try and prevent him from publishing his side of the story. Their latest attempt to cover their own backs was to inform him, the night before Christmas Eve, that these two documents cannot be published, and that he was to return or destroy all copies immediately..."

Chicago Tribune: U.S. stalls on human trafficking
"Three years ago, President Bush declared that he had 'zero tolerance' for trafficking in humans by the government's overseas contractors, and two years ago Congress mandated a similar policy.
But notwithstanding the president's statement and the congressional edict, the Defense Department has yet to adopt a policy to bar human trafficking.
A proposal prohibiting defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor was drafted by the Pentagon last summer, but five defense lobbying groups oppose key provisions and a final policy still appears to be months away, according to those involved and Defense Department records.
The lobbying groups opposing the plan say they're in favor of the idea in principle, but said they believe that implementing key portions of it overseas is unrealistic. They represent thousands of firms, including some of the industry's biggest names, such as DynCorp International and Halliburton subsidiary KBR, both of which have been linked to trafficking-related concerns..."


Iraq:

Sidney Blumenthal: Victory in name only
"...Bush hoped to erase the year's infamies with the election in Iraq on December 15, his ultimate turning point. He delivered five major speeches crafted by his new adviser on the National Security Council, Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist and co-author of Choosing Your Battles, based on his public opinion research showing that 'the public is defeat phobic, not casualty phobic'. In one speech, Bush mentioned 'victory' 15 times, against a background embossed with the slogan 'Plan for Victory,' and the White House issued a document entitled National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.
Since the election of the Shia slate that will hold power for four years, dedicated to an Islamic state allied with Iran, the president and his advisers have fallen eerily silent. As his annus horribilis draws to a close, Bush appears to have expended the turning points..."

Latin America:

Would we ever expect the U.S. Congress or President to make such a gesture while the nation faces a budget deficit & enormous debt? The numerous times the Congress has voted itself a raise while leaving the minimum wage at $5.15 an hour comes to mind as glaring contrarian example...

BBC: Bolivian leader to cut own salary
"The socialist president-elect of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has said he will cut his salary by half when he takes office next month.
Mr Morales said his cabinet would follow suit and that members of Bolivia's parliament would be expected to cut their allowances.
He also reaffirmed his commitment to change Bolivia's economic system.
At the moment, Mr Morales, an Aymara Indian born into poverty, rents a single room in a shared house.
When he moves into the presidential palace next month, Mr Morales is not planning to switch to a jet-set lifestyle.
Announcing the salary cut, he said that in a country as poor as Bolivia, the president and his cabinet should share the burden.
The money saved will go on social programmes, particularly in the field of education.
Mr Morales also confirmed that his government plans to introduce a new tax on the wealthy as soon as possible.
His advisors say they are planning to revoke a decree from 1985 which switched Bolivia to the sort of free-market economy recommended by Washington.
These announcements will go down well with the poor voters who gave Mr Morales a resounding election victory..."


Iraq:

Does this mean that Mr. Baker's trip after the fall of Baghdad (while working for the 'Iraqi government' and still representing the Saudis via Baker's law firm) was successful in making sure the Iraqi debt to Saudi Arabia was left intact?

BBC: Write-off for bulk of Iraqi debt
"Iraq will see the bulk of its $120bn (£69bn) debt written off by the end of 2006, its finance minister Ali Allawi has told the BBC.
Mr Allawi said debt levels would then fall to a 'supportable' level of $30bn.
Creditors from the Paris Club of rich nations have agreed to cancel most of the $40bn owed to them after Iraq made strides to ensure economic stability...
...The Paris Club of nations, which include the United States, United Kingdom and Russia, had made its pledge to write-off Iraq's debts conditional on an IMF agreement..."

Dr. Richard Drayton: Shock, awe and Hobbes have backfired on America's neocons
"...It has been usual to explain the chaos and looting in Baghdad, the destruction of infrastructure, ministries, museums and the national library and archives, as caused by a failure of Rumsfeld's planning. But the evidence is this was at least in part a mask for the destruction of the collective memory and modern state of a key Arab nation, and the manufacture of disorder to create a hunger for the occupier's supervision. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported in May 2003, US troops broke the locks of museums, ministries and universities and told looters: 'Go in Ali Baba, it's all yours!'
For the American imperial strategists invested deeply in the belief that through spreading terror they could take power. Neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the recently indicted Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, learned from Leo Strauss that a strong and wise minority of humans had to rule over the weak majority through deception and fear, rather than persuasion or compromise. They read Le Bon and Freud on the relationship of crowds to authority. But most of all they loved Hobbes's Leviathan. While Hobbes saw authority as free men's chosen solution to the imperfections of anarchy, his 21st century heirs seek to create the fear that led to submission. And technology would make it possible and beautiful...
...The Afghanistan war of 2001 taught the wrong lessons. The US assumed this was the model of how a small, special forces-dominated campaign, using local proxies and calling in gunships or airstrikes, would sweep away opposition. But all Afghanistan showed was how an outside power could intervene in a finely balanced civil war. The one-eyed Mullah Omar's great escape on his motorbike was a warning that the God's-eye view can miss the human detail.
The problem for the US today is that Leviathan has shot his wad. Iraq revealed the hubris of the imperial geostrategy. One small nation can tie down a superpower. Air and space supremacy do not give command on the ground. People can't be terrorised into identification with America. The US has proved able to destroy massively - but not create, or even control. Afghanistan and Iraq lie in ruins, yet the occupiers cower behind concrete mountains...
...The US needs to discover, like a child that does not know its limits, that there is a world outside its body and desires, beyond even the reach of its toys, that suffers too."

Bush Massages The CoG:

LA Times: Chiefs Demoted in Pentagon Succession Line
"The three military service chiefs have been dropped in the Bush administration's doomsday line of Pentagon succession, pushed beneath three civilian undersecretaries in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's inner circle.
A little-noticed holiday week executive order from President Bush moved the Pentagon's intelligence chief to the No. 3 spot in the succession hierarchy behind Rumsfeld. The second spot would be the deputy secretary of defense, but that position currently is vacant. The Army chief, which long held the No. 3 spot, was dropped to sixth...
...Technically, the line of succession is assigned to specific positions, rather than the current individuals holding those jobs.
But in its current incarnation, the doomsday plan moves to near the top three undersecretaries who are Rumsfeld loyalists and who previously worked for Vice President Dick Cheney when he was defense secretary...
...Thomas Donnelly, a defense expert with the American Enterprise Institute, said the changes make it easier for the administration to assert political control and could lead to more narrow-minded decisions.
'It continues to devalue the services as institutions,' said Donnelly, saying it will centralize power, and shift it away from the services, where there is generally more military expertise and interest..."

The Fourth Estate in America:

Michael Massing: The Press: The Enemy Within
"...For many reporters, the bold coverage of the effects of the hurricane, and of the administration's glaring failure to respond effectively, has helped to begin making up for their timid reporting on the existence of WMD. Among some journalists I've spoken with, shame has given way to pride, and there is much talk about the need to get back to the basic responsibility of reporters, to expose wrongdoing and the failures of the political system. In recent weeks, journalists have been asking more pointed questions at press conferences, attempting to investigate cronyism and corruption in the White House and Congress, and doing more to document the plight of people without jobs or a place to live.
Will such changes prove lasting? In a previous article, I described many of the external pressures besetting journalists today, including a hostile White House, aggressive conservative critics, and greedy corporate owners.[2] Here, I will concentrate on the press's internal problems—not on its many ethical and professional lapses, which have been extensively discussed elsewhere, but rather on the structural problems that keep the press from fulfilling its responsibilities to serve as a witness to injustice and a watchdog over the powerful. To some extent, these problems consist of professional practices and proclivities that inhibit reporting —a reliance on 'access,' an excessive striving for 'balance,' an uncritical fascination with celebrities. Equally important is the increasing isolation of much of the profession from disadvantaged Americans and the difficulties they face. Finally, and most significantly, there's the political climate in which journalists work. Today's political pressures too often breed in journalists a tendency toward self-censorship, toward shying away from the pursuit of truths that might prove unpopular, whether with official authorities or the public..."

