Volunteers for a Better America

Polar Bears and the Arctic

Here in Central Illinois, this summer was a scorcher and very dry.  Yet if we watered the trees and the plants, we could almost forget that the globe is warming.  Not so in the Arctic, where the ice is receding faster and faster, at about 9% a decade and could vanish by the turn of the century.  Scientists suggest polar bears and other Arctic species may be lost forever.  See this article in the Guardian.

We cannot, of course, expect to expand the human population as we have been doing without having dramatic impact on the Earth.  We are not likely to give up air conditioners, cars, refrigerators and computers in order to save the polar bears, even if we should.  But we can certainly do much more than we are currently doing to lessen the harm we do.  Imagine a world where cars were used only for travel between cities not accessible by train or plane, where energy efficiency was considered of the highest priority in appliances, vehicles and heating and cooling systems, where manufacturers were required to improve efficiency of resource use and energy use in their manufacturing processes and their manufactured products.  We can dramatically reduce environmental degradation, if we will only try.

the Eavesdropping Leak

Bush's approach to the leak of the secret prisons has been nothing like his hands off approach to the Valerie Plame leak.  With the Plame leak, he just raised his arms like a cowboy surrendering to the local sheriff and disclaimed any information or particular interest in the matter.  The prisons are different. See this article in the Dec. 27 Washington Post, here.   He apparently sees the leak of their existence as a national security threat, and has called in editors of the nation's finest newspapers to let them know his concern.  He may well be applying subtle pressure.  It is as though he is afraid of what the American people might do given that knowledge, for surely the mere fact of their existence cannot give any solace to terrorists or provide any information that will be of use to them.

The media hasn't done much.  After a flurry of stories in the press, and barebones discussion on the major broadcast networks, it has already died down.  It is as though the broadcast media cannot keep anything other than a celebrity murder trial in their heads at once. Anderson Cooper kicked Aaron Brown out by emoting on screen during the worst of Katrina, and now he emotes on every occasion.  But we don't hear much from him about these issues and certainly no extensive reports on surveillance, secret sites, or even the Padilla case or how our privacy rights have diminished in recent years.   Bush's sudden deep interest in leaks compared with his lighthearted treatment of the Plame affair strikes me as posturing.  He is attempting to use his status to convince editors to do even less to go after the stories that are not being told about the Iraq occupation.

More White House Fibbing? Greenhouse emissions and emission cutback programs

George Bush failed to support the Kyoto Accord and has generally supported radical pullbacks from the environmental progress this country made over the last 30 years in cleaning our water, cleaning our air and protecting endangered species habitat.  The Bush Administration proposes cutting down forests in the name of saving them, building roads in wilderness, letting the Arctic melt away, and relying on automakers to reduce greenhouse emissions voluntarily.

But as with the rationale for war in Iraq and the fabricated connection between 9/11 and al Queda, Bush just can't seem to help prevarication to get his way.  Or maybe he just cannot tell the difference between PR spin and scientific facts.  The Washington Post editorializes, here, on the Bush Administration's attempt to claim, at a recent international climate conference, that the United States is actually cutting greenhouse emissions. When the Post first contested Bush Administration figures claiming a decline, James L. Connaughton of the White House Council on Environmental Quality defended the Bush record and claimed the numbers were indeed correct.  But now figures put out by the Energy Information Agency show a "hefty" 2 percent increase for 2004--the biggest in five years.  The U.S. is still at the top of the world in greenhouse emissions, producing one-fourth of the planet's burden.

Lord Rees, the president of Britain's elite scientific academy, responded to questions about the Energy Information Administration report with a clear critique of US policies. 

"We should not underestimate the challenge of achieving economic growth whilst reducing emissions, and the United States is not the only country that is struggling to do this. ... But it seems unlikely that the present U.S. strategy of only setting emissions targets relative to eonomic growth, reducing so-called greenhouse gas intensity, will be enough." Gas Emissions Reached High in U.S. in '04, New York Times, Dec. 21, 2005, at A20, available here.

Connaughton has also claimed that the Bush Administration had created 60 programs for addressing greenhouse emissions.  The Post notes that only 3 of those 60 are new programs--there rest are merely repackagings of existing programs.   Given this record of misrepresenting progress on two fronts (actual declines in emission, programs to cut emissions), the Post poses a question that applies to almost everything the Bush Administration touches these days:

If it can't get its numbers right, why should we take seriously the White House's declared intention to forge a "constructive and effective approach" to climate change at all?  Post editorial, supra.

Bush has avid support in his anti-environmentalism stance from Richard Pombo, a Republican with an ax to grind against all those who want to protect the environment.  Pombo has proposed to "update" the Endangered Species Act by essentially gutting the most important provisions to protect critical habitat and then having the federal government pay landowners if they are not permitted to do whatever they want with their land.  That policy is, quite simply, nutty.  Being a landowner does not provide anyone with a license to commit mayhem, hold drug parties, set reckless fires, dig into the ground and break water mains or sewer lines.  When they do those things, they aren't just taking care of private business; they're messing up public goods.  The same is true when a landowner proposes to destroy a wetland or cut down a forest that is critical habitat to a species.  It is entirely unreasonable to pass a law that requires taxpayers to compensate for one particular regulatory restriction.  It is not demanded by the Constitution, and it should not be supported by Congress.  The only purpose behind such a provision is to limit critical habitat requirements with a budgetary hammer.

Wal-Mart--more legal problems

For those who have seen the Wal-Mart Film:  the High Cost of Low Price, you will remember that Wal-Mart has been involved in several kinds of litigation.  There are claims of employment discrimination, in one of the largest class action lawsuits in the country.  There are claims of knowing use of cheap but illegal employees, through hiring subcontracting firms that use undocumented workers.  There are safety issues, as Wal-Mart installs cameras in its parking lots to surveil union activism but doesn't use them to protect its customers.  (One way that it is getting around that at a new store in Urbana Illinois is to have the city build and maintain the parking lot as an enticement to get Wal Mart to open its third (or is it fourth) store in the metropolitan area.  That means, of course, that city dollars will subsidize the Wal-Mart heirs multi-billion dollar fortunes.....)

And there are even criminal probes of Wal-Mart's treating of its toxic wastes.  See Kris Hudson, Wal-Mart Faces Criminal Probe over Waste Rules,  Wall Street Journal, Dec. 21, 2005, at B3.  Seems that retailers are supposed to designate materials that constitute hazardous waste and package and transport appropriately.  Wal-Mart has apparently been taking a cheaper way out.  It delays the sorting and special packaging.  Instead, it ships its returned paints, aerosol cans, cosmetics, pool chemicals, and fertilizers on trucks from its various California stores to its Las Vegas warehouse and only then does it consolidate and examine the goods to comply with the hazardous waste rules.  Federal and California officials are investigating these practices.

Shouldn't this be making the local news?  Instead of another discussion with somebody who knew something about Laci Peterson's murder, why don't we hear more about what Wal-Mart is doing with its immense power as the largest corporation in American with more than 1.2 million employees?  What are its hiring and buying policies?  What are included in the many subsidies that it gets from local governments?  What happens when it builds a mega store and then abandons that site to build an even larger store just a few blocks away? 

These are important issues that affect how communities thrive and how individuals work.  It is incumbent upon the local and national media to delve into these questions and pay much more attention to them.

Elections, Eavesdropping, Padilla, and Lawrence Wilkerson

Clean Elections, Jobs for Justice, Volunteers for a Better America and Giving Generously

One thing the current national scene should do is convince each and every one of us to become more involved locally.  Here in Central Illinois, there are several groups that are generally interested in promoting social justice.  Surely, each one of us can find one group that is "close enough" to our own particular set of values that we can become involved as an active participant in the struggle to recapture our democracy.  Clean Elections, Jobs for Justice, Volunteers for a Better America--each of these groups has potential to make real differences for individuals in ways big and small.  Just think what this world would be like if we established a state fund that paid for election campaigns and took the millionaires and corporate money out of the elections!  No more "bought" legislation, no more paying attention to the rich guys while poor families go without heat, health care, and education.  Think if we all dedicated ourselves to ensuring that each person had a decent job that could pay for food, shelter and even health care and retirement.  What if we all volunteered to inform our neighbors, encourage dialogue, engage in civic projects, and work for peace and justice each day?  Couldn't it be a better world?

Did you read the story in the Chicago Tribune today about the shortfalls in food banks in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles.  People have topped out in donations.  But remember the earlier posting on A Taxing Matter, that wealthy people are far less generous with their incomes than people in lower income brackets?  Let's go out there and press everyone to ante up before the end of the year to help those who are less fortunate.