Iraq:

This shift in policy (expanding the air war) is one Sy Hersh wrote about over a month ago in the New Yorker and the absence of its press coverage was lamented by Norman Solomon...

The Washington Post: US Bombing of Iraq Intensifies
"US airstrikes in Iraq have surged this fall, jumping to nearly five times the average monthly rate earlier in the year, according to US military figures.
Until the end of August, US warplanes were conducting about 25 strikes a month. The number rose to 62 in September, then to 122 in October and 120 in November.
Several US officers involved in operations in Iraq attributed much of the increase to a series of ground offensives in western Anbar province. Those offensives, conducted by US Marines and Iraqi forces, were aimed at clearing foreign fighters and other insurgents from the Euphrates River Valley and establishing Iraqi control over the Syrian border area.
But Air Force Maj. Gen. Allen G. Peck, deputy commander of the US air operations center in the region, said the higher strike numbers also reflected more aggressive military operations in other parts of Iraq that were undertaken to improve security for last week's national elections.
'I'm hard-pressed to provide a single definitive explanation for the increase,' Peck said in a telephone interview.
For most airstrikes in Iraq, US crews have been employing 500-pound, precision-guided bombs rather than the 1,000- or 2,000-pound versions used in past conflicts, Peck said. The smaller bombs are intended to reduce the potential for collateral damage.
In limited cases, the 100-pound Hellfire missile is used. 'It won't knock down a house, but it can be effective in taking out a car,' Peck said.
With the Pentagon preparing to reduce the level of US ground forces in Iraq next year, some defense experts have speculated that US airpower will be used more intensively to support operations by Iraq's fledgling security forces and protect US advisers embedded with them. Indeed, American commanders have said that US air forces in the region will not be drawn down as quickly as ground forces."


Domestic Surveillance:

James Bamford; NSA, the Agency That Could Be Big Brother
"...In essence, NSA seemed to be on a classic fishing expedition, precisely the type of abuse the FISA court was put in place to stop.At a news conference, President Bush himself seemed to acknowledge this new tactic. 'FISA is for long-term monitoring,' he said. 'There's a difference between detecting so we can prevent, and monitoring.'
This eavesdropping is not the Bush administration's only attempt to expand the boundaries of what is legally permissible.
In 2002, it was revealed that the Pentagon had launched Total Information Awareness, a data mining program led by John Poindexter, a retired rear admiral who had served as national security adviser under Ronald Reagan and helped devise the plan to sell arms to Iran and illegally divert the proceeds to rebels in Nicaragua.
Total Information Awareness, known as TIA, was intended to search through vast data bases, promising to 'increase the information coverage by an order-of-magnitude.' According to a 2002 article in The New York Times, the program 'would permit intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials to mount a vast dragnet through electronic transaction data ranging from credit card information to veterinary records, in the United States and internationally, to hunt for terrorists.' After press reports, the Pentagon shut it down, and Mr. Poindexter eventually left the government.
But according to a 2004 General Accounting Office report, the Bush administration and the Pentagon continued to rely heavily on data-mining techniques. 'Our survey of 128 federal departments and agencies on their use of data mining,' the report said, 'shows that 52 agencies are using or are planning to use data mining. These departments and agencies reported 199 data-mining efforts, of which 68 are planned and 131 are operational.' Of these uses, the report continued, 'the Department of Defense reported the largest number of efforts,'..."

NY Times: NSA-Spying Files Bigger than White House Said
"...Since the disclosure last week of the NSA's domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.
What has not been publicly acknowledged is that NSA technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.
The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.
Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the technical aspects of the operation and the NSA's use of broad searches to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified, many details of how the NSA is conducting it remain unknown, and members of Congress who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are eager to learn more about the program's operational details, as well as its legality..."

Domestic Surveillance:

US News and World Report: Nuclear Monitoring of Muslims Done Without Search Warrants
"in search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts.
Federal officials familiar with the program maintain that warrants are unneeded for the kind of radiation sampling the operation entails, but some legal scholars disagree. News of the program comes in the wake of revelations last week that, after 9/11, the Bush White House approved electronic surveillance of U.S. targets by the National Security Agency without court orders. These and other developments suggest that the federal government's domestic spying programs since 9/11 have been far broader than previously thought.
The nuclear surveillance program began in early 2002 and has been run by the FBI and the Department of Energy's Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST). Two individuals, who declined to be named because the program is highly classified, spoke to U.S. News because of their concerns about the legality of the program. At its peak, they say, the effort involved three vehicles in Washington, D.C., monitoring 120 sites per day, nearly all of them Muslim targets drawn up by the FBI. For some ten months, officials conducted daily monitoring, and they have resumed daily checks during periods of high threat. The program has also operated in at least five other cities when threat levels there have risen: Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York, and Seattle...
...Georgetown University Professor David Cole, a constitutional law expert, disagrees. Surveillance of public spaces such as mosques or public businesses might well be allowable without a court order, he argues, but not private offices or homes: 'They don't need a warrant to drive onto the property -- the issue isn't where they are, but whether they're using a tactic to intrude on privacy. It seems to me that they are, and that they would need a warrant or probable cause.'
Cole points to a 2001 Supreme Court decision, [sic] Kyllo v. U.S., which looked at police use -- without a search warrant -- of thermal imaging technology to search for marijuana-growing lamps in a home. The court, in a ruling written by Justice Antonin Scalia, ruled that authorities did in fact need a warrant -- that the heat sensors violated the Fourth Amendment's clause against unreasonable search and seizure...."


The Stealth Nominee, Mr. Alito:

The revalation of the Executive's taking of unprecedented powers was clearly not part of the plan for Bush's second term especially before the confirmation of their favorite radical.

New York Times Editorial: Alito's Zeal for Presidential Power
"With the Bush administration claiming sweeping and often legally baseless authority to detain and spy on people, judges play a crucial role in underscoring the limits of presidential power. When the Senate begins hearings next month on Judge Samuel Alito, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, it should explore whether he understands where the Constitution sets those limits. New documents released yesterday provide more evidence that Judge Alito has a skewed view of the allocation of power among the three branches - skewed in favor of presidential power.
One troubling memo concerns domestic wiretaps - a timely topic. In the memo, which he wrote as a lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, Judge Alito argued that the attorney general should be immune from lawsuits when he illegally wiretaps Americans. Judge Alito argued for taking a step-by-step approach to establishing this principle, much as he argued for an incremental approach to reversing Roe v. Wade in another memo.
The Supreme Court flatly rejected Judge Alito's view of the law. In a 1985 ruling, the court rightly concluded that if the attorney general had the sort of immunity Judge Alito favored, it would be an invitation to deny people their constitutional rights.
In a second memo released yesterday, Judge Alito made another bald proposal for grabbing power for the president. He said that when the president signed bills into law, he should make a 'signing statement' about what the law means. By doing so, Judge Alito hoped the president could shift courts' focus away from 'legislative intent' - a well-established part of interpreting the meaning of a statute - toward what he called 'the President's intent.'
In the memo, Judge Alito noted that one problem was the effect these signing statements would have on Congressional relations. They would 'not be warmly welcomed by Congress,' he predicted, because of the 'novelty of the procedure' and 'the potential increase of presidential power.'
These memos are part of a broader pattern of elevating the presidency above the other branches of government. In his judicial opinions, Judge Alito has shown a lack of respect for Congressional power - notably when he voted to strike down Congress's ban on machine guns as exceeding its constitutional authority. He has taken a cramped view of the Fourth Amendment and other constitutional provisions that limit executive power.
The Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have had to repeatedly pull the Bush administration back when it exceeded its constitutional powers. They have made clear that Americans cannot be held indefinitely without trial just because they are labeled 'enemy combatants.' They have vindicated the right of Guantánamo Bay detainees to challenge their confinement. And they will no doubt have to correct the Bush administration's latest assertions of power to spy domestically. The Senate should determine that Judge Alito is on the side of the Constitution in these battles, not on the side of the presidency - which the latest documents strongly question - before voting to confirm him."