Surveillance and More Surveillance (and Alito)

"Nation's Phones Tapped: Government analyzing massive amount of calls, e-mail traffic" screams the Chicago Tribune on  the front page, Christmas Eve 2005, as the story of the Bush Administration's widespread data-mining operation becomes better understood.  Not just a few dozen calls based on specific traces to particular overseas terrorist suspects, but "large volumes of telephone and internet communications flowing into and out of the United States" "collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries."  Id.   The Administration even arranged for foreign-to-foreign traffice to pass through U.S.-based switches, and telecommunications companies willingly obliged in scanning that traffice for "patterns" and passing it along to the government.   All of this data-mining of private communications has been done, without the ordinary warrant requirement, in a context of warm cooperation between the Bush Administration and our quasi-public telecommunications utilities and media companies. 

"'All that data is mined with the cooperation of the government and shared with them, and since 9/11, there's been much more active involvement in that area,' said [a] former ... telecommunications expert."  Id.

The Administration claims, see this story by Eric Lichtbau, that FISA doesn't provide sufficient flexibility in this age of terror.  Yet it did not then go to Congress and work out a law that protects liberties while providing the kind of rules necessary.  Instead, it determined that it would just not abide by the law on these matters and "arranged with top officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to important switches." Id.  Interestingly, Colin Powell is on record, here, as saying he supports the exercise of the authority, that he doesn't understand why the Administration did not seek authorization under the law since it would not have been difficult, and that there will be a great debate over the warrantless eavesdropping.  As always, Powell is trying to do the impossible--be loyal to Bush and be loyal to the values for which this country stands.

It may be that products of this data-mining have then been used by the Bush Administration to justify further surveillance of particular targets under the FISA court's very secretive processes.  This is reported to be one of the reasons that Judge Robertson, an appointee to the FISA court, stepped down to protest the Bush policies.

By Christmas Day, we could peruse the Justice Department memo to the chairs and vice-chairs of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, linked here.  The legal rationales offered are disturbing in a country that purports to be the leader of the free world.  Bush, buttressed by a vice president and staff member who have explicitly stated that they wish to increase the brute power of the office of the presidency, essentially claims that the Constitutional authority to command the armed forces in the time of war give him the right to do whatever he deems necessary in the interests of national security, without courts or Congress having any check upon that power.  In addition, the memo claims that the authorization to invade Afghanistan was an implicit exception to the strict requirements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Not unsurprisingly, Supreme Court nominee Alito argued as far back as the 1980s that government officials who violate the law in ordering illegal wiretaps should be considered immune from lawsuits (though he did not think his arguments should be tested in court).  Remember that Alito's memos were written in the context of the aftermath of Watergate and the indictment and ultimate imprisonment of Attorney General John Mitchell for obstruction of justice.  (Yes, those same charges that are applicable to Scooter Libby in the outing of Valerie Plame.) If government officials are above the law, what constraint is there to ensure that they act for the public good rather than for their personal aggrandisement or power?   This is another reason for filibustering Alito's nomination.  His ideological extremism would support an immensely powerful executive and decreased rights for women and minorities.

Meanwhile, we also learn of widespread radioactivity monitoring by the government, apparently by driving vehicles into private parking lots adjacent to homes, mosques and stores. See this report by Matthew L. Wald in the Dec. 24, 2005 New York Times reporting "thousands of searches" over the last three years.  The Council on American-Islamic Relations issued the following statement.

"This disturbing revelation, coupled with recent reports of domestic surveillance without warrant, could lead to the perception that we are no longer a national ruled by law, but instead one in which fear trumps constitutional rights.  All Americans should be concerned about the apparent trend toward a two-tiered system of justice, with full rights for most citizens, and another diminished set of rights for Muslims."  Id.

Federal agents have asserted they have violated no constitutional rights.  One is quoted as saying "If you can drive a car into the parking lot near the shopping mall, we [with our sophisticated spying equipment] can go there."  Id.  This nonchalance of government agents to privacy invasions confirms that privacy rights have deteriorated amazingly since the 1965 Terry v. Ohio case that concluded that Americans have no expectations of privacy in their automobiles.  Make no mistake about it--this is a grab for immense discretionary power over citizens who have in no way provided probable cause or even reasonable suspicion of commiting treason.  It is essentially a right of the executive to be above the laws created for others in this country, and to choose to apply those laws as that person sees fit.

Meanwhile, a lone Republican senator blocked authorization of the intelligence bill, in what the meda reported, here, as an attempt to thwart the efforts of Ted Kennedy and John Kerry to require detailed national intelligence updates to Congress about secret detention sites overseas and reports on prisoner treatment and conditions.  Why is it that Republicans and Wall Street are so supportive of secret detentions, extraordinary renderings, and torture?  Surely they must know that those behaviors go against every tradition of liberty.

Jose Padilla:  now you've got him, you don't want him? 

Remember that Padilla is an American citizen who was seized on U.S. soil and then imprisoned for years in a military brig on Bush's decision to label him an enemy combatant who, according to Bush, intended to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the United States.  We have no way to know whether Padilla is innocent or guilty, because his case has never come before a court, in spite of the writ of habeas corpus and the 14th amendment due process rights.  The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, a court heavily laden with Republican appointees that leans heavily to the right in almost all its decisions, essentially held that American citizens can be held as enemy combatants whenever a President says that wartime exigencies require it.  See the September 2005 decision, here.  Since Padilla was arrested on American soil as a civilian and held for three and one-half years (and counting) in a military brig, that is an enormously worrisome conclusion in a regime that seems bent on maintaining a perpetual state of war to support the military-industrial expansion that ordinarily accompanies it. 

The Bush Administration apparently was worried about being able to uphold any kind of case against Padilla.  After winning the right to treat him as an enemy combatant held by the military based on the assertion that his release would threaten national security, the Administration decided it would prefer to release Padilla from military custody.  The Administration may not have wanted to face the Supreme Court's decision with O'Connor still on the bench and right-wing ideologist Alito not yet--and maybe never--appointed.  It requested that the Fourth Circuit moot its ruling and permit Padilla to be turned over to civilian custody for some comparatively petty criminal accessory charges. 

To put it mildly, last week's Fourth Circuit opinion, here and New York Times description, here, reflected the anger of being used and the concern that the Administration was toying with the judicial system.  It noted the irony of a request for release of a person that it had just argued must be held in military security.  It questioned the absence of information about Padilla's purported taking up arms with Afghanistan fighters against the United States, and the timing of an "emergency application" for transfer to civilian custody just days before the district court would hear evidence on whether Padilla, a citizen, had been properly classified as an enemy combatant and days before briefings were due in the Supreme Court on Padilla's appeal of the Fourth Circuit decision. Conservative Judge Michael Luttig (considered by Bush for the Supreme Court), used scathing language to indicate a concern that "the government may be attempting to avoid consideration of [the Fourth Circuit] decision by the Supreme Court" even though the case clearly "warrant[s] final consideration" because it "presents an issue of suchy especial national importance."  The court concludes with a frank observation that the Administration's conduct of the Padilla case could be seen as casting doubt on its integrity and hence its credibility before the courts--either Padilla may have been held for almost four years by mistake, or the powers the Administration has asserted it requires are not really necessary in the fight against terrorism.

The Wall Street Journal, the editorial pages of which lately seem to operate as Bush-Cheney lackeys, immediately came out with an editorial reminding the country that Bush hasn't been aggressive enough, having caved to McCain on "torture" (in quotes, so that you know they don't think torture is a serious subject), settling for a piddling six-month extension of the Patriot Act (this was before the House reduced it to five weeks), and now abandoning its enemy combatant case against a U.S. citizen.  Why, to read the Wall Street Journal, you would think that excessive military power over ordinary Americans' lives, the use of torture, excessive corporate subsidies, giveaway tax cuts for millionaires, and an FBI, CIA or NSA agent in the driveway, attic and basement of every home was the ideal American dream that our courageous soldiers fought so hard for in World War II!  The Journal's editorial makes a few errors.  It claims that "Padilla has become a liberal icon--an 'innocent' man who has been held 'illegally.'"  Padilla is a liberal icon, but not because he is necessarily innocent.  He may well be guilty of planning to detonate a dirty bomb, but Americans who treasure liberty are not comfortable with a one-man monkey court declaring him evil and putting him away without due process of law.  The Journal goes on to say that the debate has been caught up in "one man's rights" and missed "the right of the rest ofus to be protected from enemy attack." 

Of course, that argument misses on several points.  Each person's rights are, in fact, every other person's rights--we cannot think about rights in the aggregate, societal rights, "freedom" or "democracy" in the abstract, if those abstract rights do not translate to real protections for each and every individual. The reason our criminal system declares that individuals are "presumed innocent" is that only in that way can each person's right be realized.   The rule of law is based first and foremost on this fundamental principle--that each individual shall be judged on his or her own actions, on the merits of the information, without prejudice.  The individual cannot be lightly executed just to simplify protection of those who remain.  If an individual can be subject to arbitrary process today, then any other individual may be subject to that same arbitrary process tomorrow.  This was the lesson learned by the world in a most difficult way during Hitler's Third Reich.  It is dictatorships that declare the power to judge and execute citizens on the sheer whim of the dictator.   And no person who escapes the ax one day has any rest that he or she will be free from it the next.

Lawrence B. Wilkerson, speaking out

Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell and retired Army colonel, has begun speaking out about the Bush Administration.  He notes the secretive approach of the Administration, and its incompetence both at home and abroad.  He asserts that Powell was too involved with damage control to do the work he should have done.  He accuses Cheney and Rumsfeld of running a cabal that makes the critical decisions on issues for a president who "is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either."  See the story in the New York Times, Dec. 24, 2005, at A4.  He laments the Administration's condoning of torture and setting policies that led to abuses like Abu Ghraib. 

He said, she said: the impact of journalistic "balance" on accountability

Dan Shaviro, in his "Start Making Sense" blog (here, scroll down for specified articles), considered the "Incentive Problems Caused by Journalistic Balance."  He notes that the "he said, she said" game has been around for a while, but everyone has assumed that there was actually some accountability somewhere in the process, so that stating the truth counted for something other than just balancing out the other side.

The Bush Administration, on the other hand, has figured out that there is no accountability these days, with a press that is too "stupid, mindless, timid, self-serving, cowardly, incompetent, ignorant" to follow through.  It has exploited that discovery to the hilt.  With a blatant unconcern for what the facts actually are, each person from Bush to Cheney to McClellan stays "on message" no matter what the questions are.  No answer, but a powerful repetition of the world according to the neocons.

This is perhaps most obvious when it comes to the Administration's position on torture.  Shaviro provides the following insightful commentary in another article, "Is this why the Bush Administration is so keen on torture?".

"While torture's efficacy in getting people to provide true information is disputed, no one doubts that it works extremely well at getting people to say what the torturers want them to say. The likes of Cheney might be keen on this for either or both of two reasons. The first is that they are just trying to make a case, and don't care if the statements extracted through torture are true or not. The second is that they already "know" what is true, on ideological grounds, and thus regard all actual empirical evidence as false unless it confirms their fixed preconceptions.  Not only don't I know which rationale was more important to Cheney, but I'm not convinced that he knows the difference any more." [formatting condensed]

The negative impact of mindless "balance" is a loss of the ability to make credibility judgments and the loss of accountability.  Cheney's perspective on torture is just an example of the way manipulation of information can lead to a dogmatic inability to assess rightness or wrongness of the two "balanced" sides. 

Perhaps the answer is to keep encouraging people to read the blogosphere.  With commentaries like Shaviro's, there is hope that fuller information will be disseminated more broadly and more thoughtful observations about what that information means for today's society will be shared with a broader audience.

Sell Our National Parks?

It seems that some in Congress will go to any length to enhance revenues (without taxes) and claim deficit reductions while voting for tax cuts for the superrich.  Richard Pombo is notorious for his support of drilling in the Arctic Refuge, his efforts to end the 30-year protections of the Endangered Species Act, and his lack of concern about environmental pollutants (see a wealth of newspaper and organization articles linked at this anti-Pombo blog here, and this Sierra Club information here).  Now Pombo has gone even further--he has also proposed selling our precious national parks (see this article in the San Francisco Chronicle).  Among parks suggested for the ax are the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historical Site in Massachusetts and the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve in Alaska.

It appears that Pombo has no comprehension of the long-term planning that is necessary to protect and preserve this fair land for future generations. This kind of brinksmanship and toying with our American heritage is, quite simply, despicable.

Medical Journal GhostWriting

We have come to expect spin from the Bush Administration.  We've had, after all, five years of distorted information, beginning with Bush and Cheney's assertions of certainty about Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction and the likelihood of mushroom clouds over Manhattan if the country did not go along with their desire for waging war on Iraq.  We learned about payments of tax money to Armstrong Williams to tout the Administration's "No Child Left Behind" Act and letting Jeff Gannon pose as a real journalist in the White House press room to loft easy questions Bush's way to extricate him from any real journalistic questioning that might (on very rare days) take place.  We learned about video news releases with paid PR performers distributing the White House's views of itself to local news channels and aired without attribution as though they were independent reporting.  We learned about an Iraqi press bought and paid for by the Pentagon, that likely quoted its own stories to show what great progress had been made. 

But did you know that medical journals were publishing pharmaceutical companies' paid propaganda under the guise of research?  Anna Mathews reported on these activities in a story entitled "At Medical Journals, Writers Paid by Industry Play Big Role: Articles Appear Under Name of Academic Researchers, But They Often Get Help," Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2005, A1.   She reports that articles that appear under the names of academic scientists may well have been written entirely by pharmaceutical hired hacks. The companies in some cases even have the articles already written and listed in their database, waiting with a blank for the yet-to-be-selected academic "author."   There's a handy graphic in the printed edition--a drug company at the top sends money to an academic research whose name appears on a medical journal article; the drug company also sends money to a communications firm to prepare an article, and the firm hires a medical writer to actually write the article.  The drug companies claim that authors "have to sign off on everything" and the result is just "a way to more efficiently make the transition from raw data to finished manuscript." 

Like the Bush administration propaganda, this medical propaganda often appears without proper attribution.  The Journal article indicates that only 10% of articles on studies sponsored by drug companies disclosed the help of a medical writer.  In some cases (perhaps a significant number), the supposed academic researcher has had very little to do with the actual scientific research. Even so, the Journal reporter notes, "[a]cademic scientists can more easily pile up high-profile publications, the main currency of [academic] advancement."

Why is this story only in the Journal?  Why isn't it on CNN and other news broadcasts?  How can CNN in particular spend hours on end interviewing lawyers in connection with the latest conspicuous crime or airplane crash but find not a minute to devote to exposing this crass misuse of ghostwriting? 

FISA Court Calls Bush to Account

Bush has claimed that he had power, as commander-in-chief and under the authorizing language for launching a war against Afghanistan, to circumvent the constitutional protections against warrantless searches of American citizens because he deemed it necessary. Cheney claims that he has supported actions from the beginning with the intent of building a stronger executive weakened by Vietnam and Watergate revelations of presidential excesses, such as Nixon's enemies list.  See this story in the Washington Post.

After learning about torture memos, extraordinary renderings, black site prisons, and illegal government propaganda at home and abroad, last week Americans were informed of one more power grab by the current occupant of the White House.  We learned that Bush has authorized domestic spying since 2001 that circumvents the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act procedures.

The White House claims that it made the program known to sufficient Congressional and judicial personnel to provide any needed oversight.  Several of those in Congress that were informed have voiced their doubts about the legality of the program and noted that the way they were informed prevented them from performing any kind of oversight function, because they were prohibited from sharing any information with others or seeking advice of legal counsel. 

The White House apparently informed only the head of the FISA court.  Other judges learned about the activities only when the Washington Post broke the story. One FISA judge has already resigned, apparently because of his view that the program may be illegal.  According to the Washington Post, here, because of the many concerns expressed by most of the other FISA judges, the chief FISA judge has now arranged for the Justice Department and National Security Agency to explain to the court how the program has worked, why the FISA court was bypassed, and what the claimed legal basis for the program is.

Congress should also pursue an investigation into these matters, including not only this surveillance but also the Pentagon's database on American citizens and the FBI's incident files on anti-war, environmental, and other organizations.   This should be a part of Congress's in-depth review of the various excessive provisions in the so-called "Patriot Act" during the six-month extension agreed upon today.  A government's decision to spy on its own citizens is a stark signal of repression that has no merit in a true democracy.   And no matter what the security threat, a presidential claim to unrestrained power is unacceptable.

Et Tu, C-Span?

FAIR has conducted a study of C-Span's popular Washington Journal, available here.  The program format provides for a number of guests and call-in comments and questions from the audience.  The show has long claimed to be politically neutral in its selection of guests, so as to provide a format for useful dialogue that is informative and helpful.

FAIR's report shows that the claim of political neutrality is, alas, much like Fox News' claim of being "fair and balanced."  The study examined the party affiliations of government guests and others for whom affiliation is relevant, gender, ethnicity and occupation.  It found a consistent pattern of favoring dominant groups and conservative ideology. 

• Republicans outnumber Democrats two to one
• Whites outnumber minorities 85% to 15%
• Men outnumber women four to one
• Journalists and special interests outnumber citizen-based groups more than 10 to one

One more piece of evidence that concentrated corporate ownership of media in the country is limiting the perspectives offered and ensuring that conservative views are given dominance.  It has to change, but it is unclear how change can take place when the media is saturated with slanted commentary and information that misinforms Americans about the range of views on issues.