Domestic Surveillance:

US News and World Report: Nuclear Monitoring of Muslims Done Without Search Warrants
"in search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts.
Federal officials familiar with the program maintain that warrants are unneeded for the kind of radiation sampling the operation entails, but some legal scholars disagree. News of the program comes in the wake of revelations last week that, after 9/11, the Bush White House approved electronic surveillance of U.S. targets by the National Security Agency without court orders. These and other developments suggest that the federal government's domestic spying programs since 9/11 have been far broader than previously thought.
The nuclear surveillance program began in early 2002 and has been run by the FBI and the Department of Energy's Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST). Two individuals, who declined to be named because the program is highly classified, spoke to U.S. News because of their concerns about the legality of the program. At its peak, they say, the effort involved three vehicles in Washington, D.C., monitoring 120 sites per day, nearly all of them Muslim targets drawn up by the FBI. For some ten months, officials conducted daily monitoring, and they have resumed daily checks during periods of high threat. The program has also operated in at least five other cities when threat levels there have risen: Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York, and Seattle...
...Georgetown University Professor David Cole, a constitutional law expert, disagrees. Surveillance of public spaces such as mosques or public businesses might well be allowable without a court order, he argues, but not private offices or homes: 'They don't need a warrant to drive onto the property -- the issue isn't where they are, but whether they're using a tactic to intrude on privacy. It seems to me that they are, and that they would need a warrant or probable cause.'
Cole points to a 2001 Supreme Court decision, [sic] Kyllo v. U.S., which looked at police use -- without a search warrant -- of thermal imaging technology to search for marijuana-growing lamps in a home. The court, in a ruling written by Justice Antonin Scalia, ruled that authorities did in fact need a warrant -- that the heat sensors violated the Fourth Amendment's clause against unreasonable search and seizure...."


The Stealth Nominee, Mr. Alito:

The revalation of the Executive's taking of unprecedented powers was clearly not part of the plan for Bush's second term especially before the confirmation of their favorite radical.

New York Times Editorial: Alito's Zeal for Presidential Power
"With the Bush administration claiming sweeping and often legally baseless authority to detain and spy on people, judges play a crucial role in underscoring the limits of presidential power. When the Senate begins hearings next month on Judge Samuel Alito, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, it should explore whether he understands where the Constitution sets those limits. New documents released yesterday provide more evidence that Judge Alito has a skewed view of the allocation of power among the three branches - skewed in favor of presidential power.
One troubling memo concerns domestic wiretaps - a timely topic. In the memo, which he wrote as a lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, Judge Alito argued that the attorney general should be immune from lawsuits when he illegally wiretaps Americans. Judge Alito argued for taking a step-by-step approach to establishing this principle, much as he argued for an incremental approach to reversing Roe v. Wade in another memo.
The Supreme Court flatly rejected Judge Alito's view of the law. In a 1985 ruling, the court rightly concluded that if the attorney general had the sort of immunity Judge Alito favored, it would be an invitation to deny people their constitutional rights.
In a second memo released yesterday, Judge Alito made another bald proposal for grabbing power for the president. He said that when the president signed bills into law, he should make a 'signing statement' about what the law means. By doing so, Judge Alito hoped the president could shift courts' focus away from 'legislative intent' - a well-established part of interpreting the meaning of a statute - toward what he called 'the President's intent.'
In the memo, Judge Alito noted that one problem was the effect these signing statements would have on Congressional relations. They would 'not be warmly welcomed by Congress,' he predicted, because of the 'novelty of the procedure' and 'the potential increase of presidential power.'
These memos are part of a broader pattern of elevating the presidency above the other branches of government. In his judicial opinions, Judge Alito has shown a lack of respect for Congressional power - notably when he voted to strike down Congress's ban on machine guns as exceeding its constitutional authority. He has taken a cramped view of the Fourth Amendment and other constitutional provisions that limit executive power.
The Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have had to repeatedly pull the Bush administration back when it exceeded its constitutional powers. They have made clear that Americans cannot be held indefinitely without trial just because they are labeled 'enemy combatants.' They have vindicated the right of Guantánamo Bay detainees to challenge their confinement. And they will no doubt have to correct the Bush administration's latest assertions of power to spy domestically. The Senate should determine that Judge Alito is on the side of the Constitution in these battles, not on the side of the presidency - which the latest documents strongly question - before voting to confirm him."

Warrants? Bush Don't Need No Stinkin' Warrants!

What ought to make any curious person wonder, is what else we're not being told. Does Bush's surveillance directive go as far as Nixon's [in spying on domestic political opponents]?
Why else skirt the FISA court? The 'expediency in an emergency' argument is pure neofascist-inspired nonsense, especially in light of former Senator Daschle's comments in the Washington Post, which specifically contradicts the Administration assertion that the Congressional resolution gives the President the power they took: "...On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to 'deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States.' Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize 'all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided' the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words 'in the United States and' after 'appropriate force' in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused..."

New York Times: Spying Program Snared U.S. Calls
"A surveillance program approved by President Bush to conduct eavesdropping without warrants has captured what are purely domestic communications in some cases, despite a requirement by the White House that one end of the intercepted conversations take place on foreign soil, officials say.
The officials say the National Security Agency's interception of a small number of communications between people within the United States was apparently accidental, [emphasis added] and was caused by technical glitches at the National Security Agency in determining whether a communication was in fact 'international.'
Telecommunications experts say the issue points up troubling logistical questions about the program. At a time when communications networks are increasingly globalized, it is sometimes difficult even for the N.S.A. to determine whether someone is inside or outside the United States when making a cellphone call or sending an e-mail message. As a result, people that the security agency may think are outside the United States are actually on American soil..."

AP: Judge Reportedly Resigns Over U.S. Spy Program
"A federal judge has resigned from a special court set up to oversee government surveillance, apparently in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program on people with suspected terrorist ties.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson would not comment Wednesday on his resignation, but The Washington Post reported that it stemmed from deep concern that the surveillance program Bush authorized was legally questionable and may have tainted the work of the court.
An aide to Robertson said the resignation letter submitted to Chief Justice John Roberts was not being released. Robertson did not step down from his district judgeship in Washington...
...Robertson was one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees government applications for secret surveillance or searches of foreigners and U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism or espionage. Robertson's term was to end in May.
'This was definitely a statement of protest,' said Scott Silliman, a former Air Force attorney and Duke University law professor. 'It is unusual because it signifies that at least one member of the court believes that the president has exceeded his legal authority.'
Ruth Wedgwood, a Johns Hopkins University professor and defender of many Bush administration policies in the terror war, said that service on the special court is voluntary.
'If Judge Robertson had strong feelings that he thought would interfere with the needed objectivity, one could understand his decision,' she said,..."

Washington Post: Judges: Was Illegal Spying Used to Get FISA Warrants?
"The presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality of President Bush's domestic spying program, according to several intelligence and government sources.
Several members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said in interviews that they want to know why the administration believed secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails of U.S. citizens without court authorization was legal. Some of the judges said they are particularly concerned that information gleaned from the president's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to gain authorized wiretaps from their court.
'The questions are obvious,' said U.S. District Judge Dee Benson of Utah. 'What have you been doing, and how might it affect the reliability and credibility of the information we're getting in our court?'..."