More on Domestic Spying

America is reeling with Thursday's revelations that Bush authorized domestic spying on Americans that does not conform to the legal requirements under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  See, as one example, the discussion in the Dec. 20, 2005 New York Times, here. 

This is a frightening moment in America's recent plunge into a world of limited civil liberties and expanding military presence across the globe and domestically.  It is a Constitutional crisis of unprecedented proportions in our recent history--a president who claims that he is above the law in almost any area of contention, and whose military-corporatist chronies (including Cheney and the other neo-cons) are intent on establishing global hegemony and control of resources.

Remember that this new revelation comes on the heels of various situations where Bush already claims that the Constitutional authority as "commander-in-chief" of the armed forces provides extraordinary powers. This president has claimed that the power includes (i) rounding up thousands of people based on their ethnicity and deporting them in the aftermath of the September 11 attack, (ii) picking up American citizens on American soil engaged in ordinary activity and holding them for years in a military brig without access to counsel or family on the say-so of an executive who labels them as an "enemy combatant", (iii) permitting the military, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, to raid homes to gather in individuals, carry them off to prisons and holdthem for months without any due process, in a manner reminiscent of the dictator the military had presumably replaced, (iv) engage in covert propaganda abroad, including "buying" journalists and stories in Iraq (and possibly using those planted stories as justification for activities to people at home in the U.S.), (v) detaining people at Guantanamo as terrorists but offering no process--or, in some cases, only military-run tribunals--to contest the determination, (vi) permitting the military and intelligence agencies to develop a policy of leniency towards torture and murder at Guantanamo and at military prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, and at "black site" prisons secretetd around the globe and operated outside the purview of Congressional oversight or knowledge of the American people, (vii) engaging in unprecedented instances of "extraordinary rendering" of suspects to foreign governments known for their use of torture for interrogation, upon the mere "promise" that there would be no torture, and (viii) authorizing and encouraging FBI spying on domestic organizations engaged in political dissent, such as Quakers and other anti-war organizations.

The Administration's feeble legal defense of its grab for power is amazingly short on substance.  First, the Administration claims that the power of commander-in-chief of the armed forces authorizes the President to do whatever the person in that office considers necessary to "protect Americans."  This is a bald assertion of dictatorial power.  If the Commander-in-Chief power can be carried to authorize domestic spying on civilians without any judical check to substantiate even mere suspicion of improper activity, then it can authorize almost any action desired to be undertaken as long as there is some "war" involving U.S. forces going on somewhere around the globe.  The purported "war" on terrorism provides a perfect foil for overreaching executive powers.  The Administration has said that it expects the purported "war" on terrorism to be a near-permanent fixture.  Under this analysis, near-dictatorial powers of the presidency would also be a near-permanent fixture, even though terrorists come and go for different reasons, from different states, with different targets. 

Attorney General Gonzales, the person most concerned with protecting our cherished democratic heritage through upholding the laws of the land--including the separation of powers provisions of the Constitution--, has in fact turned out to be the most willing excuser of executive overreach.  He played a role in the development of the "torture memos" that purported to provide legal cover to Administrative excesses in permitting cruel and inhumane treatment of detainees.  Those memos twisted the language of the law to exempt from the definition of torture anything short of lethal injury and claimed that the Geneva Conventions, international law generally, and US law in particular didn't apply to those that the President deems to be "enemy combatants"  on his mere say-so.  Now, Attorney General Gonzales claims that Bush's actions authorizing abrogation of FISA was authorized by Congress because Congress passed a resolution authorizing the invasion of Agfhanistan with a "whereas" clause in the Preamble stating that "all necessary and appropriate force" should be used.  As Senators Feingold, Reed and Levin pointedly noted in a press conference last night (televised on C-Span), this is grasping at straws.  Settled law gives no affirmative legal authority to statutory preambles, and that settled law is even more clearly applicable here, where Congress's intent was clearly to authorize a military invasion of Afghanistan and not warrantless domestic spying on Americans.

Gonzales also claims the program is acceptable because it is "limited in scope" since eavesdropping is authorized only on international calls.  The claimed limitation to just "some Americans" (those who make international calls) does nothing to assuage concerns.  This argument is like claiming that residents of California shouldn't be concerned about illegal government searches and abrogation of civil liberties that only take place in, say, Alaska.  It is a crass attempt to get Americans generally to accept loss of civil liberties so long as it appears to be limited to other people or other concerns.   Free speech and free association rights are direly threatened:  once any such unilateral executive power is accepted, it becomes easy to extend the "limited scope" to other groups.

Gonzales and Bush also claim that this action is adequately checked because some selected people in Congress had been informed.  The idea that informing a few pre-selected members of Congress amounts to a proper check on executive power is ludicrous.  Even those few informed (and we do not, of course, have a list but know that a number of members of concerned congressional committees were not informed) did not have enough information to evaluate the program.  John D. Rockefeller IV released a handwritten letter sent to Cheney on July 17, 2003 complaining that he could not assess the program without being able to consult with staff or counsel, "much less endorse these activities."  See id.

The Administration argues that it was necessary to avoid FISA and authorize executive wiretappings of American citizens because of the need for speed in responding to issues.  Bush cited the changes in terrorism in the last few decades that make it necessary to respond to a "two-minute phone call."  But FISA was enacted to expedite warrant  processes through a special court, one that is even authorized to issue after-the-fact warrants in appropriate circumstances. many civil libertarians have complained that the FISA procedures already short-circuit necessary protections of civil liberties.  In the thousands of instances of federal use of FISA authority, the court has only found a handful to be improper.  The Administration made no effort to ask Congress to update FISA to deal with their purported concerns about lack of agility in responding to wiretap needs.  Instead, the Administration decided to act contrary to the law that it is charged with enforcing!  Perhaps the most ominous concept here is the view that the chief executive of the United States can unilaterially decide not to comply with a U.S. law merely because the executive branch considers it to be outdated. 

The Justice Department has developed two legal memoranda outlining its case for the legality of the wiretap authorization.  Id. Not unexpectedly for this highly secretive administration that shuns openness like a vampire shuns sunshine, Attorney General Gonzales refused to release those opinions.  One has to wonder what reason there could be for withholding a well-argued legal opinion for supporting an unprecedented action that threatens to precipitate a Constitutional crisis.  Could it be a suspicion that the arguments will be found by legal scholars around the country to be as flimsy and self-serving as the arguments made in support of contravening the Geneva Conventions on torture?

Domestic Spying

(My apology for the hiatus from posting--regrettably, some technical problems at TypePad prevented viewers from seeing the most recent entries, and "ate up" entries that were in the process of being posted.  Hopefully, the glitches are cured now.)

The past few days have been enormously revealing about this Administration's views towards the powers of the executive and the private lives of Americans.  Bush has admitted authorizing domestic spying on Americans without any kind of warrant required.   This is in direct violation of U.S. laws enacted to prevent an overreaching executive from attempting to stifle dissent through domestic spying and ultimately control of individuals' activities.  It is encouraging, at least, that both Democrats and some moderate Republicans in Congress have realized the gravity of this revelation and are dealing with it as the grave Constitutional crisis that it represents.

Here's what George Miller had to say about these issues, as posted on the DCCC website, here.

An example of the degree to which this domestic spying is being carried is available in this story courtesy of the Standard-Times (a division of Ottoway, a community newspaper subsidiary of Dow Jones).  A student was visited by FBI agents, after asking for a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's "Little Red Book" through an interlibrary loan program for a class project on communism.  The agents came to his home and questioned him on his reasons for wanting the book, which they told him was on a "watch list."  A professor at the university that the student attended was planning to teach a course on terrorism in the next semester, but has decided not to do so because i t might be putting the students who take it into the eye of the FBI spying storm!

So Bush's policies are teaching students that dissent or even interest in ideas that the government may disagree with is unAmerican.  And Bush's policies are affecting academic freedom, because professors will have to think twice about what ideas to consider or what courses to teach, if they and their students may be subject to harassment by federal spies.  And Bush policies are affecting the freedom of each of us, because without a true "free market" of ideas, the purportedly "free market" of commercial companies has nothing to do with liberty, freedom, and justice for all.

Religious Bullying (2)

In an earlier posting, here, we reported the effort, fostered by Fox media and others, to create a campaign against a straw-man "war on Christmas."  See information about Fox host John Gibson's book called "The War on Christmas", here, and a Media Matters for America summary of the Fox effort to beat this particular war-drum to produce good Christmas season viewing numbers, here. 

Of course, there's a veritable smorgasbord of conservative-backed groups pushing this "war on Christmas" and using both the mass media and the internet to do so.  It galvanizes the ultra right and it detracts attention from other issues--like the fact that the majority-party tax proposals provide Christmas gifts to the wealthy but bundles of sticks for the poor, or the fact that the Administration has managed to so bungle its occupation of Iraq that two years after the "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier landing Americans are dying at increasingly high rates while the Iraqi resistance continues apace. 

For one example of the groups pushing this "war on Christmas," see the WorldNetDaily postings, here.  At the top of the home website is one article after another decrying public schools' neglect of Christian hymns and commercial establishments' decisions not to impose "Merry Christmas" greetings on shoppers who may not in fact celebrate Christmas.  The site also links to a story from "Whistleblower Magazine",  here, that purports to reveal the growing criminalization of Christianity. Joseph Farah (editor and founder of WorldNewsDaily) claims there is a "seasonal witch hunt by the ACLU" and

"The attacks on Christianity in America are alarming. We are witnessing more than religious bigotry now. We are entering the early stages of what could become persecution and outright criminalization of Christianity."  [emphasis added]

Another of the groups active in this creating this pre-emptive war of Christians on minority religions is a conservative Republican group, GOPUSA.  See its mission statement, here.  For an example of GOPUSA's attempt to stir up ire over a fabricated "war on Christmas", see here.  Note not only the featured "I'm offended that you're offended--Merry Christmas, anyway" story repeated from the 2004 holiday season, but also the link at the left for a poll on whether readers are offended by the White House choice of a holiday card. The "I'm Offended" piece is a good example of the conservative right's intolerance of dissent, willingness to use its clear majority status to impose its views on those who disagree with it, and general insensitivity to people in our country who practice a minority religion.  Quoting from the article:

"I'm sorry folks, but the only person I'm concerned about "offending" during this Christmas season is the Lord himself."

[From somewhat further on in the article]: " I cannot be concerned that "Merry Christmas" offends you. If I'm not careful, the day will come when saying I'm a Christian will offend you. I'm offended that you're offended. How about that? "

[And even further on]:"The most recent Newsweek survey shows that 82% of Americans believe that Jesus is the Son of God. So, in trying not to offend a few, you've offended many."

In other words, the writer of the article is literally bragging about imposing her religious views, which she quite explicitly notes represent the views of the vast majority of people in this country, on others that the writer knows do not agree with her and not giving a hoot whether that is offensive to the religious sensibilities of those others or not. 

Another example is the American Family Association--another group claiming to defend families (only traditional Ozzie, Harriet and kids need apply) and Christians from the encroachments of modern multicultural civilization.  On their website you can find various stories, such as the AgapePress story about the Alliance Defense Fund that claims decisions by public schools not to use Christian hymns in their programming during the holiday season is government censorship.  See here.

Invented rationales, bullying use of majority power and damning of those who dissent, my friends, are typical of pre-emptive wars of choice.  Those are the signals that should send up red flags to journalists reporting on this fabricated war (and readers, as well).  Giant warnings should appear:  "Beware!  The views you are about to hear may be white-washed and pre-washed for approval by a self-selected, agreeable constituency.  They may not reflect either reality or the practical necessities of living in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic world."

These efforts confuse freedom of a religious group (no matter its majority or minority status) to practice the religion of its choice with freedom of a religious majority to impose its particular religious choice on others.  The first is a most sacred right to all Americans:  it is the reason that religions (especially Christianity) flourish throughout the country.  The second is the epitome of bigotry and persecution:  avoiding it was one of the reasons America was established.

For an example of journalists who have been able to see past the subterfuge of the fabricated war on Christmas, you can sample the commentary by Leonard Pitts (Chicago Tribune, Dec. 13, 2005, section 1, page 13).  He uses a dose of good humor and a few apt phrases to say what needs to be said.

"They're putting so much energy into defending Christmas that one feels downright churlish for pointing out that no one's attacking it."

"What's offensive--also surreal and absurd--is the notion that Christianity, a faith claimed by 76 percent of all Americans, is somehow being intimidated into non-existence."

"[T]he  AFA [American Family Association] is feeling persecuted because a salesclerk says "Happy Holidays"?  That's not persecution.  It's a persecution complex."

A number of readers also contributed letters to the editor of the Tribune on the topic as well, in response to earlier letters complaining about "discrimination" against Christians when Christian preferences were not observed by store owners.  They uniformly note that religious freedom is not challenged when a store decides to use one greeting rather than another.  But I like best a letter from Patrick Brennan of Chicago, Chicago Tribune, Dec. 13, 2005, at Section 1, page 12, partially excerpted below (with condensed formatting).

"It is absurd to tie the marketing of material goods to religious freedom.  Perhaps her confusion  [that of Loree Kowalis, the writer of a letter bemoaning discrimination against Christians] would lessen if she reread her letter.  In her closing statement, she recites a litany of the various holidays people observe in December and wishes that gaggle of celebrants good cheer.  While not as verbose, a store that wishes its customers 'happy holidays' is doing the exact same thing."

Pentagon Overreach

MSNBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams featured a story, Is the Pentagon Spying on Americans?, that should make all of us uneasy and should provide even more reason for moderate Representatives and Senators to call a halt to the overreaching powers provided by the so-called "Patriot" Act.

The story discusses a secret database established by the Pentagon, which is combing all available files for information on specific individuals and groups, supposedly in the hunt for domestic "terrorists."   The Pentagon's post-9/11 beefed up domestic monitoring on behalf of "national security" includes a number of peaceful groups organized to protest war and military recruiting.  One such group included in the "suspicious" persons database  is a peace group that met at the Quaker Meeting House in Lake  Worth, Florida, a year ago to plan an activist campaign opposing military recruitment at high schools!

"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 database, and the rationales offered to justify it, are forebodingly reminiscent of the types of activities condoned by J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy at the height of the McCarthy era's attack on civilian dissent.  Freedom of association doesn't exist if the daughter of a friend who happens to be along when someone gets arrested can be strip-searched (Alito supports that approach) and anyone attending a meeting to protest actions of the military-industrial complex is treated as a traitor and enemy of the country (the database suggests this is the basis for the notion of "threats", in line with Ari Fleischer's scary pronouncement shortly after 9/11 that those who didn't support the Administration's militaristic and anti-civil-liberties stance were unpatriotic supporters of the "enemy").

The Pentagon, of course, seldom responds to criticism with open information to allow ordinary Americans to pass judgment on the reasonableness of its action. It operates as a secretive and highly politicized division of the executive branch of government, claiming a right to hold U.S. citizens in its military brigs beyond the reach of press, counsel, or court.  Not unexpectedly, it response to the news about the discovery of the 400 page document revealing its far-flung domestic spying on dissent undermining freedom of speech and association with typical mellifluous claims of acting honorably.  (The military doesn't condone torture, remember--it just does it.)

"A spokesman said that all domestic intelligence information is 'properly collected' and involves 'protection of Defense Department installations, interests and personnel.' "

Of course, the notion that the military can collect whatever domestic intelligence it wants so long as its purpose is to protect "Defense Department ...interests" is a broad one indeed.  The Defense Department has already shown that it doesn't like dissent.  Rumsfeld and Cheney have openly attacked dissent as unpatriotic.  Mr. Bush has proclaimed that we Americans should view him first and foremost as a "War President" and suggested that label gives him unprecedented powers over us and our rights to know and to dissent.  If domestic spying were acceptable so long as the Defense Department believes it is protecting its OWN interests and not the interests of the American people, then a database on every single American who has ever voiced criticism of military installations, recruitment, strategies and actions would be legitimate and free speech would be essentially a dead letter of the law.

This Pentagon view of dissent as a "threat" is typical of dictatorships like Saddam Hussein's, not democracies.  Democracy is, in fact, not sustainable without an informed and active government opposition that constantly brings pressure on government officials to act for the public good rather than for the special interests of the few, the rich, and the connected.

Groups like our own VoBA are, in fact, the quintessential feature of a real democracy--local, grassroots efforts to be informed and to inform others about the issues that matter in sustaining our values, our environment, and most of all our cherished liberties.  VoBA members have participated in anti-war rallies, protested media consolidation, informed each other and our local community about excess corporate greed, rallied in support of military families left suffering an unfathomable loss because of a pre-emptive war of choice, protested the despicable, pervasive military and intelligence use of torture, highlighted the untoward treatment of the poor by federal agencies, decried corrupt cronyism that threatens the core values of democracy, and objected strenuously to White House and Defense propaganda that intends to pull a curtain down over truthtelling in American and international media.  If that is a threat to the military, then the military itself is a threat to American democracy.

Why "Some" Torture Can't Work

Senator McCain has proposed legislation that would ban any cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment by any U.S. persons of any U.S. prisoners anywhere around the globe at any time.  But inside the Beltway has been abuzz with rumors of a "compromise" with the Cheney-Bush position that torture is sometimes ok, at least if it's done by the CIA. 

Our view is clear--there can be no compromise here.  If we participate in, arrange for, or make possible treatment of prisoners that involves "waterboarding", naked pyramid schemes, dog baiting, shackling from the ceiling in untenable positions for hours on end, starving or other treatment that degrades humans, we have not only violated international and U.S. law but we have betrayed the very essence of the values we stand for. 