Skirting Congressional Intent:

It should be clear that the Administration, with the convenient timing of new Supreme Court appointees of the most radical flavor, seeks to bring a Nixon-era case [UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 407 U.S. 297 (1972)" ] back before the Court in which it ruled the Executive's actions of ordering domestic surveillance unconstitutional.
Congress should be urged, in the most forceful terms, to check the power of the Executive, and to take action in the event that the Executive's actions are deemed to be felonious.

Senator Byrd: No President Is Above the Law
"...Now comes the stomach-churning revelation that through an executive order, President Bush has circumvented both the Congress and the courts. He has usurped the Third Branch of government - the branch charged with protecting the civil liberties of our people - by directing the National Security Agency to intercept and eavesdrop on the phone conversations and e-mails of American citizens without a warrant, which is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. He has stiff-armed the People's Branch of government. He has rationalized the use of domestic, civilian surveillance with a flimsy claim that he has such authority because we are at war. The executive order, which has been acknowledged by the President, is an end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which makes it unlawful for any official to monitor the communications of an individual on American soil without the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
What is the President thinking? Congress has provided for the very situations which the President is blatantly exploiting. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, housed in the Department of Justice, reviews requests for warrants for domestic surveillance. The Court can review these requests expeditiously and in times of great emergency. In extreme cases, where time is of the essence and national security is at stake, surveillance can be conducted before the warrant is even applied for.
This secret court was established so that sensitive surveillance could be conducted, and information could be gathered without compromising the security of the investigation. The purpose of the FISA Court is to balance the government's role in fighting the war on terror with the Fourth Amendment rights afforded to each and every American.
The American public is given vague and empty assurances by the President that amount to little more than 'trust me.' But, we are a nation of laws and not of men. Where is the source of that authority he claims? I defy the Administration to show me where in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or the U.S. Constitution, they are allowed to steal into the lives of innocent America citizens and spy.
When asked yesterday what the source of this authority was, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had no answer. Secretary Rice seemed to insinuate that eavesdropping on Americans was acceptable because FISA was an outdated law, and could not address the needs of the government in combating the new war on terror. This is a patent falsehood..."

Minority Report requested by Rep. John Conyers: Report: The Constitution in Crisis
"...In brief, we have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice President and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war with Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and other legal violations in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their Administration.
There is a prima facie case that these actions by the President, Vice-President and other members of the Bush Administration violated a number of federal laws, including (1) Committing a Fraud against the United States; (2) Making False Statements to Congress; (3) The War Powers Resolution; (4) Misuse of Government Funds; (5) federal laws and international treaties prohibiting torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; (6) federal laws concerning retaliating against witnesses and other individuals; and (7) federal laws and regulations concerning leaking and other misuse of intelligence..."

The National-Security State, Or Bush's Hallucinations of Monarchy:

If the President, on the advice of dubiously convenient counsel of Ashcroft, Gonzales and Yoo, says he is justified in ignoring the FISA requirement, a violation of which is a felony, what is all this debate about the PARTIOT Act?

If he feels justified ignoring the law that requires him to receive permission from the FISA court, which has been little more than a rubber-stamp anyhow, why bother with the PATRIOT Act?

Or was it just meant to be a distraction from the very beginning?

Democracy Now! - An Impeachable Offense? Bush Admits Authorizing NSA to Eavesdrop on Americans Without Court Approval
"...Under FISA, the government can obtain warrants directly from a special court that requires almost no evidence or probable cause. Passed by Congress in the 1970s, FISA describes itself and the criminal wiretap statute as 'the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance…may be conducted.'
Several analysts have questioned the administration's decision to not seek court-approved warrants when FISA courts have almost never rejected them. According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, FISA courts have rejected only four of over 15,000 warrant requests made since 1979. That number includes over 4,000 warrant requests since the 9/11 attacks...

...MARTIN GARBUS: There had been a case in 1972, when Nixon tried to do the same thing. Lenny Wineglass, a very fine lawyer, argued the case in District Court. Nixon claimed that you could, for domestic surveillance, that you had a right to use executive warrants, as he claimed, the permission of the President and the Attorney General. And he said that that was sufficient. This was at a time of civil unrest, according to him, 1971, 1972. There were some bombings within the United States. And he went out, and he tried to survey, surveillance people, eavesdropping, wiretapping without judicial warrants, without probable cause.
And the United States Supreme Court said no. The United States Supreme Court said you can’t do this. The United States Supreme Court said that the President does not have that kind of power within the Constitution. He has the power to protect the nation, but this goes beyond that. He can’t violate the Constitution. That's exactly what's happening now. And what’s going to happen is: You now have a different Supreme Court. You’re going to have Roberts, probably Alito, and my judgment is they're going to uphold what Bush is doing, and in effect, they're going to reverse, though not directly, the Nixon case. It's a strategy to get past that Nixon case and to give the President the broadest powers that any President has ever had...
...I think this business about the PATRIOT Act, I think it's just a firestorm. I think, ultimately, it's going to be passed, and they are going to rely on the President's authority at the end of the day. You really don't need the PATRIOT Act if the President has all of this authority.
So, they're switching the argument. They no longer need that particular statute. This comes within the President's Article 2, Section 2 rights under the Constitution to protect the people. They have changed the battleground to bring it close to the Nixon case, which they, with this new Supreme Court, will overrule. The Nixon case was ’72. At that time, you had Brennan, Marshall, Douglas. This is a very, very different court..."

William Rivers Pitt: Radical Militant Librarians and Other Dire Threats
"There was an internal FBI email sent in October 2003 that speaks volumes about why our legal system has been arranged the way it has. An unnamed agent was railing via email against the Department of Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. Specifically, the agent was frustrated by OIPR's failure to deliver authorization to use Section 215 of the Patriot Act for a search. 'While radical militant librarians kick us around, true terrorists benefit from OIPR's failure to let us use the tools given to us,' wrote the agent.

Radical militant librarians?

Radical militant librarians?

This, right here, is why the legal system is arranged the way it is. This is why officers must obtain warrants from a judge before they can conduct a search. Even in this time of watered-down civil liberties, warrants serve a vital purpose. At a minimum, the warrant firewall keeps walleyed FBI agents with wild hairs about radical militant librarians from bulldozing through the Fourth Amendment..."


Iraq:

Sabah Ali: Behind the Steel Curtain: The Real Face of the Occupation
"The Bush Administration uses double barrel propaganda today, with Mr. Bush using a prime time television address to say things like 'My fellow citizens: Not only can we win the war in Iraq - we are winning the war in Iraq,' and responding to negative news by saying 'It does not mean that we are losing.' Meanwhile, Mr. Cheney, while on a heavily guarded tour of the 'Green Zone' and other locales in Iraq said today, 'I think the vast majority of them think of us as liberators.'
While the Bush Administration portrayed Thursday's Iraqi elections as a resounding success, Iraqi political parties are complaining of violations ranging from dead men voting to murder in the streets as accusations begin to fly from all political corners of rampand fraud and violence bringing the results of the vote under suspicion.
And if you want a sampling of Iraqis who Cheney spoke of, the following is another powerful dispatch from independent Iraqi journalist Sabah Ali..."