Surely John McCain knows this, after his time as a torture victim.  Surely he will not yield to the demands of the likes of Dick Cheney, who said he had "more important things to do" than go to war in Vietnam, or George Bush, who managed to convert a cushy job in the national guard into an even cushier political job and legacy appointment.

The military and intelligence forces' abusive practices under the Bush Administration are something we will be ashamed of as a nation for decades to come.  Think of the way we've used the power of the state against individuals since 9/11.  Thousands of immigrants were held in New York prisons for months without process and then deported, without process.  Thousands of people were (and are) detained in Iraq and Afghanistan, in much the same way that Saddam's forces had detained people in the past, by entering their homes and taking them in the middle of the night to prisons where their relatives might eventually locate them, or not, months later.  Thousands of those declared by one prone-to-error person, George W. Bush, to be "enemy combatants" were shipped to wire enclosures on the island of Cuba and held there for years without due process.  Korans were desecrated.  Deaths took place in suspicious circumstances; beatings, shacklings, waterboarding and other techniques were approved.  The practices developed at Guantanamo were shipped to Iraq, and Abu Ghraib was one result.  The military has acknowledged at least 29 murders of detainees, and of course we have no way to know how many more there may have been.  We know that at least two U.S. citizens were held in military brigs as "enemy combatants" without any of the rights to which citizens are entitled under the Constitution.  Do we know for sure that no other citizens are being held incognito, without access to counsel, in a military brig or "black site" somewhere around the globe?  Can we trust anything this administration tells us about the treatment it provides to any detainee anywhere, given this administration's awful track record on forthrightness?  Two years after Abu Ghraib, we continue to practice "extraordinary rendering" of suspected terrorists--they are merely suspects, and at least some of them have proven to be entirely innocent.  We maintain secret "black sites" around the globe where U.S. personnel may well be committing war crimes of the most grievous nature against suspected terrorists (also not proven guilty through any legitimate process).   

Meanwhile, the Iraqis have picked up where Uncle Sam and Dictator Saddam left off.  In mid-November, a secret prison was discovered in the Interior Ministry building in Baghdad with 169 badly treated "inmates" victims of the "new" "democratic" "Iraqi" regime.  Now we learn about another secret torture center in Iraq with more than six hundred poorly treated detainees.  Read the Knight Ridder story here.  A sampling of the information from the report follows.

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi:  "People are doing the same thing as Saddam's time and worse."  Allawi has indicated that these are primarily Shiite death squads who have taken up the activities formerly handled by Saddam's Sunni henchmen.

An unnamed interrogator who "punched several people in front of the reporter":  "Don't talk to me about human rights.  When security settles down, we'll talk about human rights.  Right now, I need confessions."

Gen. Al-Samaraaee, formerly of the Interior Ministry, "said torture and extrajudicial killings were rampant while he was at the ministry" and "secret prisons ... are run by militia groups."

Abu Saad, a prisoner, showed a fingernail that had been torn off and said he had been hung upside down, blindfolded for 40 days, allowed to use a toilet only once every three days, and saw seven other detainees die.

Is this the legacy of freedom and democracy that thousands of young Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis are dying for?   

Pentagon Propaganda (2)

As more information comes out about the Pentagon's efforts to control the news in Iraq, it is leading Americans to question further the claims made about the war and the pre-war intelligence.  See this latest Chicago Tribune story on buying access to news in Iraq.

After the domestic propaganda episodes and the revelations of the White House attempts to manipulate the press in the Plame story, the information about the Pentagon's use of tax money to plant stories in the Iraq press creates even more difficulty in separating PR spin from truth.  These planted stories may well have been picked up in U.S. newspapers and broadcast media on the assumption that they reflect true Iraqi sentiment.   Has Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld or Bush relied on a planted story about Iraq to bolster their case for the "success" of the Iraqi war effort?  Can we trust anything that comes out of the White House or Pentagon now?

There is an old saying:  once bitten, twice shy.   

Eugene McCarthy

Saturday marked the death of a "gentle" Senator who became the conscience of the nation, Eugene McCarthy, 1916-2005, reported here and here.  Eugene McCarthy was a quixotic figure who was both erudite and down to earth, a sometimes stirring speaker and an often reluctant politician. 

He did two extraordinarily brave things during his career.  In 1952, he stood up to Joe McCarthy, the Senator from Wisconsin who terrorized most of the country with his fake communist-hunting investigations in which he brandished empty pages or old data as a sword to cut people from their careers, their friends, their families, and sometimes their lives.  Eugene McCarthy met him head-on in a debate on foreign policy that should have shown the nation Joe McCarthy's lack of substance. The debate was months before Edward R. Murrow would run his first show exposing McCarthy, depicted superbly by David Strathairn in Good Night, and Good Luck.  It was several years before Joe Welch would finally bring McCarthy down with his famous "Have you no shame" line at the investigative hearings (a film clip of which is seen in the movie).

In 1968, Gene McCarthy galvanized the youth of the nation in an anti-war movement that tried to speak truth to power.   We were in college and we were frightened by the draft that could take fathers, friends and brothers away.   Unlike this war of choice where the journalists are "embedded" with the military and where there are so few independent reporters who dare to explore the world beyond their computer, in that war journalists ventured all to bring pictures of the war into people's homes.  We saw the photographs on television on the news every night--flaming helicopters, "advisers" dropped into a war zone.  Johnson withdrew his candidacy for the presidency after McCarthy's campaign began, and Robert Kennedy took up the campaign only after McCarthy had shown the possibility.  Although the war killed on for seven more violent years of napalmed children, blazing monks, and agent-oranged jungles under Nixon, McCarthy had brought it to front and center stage and forced everyone to think about this commitment to a winless war in a place that did not want us for a cause that didn't exist in a manner that stole the life out of a country, a people and our own nation.

McCarthy must have wondered at the twists of fate that have brought us to our present circumstances.  In response to a real danger, we have a context of smear and fear that has taken away civil rights for everyone, resulted in detentions and deportations of thousands on mere suspicion or association or dissent, and permitted military imprisonment of American citizens without due process yet has done very little to address the muddled intelligence that continues to threaten our ability to deal with real terrorism.  At the same time, we have an imperialistic war of choice that is again gobbling young lives and in which we are again dropping hundreds of thousands of pounds of ordinance on villagers and maiming old men and young children.

It is thus with great sadness that I note the passing of Gene McCarthy.  There are few people who have the courage to speak against power.  He did so, and he helped to bring understanding, for a while, to an entire nation.

Religious Bullying

The media is picking up the bullhorns on another pet issue--the claim that political correctness is taking "Christmas" out of the holidays, from Target's use of "Happy Holidays" as a greeting to the Bush's sending a "Happy Holidays" card to their hundreds of contacts, made most directly and often by Bill O'Reilly on Fox. Let's examine this for what it really is.

First, Christmas is by no means a dirty word either commercially or on the public square.  Christmas trees, Christmas lights and other Christmas symbols are everywhere in every store, on every street and in almost every public office.  Ruth Marcus does a good job of debunking the claim of the banishment of Christmas from mall and square in her Washington Post editorial, here.

Second, those Christians who are answering Bill O'Reilly and Pat Robertson's calls to arms in this so-called "war against Christmas" should perhaps stop to consider the proper relationship between church and state.  Christians should be the ones most concerned about government use of Christian religious symbols and most eager not to have any sect's particular religious beliefs adopted by the state.  Most persecution of religious sects comes when a government is identified with one sect and uses the power of government to discriminate against other sects.  That was the fate of Christians for many years in countries with established, non-Christian religions.  That is one of the problems at the core of undemocratic countries in the Middle East that apply religious muslim law instead of secular law.

Third, the celebration of Christmas--candlelights, trees, reindeer, and Santa--has become so prevalent that even those who practice different religions now often celebrate the holiday, to the extent possible without betraying their own religious underpinnings, in order to prevent their children from feeling excluded from the social life around them.  It is entirely appropriate that commercial establshments like Target and Wal-Mart should try to reach out to this group by being all inclusive rather than excluding them in the way they handle the holidays.  Having greeters say "Happy Holidays" includes Christians and Jews, Muslims and agnostics, Kwanzaa-celebrators and non-believers.  Having greeters say "Merry Christmas" excludes everyone but Christians.  Isn't the former better, especially for a commercial establishment that sells goods related to events for all those faiths?

Fourth, the  secular "holiday" part of the Christmas holidays is something we can all share and enjoy without worrying that it is taking away from the sacred "Christmas" part of Christmas, which is something much more personal and spiritual and non-commercial.  We should be thankful that stores realize they cannot be the locus for Christmas, and that there is a difference between the commercial "holiday" and the religious "Christmas" celebration.  See this column by Charles Madigan, here, in the "Can you believe it" perspective of Sunday's Chicago Tribune.  Madigan notes that "the last thing in the world I want is for somebody to imply that Christ will be happy if I use my credit card to buy some dandy power tools for my sons."