LA Times: Pentagon Knew Contractor Was Planting News Stories
"U.S. military officials in Iraq were fully aware that a Pentagon contractor regularly paid Iraqi newspapers to publish positive stories about the war, and made it clear that none of the stories should be traced to the United States, according to several current and former employees of Lincoln Group, the Washington, D.C.-based contractor.
In contrast to assertions by military officials in Baghdad, Iraq, and Washington, interviews and Lincoln Group documents show that the information campaign waged over the past year was designed to cloak any connection to the U.S. military.
'In clandestine parlance, Lincoln Group was a 'cut-out' - a third party - that would provide the military with plausible deniability,' said a former Lincoln Group employee who worked on the operation. 'To attribute products to (the military) would defeat the entire purpose. Hence, no product by Lincoln Group ever said 'Made in the U.S.A.'
Several workers who carried out Lincoln Group's offensive, including a $20-million, two-month contract to influence public opinion in Iraq's restive Al Anbar province, describe a campaign that was unnecessarily costly, poorly run and largely ineffective at improving America's image in Iraq. The current and former employees spoke on condition of anonymity because of confidentiality restrictions.
'In my own estimation, this stuff has absolutely no effect and it's a total waste of money,' said another former employee, echoing the sentiments of several colleagues. "Every Iraqi can read right through it,'..."

The Intelligence That Took A Nation to War:

Sen. Feinstein: Release of Nonpartisan CRS Report that Concludes Congress Did Not Have Access to Full Scope of Prewar Intelligence
"The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) has produced a report that clearly rejects White House assertions that Congress had access to the same intelligence as the President in the march to war with Iraq, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced today.
'There have been a number of claims that Congress had access to all the same intelligence before going to war as did the Administration. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service study released today indicates that these claims are patently false,' Senator Feinstein said. 'The report demonstrates that Congress routinely is denied access to intelligence sources; intelligence collection and analysis ‘methods;’ ‘raw’ or ‘lightly evaluated’ intelligence; and the President’s Daily Brief (PDB). This report goes to show that members of Congress were not seeing the same picture as the Administration.
When the Senate voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq in 2002, it was based on a more limited scope of prewar intelligence than was available to the Administration. In light of claims of the possible use or misuse of intelligence by policymakers in the march to war with Iraq, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted unanimously on February 12, 2004 to to investigate five key questions on pre-war intelligence.
I believe that Congress and the American people deserve to know what precisely was known by the President and the Administration before the use of force in Iraq. If the Senate Intelligence Committee is to produce a credible and useful report for its ongoing ‘Phase II’ investigation, it must have access to all the same intelligence as the Administration that it was previously denied, particularly the PDBs.'
Specifically, the CRS report lays out the following points..."


Flawed Voting Technology:

WESH.com - Elections Official: Some Voting Machines Could Be Hacked
"Voting machines used in four Central Florida counties might be flawed.
There's new evidence that computer hackers could change election results without anyone knowing about it, WESH 2 News reported.
The supervisor of elections in Tallahassee tested voting machines several times over the last several months, and on Monday, his workers were able to hack into a voting machine and change the outcome. He said that same thing might have happened in Volusia County in 2000.
The big controversy revolves around a little black computer card that is smaller than a floppy disk and bigger than a flash drive. The card is inserted into voting machines that scan paper ballots. The card serves as the machine's electronic brain.
But when Ion Sancho, Leon County's Supervisor of Elections, tested the Diebold system and allowed experts to manipulate the card electronically, he could change the outcome of a mock election without leaving any kind of trail. In other words, someone could fix an election and no one would know.
'The expert that we used simply programmed it on his laptop in his hotel room,' Sancho said.
Sancho began investigating the problem after watching the votes come in during the infamous 2000 presidential election. In Volusia County precinct 216, a memory card added more than 200 votes to George W. Bush's total and subtracted 16,000 votes from Al Gore. The mistake was later corrected during a hand count.
After watching his computer expert change vote totals this week, Sancho said that he now believes someone on the inside did the same thing in Volusia County in 2000.
'Someone with access to the vote center in Volusia County put it on a memory card and uploaded it into the main system,' Sancho said.
Sancho has been raising red flags about the system for months after other hackers were able to change votes during earlier tests. But Sancho said he's gotten nowhere with the company or with the Florida secretary of state's office, which oversees elections.
'This raises serious questions as to the state of Florida's certification program,' Sancho said..."


The Environment:

Kelpie Wilson: Forest Salvation
"...Last week, the Washington Post reported that US chief climate negotiator Harlan Watson was essentially nominated for the position by Exxon Mobil. This is just one more indication of the extent to which the United States government has been body-snatched by corporate interests.
Corporations may have legal personhood, but they are not human. I watched an interview on E&E TV with Margo Thorning, managing director of the International Council for Capital Formation, an Exxon-funded think tank. She kept repeating that the Kyoto cap and trade system for greenhouse gases would be 'economic suicide,' completely unconcerned that failure to bring carbon emissions under control could result in the actual suicide of civilization if not humanity itself..."

PC Magazine: New York's New Hybrid Buses
"Imagine a transit bus that's as good for the environment as 15,000 Toyota Priuses. One bus can't do this on its own, but a fleet of 825 hybrid buses headed for use on New York City streets provide the same clear-air benefits as the same amount of hybrid passenger cars. Another reason for enthusiasm is that the buses improve fuel economy by 1 mile per gallon, which is a big deal when traditional transit buses get 2.5 mpg..."


Bush's Disregard for the Rule of Law:

NY Times: Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts
"Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible 'dirty numbers' linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.
The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.
'This is really a sea change,' said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. 'It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches.'
Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight..."

Diebold's Version of the Democratic Process:

Black Box Voting: Devastating hack proven - Leon County dumps Diebold
"Due to contractual non-performance and security design issues, Leon County (Florida) supervisor of elections Ion Sancho has announced that he will never again use Diebold in an election. He has requested funds to replace the Diebold system from the county. On Tuesday, the most serious 'hack' demonstration to date took place in Leon County. The Diebold machines succumbed quickly to alteration of the votes. This comes on the heels of the resignation of Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell, and the announcement that a stockholder's class action suit has been filed against Diebold by Scott & Scott. Further 'hack' testing on additional vulnerabilities is tentatively scheduled before Christmas in the state of California.
Finnish security expert Harri Hursti, together with Black Box Voting, demonstrated that Diebold made misrepresentations to Secretaries of State across the nation when Diebold claimed votes could not be changed on the 'memory card' (the credit-card-sized ballot box used by computerized voting machines..."


Shades of COINTELPRO ?

NBC News: Pentagon Spying on Anti-War Activists
"A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.
A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a 'threat' and one of more than 1,500 'suspicious incidents' across the country over a recent 10-month period.
'This peaceful, educationally oriented group being a threat is incredible,' says Evy Grachow, a member of the Florida group called The Truth Project.
'This is incredible,' adds group member Rich Hersh. 'It's an example of paranoia by our government,' he says. 'We're not doing anything illegal.'
The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.
'I think Americans should be concerned that the military, in fact, has reached too far,' says NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin.
The Department of Defense declined repeated requests by NBC News for an interview. A spokesman said that all domestic intelligence information is 'properly collected' and involves 'protection of Defense Department installations, interests and personnel.' The military has always had a legitimate 'force protection' mission inside the U.S. to protect its personnel and facilities from potential violence. But the Pentagon now collects domestic intelligence that goes beyond legitimate concerns about terrorism or protecting U.S. military installations, say critics..."


The So-Called War On Terror:

AP: Congress Expects up to $100B Wartime Request
"The Pentagon is in the early stages of drafting a wartime request for up to $100 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan, lawmakers say, a figure that would push spending related to the wars toward a staggering half-trillion dollars.
Reps. Bill Young, R-Fla., the chairman of the House appropriations defense panel, and John Murtha, D-Pa., the senior Democrat on that subcommittee, say the military has informally told them it wants $80 billion to $100 billion in a war-spending package that the White House is expected to send Congress next year.
That would be in addition to $50 billion Congress is about to give the Pentagon before lawmakers adjourn for the year for operations in Iraq for the beginning of 2006. Military commanders expect that pot to last through May.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress has approved more than $300 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, including military operations, reconstruction, embassy security and foreign aid, as well as other costs related to the war on terrorism, according to the Congressional Research Service, which writes reports for Congress..."