Why, then, this concerted attack on the attempt to make public parts of holiday celebrations more inclusive and less religio-specific?  The claim that it is necessary because Christians are the victims of religious prejudice in this country is simply wrong. It is really an attempt to impose a religious majority's own religious views on all aspects of commercial transactions.  Plainly said, it appears to be an un-Christian bit of bullying. 

The media participation in rallying this victimless cry of victimization may be an effort to spur a mass movement based on emotional reactions (that come, no doubt, from heartfelt beliefs) to detract attention from other issues.  We saw that in connection with the 2004 elections--pitting people who believe in the traditional family against the many different faces of family life today, pitting people who want the right to own guns against families worried about the danger to their children in communities where assault weapons are more numerous than pets, pitting people who believe that conception should be treated as marking the onset of a separate, rational life against people who believe that viability is that point.

This emotional use of deepfelt values issues detracts from real conversations we should be having about poverty, racism, violence, and the actions our current government is taking to change the boundaries between government action and private action, between church and state.   It is another example of an area where the corporate-owned media have failed in both the issues they bring to attention and the way the issues are discussed.

Clean Elections, Voting Rights and American Justice

Volunteers for a Better America has consistently fought for clean elections at the local, state and national level.  We need voting machines that provide an auditable record that can be verified by the voter.   We need politicians who are beholden to the voters in the aggregate rather than to particular fat cats or corporate coffers.  In particular, we need restrictions on campaign financing by corporate interests that are essentially buying future legislation in their favor.

We will not achieve such clean elections by merely standing by and letting state legislatures hand contracts for voting equipment over to cronies or the lowest bidder.  We cannot continue to stand by and let money so taint elections that the voice of the people gets lost.  We need a concerted effort across each state, from hamlet to hamlet, county to county and city to city, to clean up the election process.  If the politicians can't get with the agenda, then we should kick them all out and start over again until they get the message.

There is a "clean elections" campaign going on now across the country.  The goal is to have states enact legislation that uses public funding at reasonable levels to finance all state-wide offices so that politicians can spend their time campaigning and talking about the issues that face the state rather than sitting in smoke-filled back rooms with big-money donors talking about their agendas.

This means we won't stand for continued dirty tricks during elections.  Remember the Bush campaign (and one time Republican National Committee) person who jammed phones in order to prevent Democratic get-out-the-vote drives?  Read the story here.  Those are the kinds of dirty tricks that cannot be tolerated.  Let's hope Mr. Tobin goes to jail, as a good lesson for future dirty tricksters. And let's hope that states like Illinois pass a "Clean Elections" law to ensure that state offices are not sold to the highest bidder.

It also means that we need a Justice Department that considers its charge to protect civil rights, including the right to a vote that counts, as one of its most sacred duties.  Sadly, that is quite clearly not the case in the current department headed by Attorney General Gonzalez. 

The Washington Post carries a story, here, about the politicization of the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department.  Historically, the analysis of career civil rights attorneys has been a highly regarded input into the decision process as to the position to be taken by the Justice Department.  No more.   In the Texas redistricting case, career attorneys interested in protecting the one person-one vote rule unanimously agreed, in a written memorandum, that the DeLay redistricting plan amounted to a plan to ride roughshod over voters and discriminate against minorities.  Political appointees in the department ignored that advise and supported the plan anyway.  Similarly, in the Georgia case requiring photo ID that for the predominantly poor black voters amounts to a modern-day version of the banned poll tax, career attorneys objected that it was a discriminatory provision that should not be allowed under the Voting Rights Act.  Again, political appointees overruled. 

Now we learn that Justice has nixed such analysis to ensure that political hacks can make their partisan decisions without the annoyance of sound legal analysis concerned with the protection of civil rights.  This is not justice.  This is politicization of the most important cabinet department in the line of fire protecting the civil rights of individual American citizens.   

Are you on the list?

Here is a little something not much covered in the U.S. media--the growth of the terrorist watch list since 2001.  In pre-9/11 days, there were fewer than two dozen names on the list.  Today's length?  80,000 names.  Read more about it here.

Should we be concerned at the number of names on the list?  Each of these people will be subject to more intensive searches or may be refused access to airline travel.  It is not clear what evidence exists, if any, to support these governmental restrictions on movement.  What is clear is that the names are being added at an extraordinarily rapid pace, and could easily be subject to human error and intelligence error. 

It would be a story worth reading to see how names are added to this list and how those individuals are treated at airports and elsewhere.  Maybe a real journalist will look into it someday.

9/11 Commission: a poor report card

The former 9/11 Commission issued its report card scoring the Bush Administration's handling of the 41 recommendations in the report produced a year earlier.  See the report here and a newspaper article describing the report here.  (The release of the report received very little coverage.  The Washington Post story ran in the Chicago Tribune and Seattle paper, but there little or no individual followup by journalists.  In a press release by the chair and vice-chair of the commission, the two state that it is "scandalous" that funding for anti-terrorism measures is still meted out to states evenly without regard to the terrorist risks posed, while police and other emergency responder units still have not been provided a dedicated part of the spectrum to ensure adequate communications during an emergency.

More about the 9/11 commission's "public discourse project" is available at its website, here.

For a sample of what

For a sample of what the international media are saying about the U.S. position on torture in light of Secretary of State Rice's trip to Europe, read this story in the Financial Times.  It is a refreshingly blunt assessment of the Bush Administration's tendency to try to have things both ways whenever possible--the way the Administration is actually handling matters, and the way the Administration knows the international community expects us to handle matters.

The article notes Rice's defense of our activities as both "operating under our laws" and "operating under our international obligations."  The article goes on to point out that the United States has reserved to itself the right to define torture for U.S. purposes differently from the way torture is defined under the international conventions.  The U.S. ignores the fact that the international convention that we signed does not permit signatory countries from preserving their own unique interpretations of the meanings of the terms of the convention.  In fact, as pointed out in the article, if each nation that signs onto a convention to eliminate torture were to retain to itself the right to redefine torture in ways that countered the convention, the convention would be meaningless.

As noted in the article, the U.S. has interpreted torture not to include tying a prisoner to a board and submerging them until they think they are drowning.  This technique, called waterboarding, has been reported as used to drain our operatives and to interrogate our detainees.  It is considered torture in every other civilized country, and therefore should be illegal in the United States as well.

It is encouraging to see that international journalists are willing to confront these major problems with blunt, specific reporting.  The comparison with the U.S. press is not so encouraging, however.  In the U.S., journalism still takes a back seat to the corporate owners of the major media and their desire to mollify the government officials in Washington in respect of their many other interests.  When GE controls a major media outlet, it is not just interested in journalism.  instead, the corporate bottom line drives almost every decision and affects how much GE is willing to let its reporters aggressively pursue ideas.  The same is true for the other major corporate-owned media--Sinclair, Viacom, Time.  The corporate owners call the shots, and the American people suffer a dearth of hard-hitting reporting as a consequence.

House Cleaning

David Broder provides a good summary,  here, of the Obey, Frank, Price and Allen proposals to make a clean sweep of the rampant influence-peddling in the House.  Their proposals include the following:

• disallow reimbursed travel connected with lobbying--no travel  with lobbyists, no trips sponsored or paid for by lobbyists
• restrict the privilege provided to former members of the House to prevent their using it to gain extraordinary lobbying access
• limit the period for roll-call votes to 20 minutes, unless leaders on both sides of the aisle agree to an extension
• limit earmarks
• require a bill to be in print for 24 hours before a vote can be called on it
• require conference committees to meet and vote in open session.

If changes such as these can be enacted, the House could become once again the pillar of democracy and an appropriately deliberative body acting in the common good.  Until then, it looks like special interest groups can essentially bargain for the legislation of their choice.

Pentagon Propaganda

There was a good bit of attention in the media when it first came out that the Bush Administration had been seeding local news programs across the country with "video news releases" that could be presented as though they were reported by independent journalists without attributing the stories (often praising the Bush White House programs) to the Bush White House.   Read this exhaustive report at the Center for Media Democracy.

Then we learned that the White House had been paying journalists to take the White House position on issues, without advising readers that the opinions and information they were receiving was covert propaganda. See this story in USA Today and here.

Next the sordid details of Judith Miller's long period of being embedded with the White House in the run up to the Iraq war came out in the aftermath of her serving time to avoid naming the Vice President's chief of staff as the source of her information on Valerie Plame, the CIA agent outed by Robert Novak.  It was clear that Miller's reporting was tainted by her closeness to her subject--she essentially ran with the story  her handlers were feeding her.  See, e.g.,  this article in Slate, this one in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and this one in The Nation.