On Torture:

Think Progress.org - As Torture Amendment Nears Passage, Pentagon Rewrites Army Detainee Standards
"With Congress on the verge of passing the sweeping McCain amendment, the Bush administration has taken its drive to permit torture to new depths.
The basis of the McCain amendment is establishing the Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation as the uniform standard for interrogation. That manual explicitly prohibits the use of so-called 'coercive interrogation techniques.' As former Army interrogator Peter Bauer has written, 'the standard interrogation techniques found in the US Army Field Manual 34-52 were far more effective than such abusive behavior as stress positions, sensory deprivation, and humiliation. We obtained more information – and more reliable information – with our basic skills than we did with even days of harsh treatment.'
Realizing this, the Pentagon has one-upped McCain, and simply rewritten the manual.."

Ray McGovern: On Torture: A Defining Moment
"Senator John McCain and his Senate colleagues have provided Congress a chance to redeem itself in a small but significant way for its craven abdication of responsibility three years ago, when it gave the president what Senator Robert Byrd warned would be a 'blank check' for war on Iraq.
With some remarkable help from then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and hired hands at the Justice Department, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stretched that blank check to include authorization for torturing detainees by CIA and US military personnel. McCain, himself a victim of torture in Vietnam, is trying to bring the US into compliance with international norms, while the Bush administration is trying desperately to leave the door open for CIA and contract interrogators to act beyond those norms without threat of prosecution..."

NBC News: Bush interview with Brian Williams

Bush shows, again, how dillusional he is, repeating falsehood after falsehood.

"Williams: A lot of people have seen in this series of speeches you're giving on Iraq, a movement in your position. They call it an acknowledgement that perhaps the mission has not gone as it was originally planned — three points: That the U.S. would be welcomed as liberators, that General Shinsecki, when he said this would take hundreds of thousands of troops in his farewell speech, might have been right. And third, that it wasn't a self-sustaining war in terms of the oil revenue. Do you concede those three points might not have gone as planned?

President Bush: Review them with me again.

Williams: Number one — that we'd be welcomed as liberators?

President Bush: I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome. There were some in society, rejectionists and the Saddamists and the terrorists that have moved in to stir them up that said, 'We're going to prevent a democracy from emerging.' But I think a lot of people are glad, I know a lot of people are glad we're there. And they're glad we're helping them train their troops so they can take the fight.

[ ed. WHAT THE HECK DOES THIS MEAN ??? ]

...

Williams: Do you believe this war was an elective on your part? Or did this have to come out of 9/11?

President Bush: Hmm, interesting question. Well, first of all, troops don't move unless I give the order. So, from that sense it was elective. I mean, I could have said, 'No, we'll try to, you know, hope for the best with Saddam Hussein.'
Remember at the time we didn't know the facts on the ground. We — everybody thought the guy had weapons of mass destruction. Everybody knew that he'd used weapons of mass destruction and had provided safe haven for terrorists. I mean, those were facts. Whether or not it had to happen is — it didn't have to happen since a human being made the decision. Whether or not it needed to happen, I'm still convinced it needed to happen..."

Oh, W, but not for the reasons your adminstration said it should.
The fact that the intel presented was known to be bogus apparently eluded Williams.

The fact that Williams failed to challenge Bush on his absurd answer to the 'welcomed' question is nothing short of rediculously poor journalism. The only Iraqis who were 'glad' were the likes of Chalabi and other CIA-connected exiles who now run the provisional government.

NBC, pull this clown's press credentials, and fast! Doubtless, GE (NBC's owner) likes Bush to get treated with kid-gloves by people pretending to be real journalists.


Bush's Take On The Constitution:

Doug Thompson: Bush on the Constitution: 'It's just a goddamned piece of paper' "Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.
Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.
GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
'I don’t give a goddamn,' Bush retorted. 'I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.'
'Mr. President,' one aide in the meeting said. 'There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.'
'Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,' Bush screamed back. 'It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!'
I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution 'a goddamned piece of paper,'..."

Iran's Nuclear Program:

The Sunday Times (UK) - Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran
"Israel's armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.
The order came after Israeli intelligence warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities, believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations..."


On Torture:

The Observer (UK) - MI6 and CIA 'sent student to Morocco to be tortured'
"An Ethiopian student who lived in London claims that he was brutally tortured with the involvement of British and US intelligence agencies.
Binyam Mohammed, 27, says he spent nearly three years in the CIA's network of 'black sites'. In Morocco he claims he underwent the strappado torture of being hung for hours from his wrists, and scalpel cuts to his chest and penis and that a CIA officer was a regular interrogator.
After his capture in Pakistan, Mohammed says British officials warned him that he would be sent to a country where torture was used. Moroccans also asked him detailed questions about his seven years in London, which his lawyers believe came from British sources..."

Washington Post: Prisoners Subjected to 'Severe Torture' at 2nd Iraqi Prison
"An Iraqi government search of a detention center in Baghdad operated by Interior Ministry special commandos found 13 prisoners who had suffered abuse serious enough to require medical treatment, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Sunday night.
An Iraqi official with firsthand knowledge of the search said that at least 12 of the 13 prisoners had been subjected to 'severe torture,' including sessions of electric shock and episodes that left them with broken bones.
'Two of them showed me their nails, and they were gone,' the official said on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
A government spokesman, Laith Kubba, said Sunday night that any findings at the prison would be 'subject to an investigation,' but he declined to comment on the allegations.
The site, which was searched Thursday, is the second Interior Ministry detention center where cases of prisoner abuse have been confirmed by U.S. and Iraqi officials..."


At What Price 'Always The Low Price' ?

FAIR.org - Media Lick the Hand That Feeds Them
"In January 2005, readers across the country all saw the same thing in their morning paper: an ad for Wal-Mart. That in itself is no surprise—Wal-Mart is, after all, the largest corporation in the world—but this particular ad, which ran in more than a hundred papers, was different: it consisted of a rebuttal of arguments lodged by the retail behemoth’s critics.
Subject to condemnation for business practices ranging from low pay and stingy healthcare benefits to exporting jobs and destroying small businesses, Wal-Mart is also the subject of litigation, including a class action discrimination suit representing 1.6 million current and former female workers who accuse the company of systematic underpayment and lack of promotion.
The ad blitz was something of a two-fer for Wal-Mart, since many outlets thought it interesting enough to report as actual news, including USA Today (1/13/05), which ran two stories on it.
It was just part of a PR offensive that included big-money charitable donations (dutifully reported) and an April invitation to reporters to its Bentonville, Ark. headquarters for a 'media day.' The session was described as a 'feisty response to critics' (New York Times, 4/6/05) and a chance for Wal-Mart to 'defend' itself and 'dispel myths' (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 4/6/05). Journalists were reportedly enjoined 'to clear their minds of previous articles about the company and ‘start with a clean slate’ ' (AP, 4/6/05).
But the media image of a beleaguered corporation at last responding to a 'horde of critics' (Minneapolis Star Tribune, 4/6/05) raises at least one question: Just how tough has media scrutiny of Wal-Mart really been? 'You’ve heard the firestorm of criticism about the company, about wages, benefits, union-busting, about locking employees in, about making them work overtime without paying them for it,' ABC’s Charlie Gibson said in introducing a Good Morning America interview with CEO Lee Scott (1/13/05). But how much have most people really heard about these issues?..."


Public Opinion:

FAIR.org - Pundits Say Public Is Wrong About Iraq
"With polls showing growing opposition to the Iraq War and an increasing distrust for the White House, one might think that the press corps would be willing to re-examine how the threat from Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction was used to lead the country into war. But for many pundits, the origins of the Iraq War are old news.
As the Washington Post's David Broder argued on NBC's Meet the Press (11/27/05), there's no point in raising such questions: 'This whole debate about whether there was just a mistake or misrepresentation or so on is, I think, from the public point of view largely irrelevant. The public's moved past that. The public wants to know what we're going to do next in Iraq.' (The 44 percent of the public that wants to see a withdrawal from Iraq, according to a October 30-November 2 ABC-Washington Post poll, is out of luck, however; Broder added that Rep. John Murtha's advocacy of withdrawing U.S. troops 'certainly crystalized the debate about the possibility of an immediate withdrawal, but that was very quickly rejected.')
When Sen. John Kerry accused Vice President Dick Cheney of making 'misleading' arguments about the state of the intelligence on Iraq, U.S. News & World Report's Gloria Borger (12/5/05) was unimpressed: 'Ah, 'misleading.' Didn't we live through that argument already? In fact, wasn't that in the Democratic talking points in the 2004 election? Are we still arguing over who lied or did not lie about WMD?'
Borger doesn't explain why these old debates are worth nothing more than a roll of the eyes. She does, however, try to argue that her attitude conforms to public opinion: 'Democrats and Republicans may not be over the finger-pointing, but the public has moved beyond the blame game--and is clearly growing impatient.' Her evidence: a poll that 'shows that 51 percent of Americans would like to elect someone other than their current politicians to Congress.' How that demonstrates a public unwillingness to debate the pre-war Iraq intelligence is not clear.
Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly spun the issue in terms of politics (11/17/05): 'You got to know that a lot of Democrats, particularly on the far left, far left, OK, are undermining the president's position in the world, in the world, by calling him a liar, saying that he juiced up the intelligence, that he knew it was false, and invaded anyway. This hurts not only the United States everywhere in the world, but it hurts our military people as well.' But a Pew poll in early November (11/3-6/05) found that 43 percent of respondents believed the White House lied about Iraq's WMD programs. Such poll numbers suggest that, by O'Reilly's standards, more than two-fifths of Americans are on the 'far left.'
O'Reilly's colleague Brit Hume (Fox News Sunday, 11/27/05), on the other hand, took the position that public opinion, at least for now, is irrelevant: 'The Iraqi forces and the U.S. forces are winning. Iraq is moving forward. This is all happening. It's unfolding. And when it does and proceeds to its logical conclusion, this war will, for all intents and purposes, have been won. Iraq will not be a terrorist state, and the world will be better off and the public will, in the fullness of time, know that. You can't expect the public to get it right every minute of every day at all times.' An odd stance to take for the main anchor of a news outlet whose slogan is, 'We report, you decide,'..."


Abramoff's Twisted Interpretation of the Right to Petition Congress:

...and the powerful whose favor he courted.

Washington Post: How Abramoff Spread the Wealth

Iraq:

Fudging the numbers?

Mark Benjamin: Incalculable pain
"A group of seven House Democrats wrote President Bush this week, accusing the Pentagon of underreporting casualties in Iraq.
It's a shocking charge. The letter writers argue that Pentagon casualty reports show only a sliver of the injuries, mostly physical ones from bombs or bullets. But war doesn't work like that, the Democrats declare, adding that the reports skip a horrible panoply of accidents, illness, disease and mental trauma..."


Spiking the news media punch?

NY Times: Military's Vast, Secretive Information War
"...The recent disclosures that a Pentagon contractor in Iraq paid newspapers to print 'good news' articles written by American soldiers prompted an outcry in Washington, where members of Congress said the practice undermined American credibility and top military and White House officials disavowed any knowledge of it. President Bush was described by Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser, as 'very troubled' about the matter. The Pentagon is investigating.
But the work of the contractor, the Lincoln Group, was not a rogue operation. Hoping to counter anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, the Bush administration has been conducting an information war that is extensive, costly and often hidden, according to documents and interviews with contractors, government officials and military personnel.
The campaign was begun by the White House, which set up a secret panel soon after the Sept. 11 attacks to coordinate information operations by the Pentagon, other government agencies and private contractors.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the focus of most of the activities, the military operates radio stations and newspapers, but does not disclose their American ties. Those outlets produce news material that is at times attributed to the 'International Information Center,' an untraceable organization..."


Those 16 words, again...

LA Times: French Intel Debunked Niger Evidence in 2001
"More than a year before President Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear weapons material in Africa, the French spy service began repeatedly warning the CIA in secret communications that there was no evidence to support the allegation.
The previously undisclosed exchanges between the U.S. and the French, described in interviews last week by the retired chief of the French counterintelligence service and a former CIA official, came on separate occasions in 2001 and 2002..."

Electronic Voting. Good For Democracy?

RAW Story: Diebold insider alleges company plagued by technical woes, Diebold defends 'sterling' record
"In an exclusive interview with RAW STORY, a whistleblower from electronic voting heavyweight Diebold Election Systems Inc. raised grave concerns about the company’s electronic voting technology and of electronic voting in general, bemoaning an electoral system the insider feels has been compromised by corporate privatization...
...Previous revelations from the whistleblower have included evidence that Diebold’s upper management and top government officials knew of backdoor software in Diebold’s central tabulator before the 2004 election, but ignored urgent warnings—such as a Homeland Security alert posted on the Internet.
'This is a very dangerous precedent that needs to be stopped—that’s the corporate takeover of elections,' the source warned. 'The majority of election directors don’t understand the gravity of what they’re dealing with. The bottom line is who is going to tamper with an election? A lot of people could, but they assume that no one will,'...
...The insider described a systematic process Diebold uses to woo election officials via cash doled out by lobbyists or attorneys and favors to assist budget-strapped public officials. 'They promise the election directors the moon and deliver things to them that really aren’t legitimate parts of the contract.' Those promises range from providing personnel to equipping warehouses with electrical systems to recharge batteries in voting machines.
'The corporation pretty much takes over. That’s how they capture so many of these people. Diebold is making them look good and they’re not going to bite the hand that feeds them.'
Diebold creates a 'monetary incentive' to stay involved via future servicing contracts after selling election equipment, the whistleblower noted, adding, 'The machines are purposely complex and poorly designed,'..."


The Pentagon's Priorities:

People are not as important as feeding contracts to 'worthy' suppliers. Is this worthiness a function of whom they lobby?

Wall St. Journal: Pentagon Weighs Personnel Cuts To Pay for Weapons
"As the Defense Department scrambles to finalize its budget for the coming fiscal year, the Air Force is looking to secure much of its savings by cutting active and reserve forces, instead of slashing weapons purchases.
The Army, which is bearing more of the burden of the war in Iraq, doesn't envision similar personnel cuts, but is exploring a modest slowdown in its plans for troop growth as it grapples with a recruiting shortfall...
...the shift is good news for the nation's major defense contractors, which appear to have dodged major cutbacks in big-ticket weapons purchases. The Air Force often has been on the defensive under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose vision of transforming the military with weapons aimed at countering multiple threats, including terrorists, clashes with some of the service's big aircraft projects. Some of the savings realized through personnel cuts could be used to pay for programs to make the military more adept at fighting terrorists or defending the homeland from attack, defense officials say...
...Separate surveillance-plane programs led by Northrop Grumman Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. face possible cuts, and lobbying already is under way to reverse the Pentagon's intent to cap production of Boeing Co.'s C-17 transport plane. Various space programs are bound to be scaled back and stretched out, and some relatively small programs, such as an airborne laser project led by Boeing, face the greatest jeopardy of being scrapped outright.
But two of the costliest future weapons systems in Mr. England's sights, the Air Force's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter made by Lockheed and the Navy's DDX destroyer made by Northrop and General Dynamics Corp., have escaped the guillotine in this budget cycle. The Army's marquee modernization program, called Future Combat Systems and led by Boeing, also appears set to be spared from another major restructuring..."


Iraq:

Rep. Henry A. Waxman: President's Claims Today Are Mindboggling
"The President's claims today are mindboggling. Either he doesn't understand the facts or simply doesn't want to face them. The reconstruction of Iraq has been an enormous boondoggle - not an example of 'quiet, steady progress.' Halliburton has repeatedly overcharged American taxpayers through fraud, waste, and abuse. The U.S. officials in charge of the reconstruction have been incompetent and, in some cases, corrupt. And billions of dollars have been squandered without increasing oil or electricity production.

Key Facts about the Reconstruction

Lack of Progress.

Massive spending on reconstruction has produced little or no progress in key sectors like electricity and oil. Despite a $2.2 billion investment in Iraq's oil infrastructure, production and export levels have actually dropped below pre-war levels. And despite the $4.4 billion the Bush Administration spent to boost Iraq's electricity production, it has fallen far short of its goal of 6000 megawatts of peak output capacity. In fact, the Administration has conceded, 'We'll never meet demand.' Iraqis living in Baghdad typically have just two hours of power followed by four hours without power throughout the day.

Rampant Overcharges and Lax Oversight.

Large government contractors like Halliburton have repeatedly overcharged the taxpayer. Auditors at the Defense Contract Audit Agency have identified over $1.4 billion in unreasonable and unsupported charges by Halliburton in Iraq. Whistleblowers have testified about $100 bags of laundry, $45 cases of soda, and brand new $85,000 trucks being abandoned because of a flat tire. Yet the Administration refuses to take action. Last month, the Defense Department paid Halliburton $130 million in reimbursements, profits, and bonuses for billings that the department's own auditors recommended against paying.

Incompetent Management.

The Bush Administration's management of the reconstruction of Iraq has been fundamentally incompetent. Billion-dollar contracts were awarded with little or no competition to favored contractors. Competition for discrete reconstruction projects was suppressed by dividing Iraq into a handful of fiefdoms and awarding lucrative monopoly contracts to companies that never had to compete against each other for specific reconstruction tasks.

Burgeoning Corruption.

Between May 2003 and June 2004, U.S. officials shipped nearly $12 billion in cash to Iraq. As government audits later found, the cash was spent and disbursed by U.S. officials with virtually no financial controls or reliable accounting. The Administration cannot account for over $8 billion that was transferred to Iraqi ministries. This unsupervised flood of cash into Iraq became an open invitation to corruption. A senior U.S. official already has been charged with accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks from a U.S. contractor in exchange for steering up to $3.5 million in fraudulent contracts his way. Government investigators have said that there are dozens of other criminal corruption cases being processed."

This Should Bother Anyone Who Values Liberty:

To this, I say 'Hell no!'
Road use fees ought to be paid on the basis of vehicle weight, engine displacement and power, and by taxing fuel. When fuel-type creates an unfair advantage, tax people on actual miles driven and/or vehicle weight. The people who drive the most, and choose to drive powerful vehicles, pay the most. Heavy vehicles damage roads much more than light ones and over-powered passenger cars waste fuel and pollute the air, which is why registration fees could to discourage this. What's left unsaid about the intent of this new proposal is that it represents an attempt to remove vehicle efficiency from the equation, which is precisely the wrong message. There are other revenue options, such as an interstate-use sticker for passenger vehicles, as is done on highways in some European countries.

The argument for alternative road-tax schemes has been touted as a means to levy fees on hybrid-vehicle-, and electric-vehicle-drivers, who might otherwise not pay their 'fair share' of road taxes. A measure of road-impact that spans all passenger-vehicle types is vehicle weight.

ZDNet: E-tracking may change the way you drive
"The U.S. Department of Transportation has been handing millions of dollars to state governments for GPS-tracking pilot projects designed to track vehicles wherever they go. So far, Washington state and Oregon have received fat federal checks to figure out how to levy these 'mileage-based road user fees.'
Now electronic tracking and taxing may be coming to a DMV near you. The Office of Transportation Policy Studies, part of the Federal Highway Administration, is about to announce another round of grants totaling some $11 million. A spokeswoman on Friday said the office is 'shooting for the end of the year' for the announcement, and more money is expected for GPS (Global Positioning System) tracking efforts...
...The problem, though, is that these "road user fee" systems are being designed and built in a way that strips drivers of their privacy and invites constant surveillance by police, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

Zero privacy protections

Details of the tracking systems vary. But the general idea is that a small GPS device, which knows its location by receiving satellite signals, is placed inside the vehicle.
Some GPS trackers constantly communicate their location back to the state DMV, while others record the location information for later retrieval. (In the Oregon pilot project, it's beamed out wirelessly when the driver pulls into a gas station.)
The problem, though, is that no privacy protections exist. No restrictions prevent police from continually monitoring, without a court order, the whereabouts of every vehicle on the road.
No rule prohibits that massive database of GPS trails from being subpoenaed by curious divorce attorneys, or handed to insurance companies that might raise rates for someone who spent too much time at a neighborhood bar. No policy bans police from automatically sending out speeding tickets based on what the GPS data say.
The Fourth Amendment provides no protection. The U.S. Supreme Court said in two cases, U.S. v. Knotts and U.S. v. Karo, that Americans have no reasonable expectation of privacy when they're driving on a public street..."


Iraq's Alleged WMD's:

Scott Ritter: What Happened to Iraq's WMD - How Politics Corrupts Intelligence
"...Typical of the Republican-led rebuttal are statements made by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who noted that 'every intelligence agency in the world, including the Russian, French, including the Israeli, all had reached the same conclusion, and that was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.'
But this is disingenuous. The intelligence services of everyone else were not proclaiming Iraq to be in possession of WMD. Rather, the intelligence services of France, Russia, Germany, Great Britain and Israel were noting that Iraq had failed to properly account for the totality of its past proscribed weapons programs, and in doing so left open the possibility that Iraq might retain an undetermined amount of WMD. There is a huge difference in substance and nuance between such assessments and the hyped-up assertions by the Bush administration concerning active programs dedicated to the reconstitution of WMD, as well as the existence of massive stockpiles of forbidden weaponry.
The actions and rhetoric of the Bush administration were aided by the tendency by most involved to accept at face value any negative information pertaining to Hussein and his regime, regardless of the source's reliability. This trend was especially evident in Congress, responsible for oversight on matters pertaining to foreign policy, intelligence and national security..."


Quid Pro Quo?

It's not a stretch to assume the Senator would vote for pro-business legislation in any case, but this still does not look very good.

AP: Senator Frist's Votes Found to Favor HCA Interests
"An analysis of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's voting record shows a pattern of supporting bills that benefit HCA Inc., the Nashville-based hospital company that's been the foundation of the Frist family's wealth.
Frist's office said the Tennessee Republican wasn't available to comment directly on the Tennessean newspaper's research, but he has said in the past that his connections to HCA have not influenced his actions in the Senate.
Frist, considered to be a possible 2008 presidential candidate, has often been criticized for his financial stake in HCA possibly creating a conflict of interest.
'Because he owned so much stock in HCA ... there is the appearance that any legislation that could help the company would have helped him financially,' said Mike Surrusco, ethics director for Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog group, which has called on the Senate ethics committee to reconsider whether Frist should be prohibited from voting on bills that could affect the fortunes of his family..."

Energy Policy:

Not what Cheney and his patrons want to hear.

Reuters: More of Third World Fit for Wind Power: UN Study
"Windmills have far bigger than expected potential for generating electricity in the Third World, according to new U.N. wind maps of countries from China to Nicaragua.
'Our studies show about 13 percent of the land area has potential for development,' Tom Hamlin of the U.N. Environment Program told Reuters on the fringes of a U.N. climate conference.
Previously, he said, maybe just 1 percent of developing nations was judged sufficiently windy, discouraging governments and investors from considering the nonpolluting source as an alternative to burning oil, coal or natural gas..."