Now we learn that Bob Woodward, having built a reputation as a dogged outside journalist willing to risk disfavor of the highest officials of the land, was so star struck by his access to power that he kept secret for two years the fact that a senior White House official had also informed him about Valerie Plame.  Worse, he participated in talk shows denigrating Peter Fitzgerald's investigation into the affair, without mentioning his own involvement.  He himself became the story, as noted in this Alternet article and this Village Voice one.  The Washington Post, see here,  covered that story fairly well, leading to a rebuke by the Post's ombudsperson, here. 

The latest revelation in the covert propaganda/embedded journalists story came in Iraq.  We learned that the Pentagon has been paying journalists in Iraq, essentially buying planted stories.  See (or hear) the stories on NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post.  The Times reported that one of the planted stories claimed that Iraq was moving steadfastly towards democracy.   It is worrisome that the lessons from the VNRs and undercover journalists in the US did not cause the Pentagon to think twice about duplicating the strategy in Iran.  Even assuming that the military is well intentioned and sees its propaganda as an effort to counter misinformation from insurgents and other sources, it should have realized that its own misinformation (using Pentagon stories without attribution) can only lead to further problems.  We cannot talk about press freedoms and the values of democracy if we do not demonstrate them in everyday life in Iraq.

This last story has been just a blip on the media screen, hardly appearing at all on the regular news programs and vanishing into the netherworld of media has-beens on even the national papers and news broadcasts.  Reporters should continue to dig into these stories.  In what other ways is the Pentagon attempting to control the information about Iraq?  How long has the covert propaganda gone on, and how many journalists in Iraq have been involved?  Does the Pentagon produce stories for other markets besides Iraq and, if so, where and at what cost and concerning what types of information? 

The mlitary in the United States is an extraordinarilyl powerful organization, with men, weapons and sophisticated electronic equipment.  We can use the military for good or we can misuse that power and ultimately create greater instabiliaty in the country.  It is important that we understand the extent of the military's covert propaganda effort.

Rice for the Defense?

Newscasts and newspapers are full of stories about Rice making the rounds of Europe.  See, e.g., this story in the Washington Post.  She will talk to European leaders and spend considerable time trying to defend U.S. military and intelligence tactics from increasingly negative revelations.  She continues to hoe the party line that the U.S. doesn't use or condone torture.  But that is still coupled with statements that the U.S. will use "every lawful weapon" to fight those it condemns as terrorists.  When the concept of "lawful" is as elusive as it proved in the 2002 Justice Department memos defending anything short of lethal blows as non-torture, these words provide little assurance that the U.S. is not overreaching. 

Rice so far is declining to answer directly questions about the rendition of U.S. detainees to secret prisons scattered across Europe and especially not identifying in public those countries harboring such secret prisons.  Id.  Meanwhile, the Germans are amassing flight data that links airport activity with claims of CIA rendition flights.  It doesn't sound comforting. Rice has apologized to Germany on behalf of the United States for its detention of German-Lebanese Al-Masri, who claims he was held secretly in an Afghan prison and treated horribly in connection with that detention.  Rendered suspects are apparently grabbed by intelligence forces, stripped naked, rendered unconscious with powerful drugs, provided enemas to purge their intestines of possible information while enroute to their secret prison destination, and left in secret prisons for interrogation.

It is not clear that there is an acceptable defense for this Defense/Intelligence behavior.  The first step towards a police state is enactment of legislative provisions that strip ordinary citizens or other potentially innocent people of due process rights in the face of a government claim that they have committed a grave act of treason towards the state. We should move to a genuine hearing to test the U.S. characterization of any detainee as an enemy combatant and quit using the shield of a purported "war" on terrorism to prevent the normal operation of due process protections.  At the same time, Congress should finally stop its erosion of personal freedoms by refusing to extend the Patriot Act, except for the most innocuous provisions that merely permit better information sharing between appropriate agencies of the government. 

The Connected, the Corrupt, and the Wanna-be-Kings

Is this the country that you studied in eighth grade civics--the America the Great, with freedom for all about which we sing praises?  Lately, I've been feeling rather ashamed of my country, because of the many things being done in her name that show no respect for what she stands for.  Added to the long list of manipulation of the American public to justify a war of choice in Iraq (for Big Oil? for military hegemony? if not, then for what?), FEMA's failure during and after Katrina, White House interference in science at the FDA, White House disregarding science at the EPA and White House dissing science at Dover PA, the last few months have brought more bad news about the Bush Administration's handling of matters from here to Iraq.

Here at home, the smell of corruption and cronyism is overpowering.  Michael Brown, Bush's buddy, who bungled every tiny thing connected with provision of relief to the evacuees and stranded on the Gulf Coast, who worried about his tie and having enough time for a leisurely dinner while people were starving and thirsting and fearing in the Convention Center, stayed on the U.S. payroll as--you couldn't make this up--a consultant on handling emergencies.  Read here.  The original 30-day "consulting" contract with the federal government was then extended another thirty days (running up to about November 26), in order to get a full "download" of Brownie's experiences at FEMA.  Read here and here.  That's a pretty incredible waste of a $150,000 a year salary for someone who was so incompetent that he had to be fired!   Now that he has finally left the federal payroll, Brown is starting up his own disaster emergency consulting firm.  Read here.  Who would hire him?  Surely, not the federal government?

Contracts seem to get awarded to White House cronies with ease, and then to be permitted to be misused and abused without anyone really doing anything about it.  Take our approximately $10 billion of contracts with Halliburton, mostly awarded on a no-bid basis (i.e., sweetheard deals), that have resulted in significant overcharges with no apparent consequences.  For a good summary of the Halliburton problem, see this TruthOut information and the Washington Post's story about the FBI investigation of Halliburton, here. 

Another example of the wacky way contracts have worked under this Administration is a Transportation Safety Administration contract awarded after 9/11.  Changes to the contract added $343 million, to cover much more expensive interviews of screener applicants at hotels instead of offices.  Nobody can explain how the changes happened.  The required back-up documentation doesn't exist, and there are conflicting versions of the story.  Read more here.

Then, of course, there is Republican representative Randy Cunningham, now infamous for using his position to award millions of dollars in defense contracts as payback for $2.4 million in bribes and graft.  Apparently, he wasn't upfront about his taxes owed either.  Read the story here and here. That problem is a real one.  How is it that a Congressman can ensure that defense contracts go to the people that are bribing him to get the contracts?  Sounds like a problem that requires more than one player. 

Regrettably, the Cunningham contract scandal is just one in a long list of scandals in the Congress and White House, including Texan Tom DeLay, who created a redistricting plan designed to ensure a win for Republicans and not for the American people; Senator Frist, whose sales of stock seemed opportunely timed after a long period of holding them and receiving reports on them even though he claimed he wasn't aware of his ownership; and of course Scooter Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, who has been indicted for obstruction of justice in the outing of Valerie Plame--and the lingering questions about Cheney and Rove who were also deeply involved in the discussions about Plame.

Contracts aren't our only worries.  The quickly developing police state powers of the federal government and military are another.  Alito, the judicial nominee who brought the right-wing cooing back to the White House nest, has been revealed more and more as exactly the right-wing ideologue that the conservatives so yearned for that they rejected Harriet Miers without giving her the up or down vote that they have always claimed judicial nominees are entitled to.  First, we saw considerable information about Alito's disdain for privacy rights.  Now, we learn that as a lawyer in the Regan Justice Department he was very active in implementing the Administration's plans to expand police powers.  Read about his views in the New York Times.   Alito argued that IRS lawyers should be able to secretly tape conversations, in spite of an ABA rule prohibiting lawyers from doing so; that the FBI should have broad investigatory powers regarding federal employees; and that prosecutors should be able to investigate persons even when they did not have a good faith belief that they might have been involved in criminal activity!  In the context of a country with the so-called Patriot Act still in force--and Congress showing no understanding that it must drastically cut back on the powers that have been ceded to the military and law enforcement in this country--confirmation of Alito would likely tip the Supreme Court off the delicate balancing position that it has held over the last decade and into a full scale retreat to pre-New Deal views.  That is at the least worrisome, and perhaps even frightening--disappeared citizens and secret investigations of individuals who have done nothing to engender suspicion other than dissent from government positions are the marks of a totalitarian police state, not a free democracy.

Of course, one mark of a police state is use of torture.  You'd think that would be an easy one for the United States, but regretably we live in an era when the White House and Justice Department have drafted various memos supportive of anything short of outright causation of death.  The White House position on torture is that the US doesn't do it but the CIA should have the right to, anyway.  Dick Cheney actively lobbies for torture with his characteristic sneer, threatening a presidential veto to any bill not allowing it.  David Rogers reported in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday that the Administration was now seeking a "compromise" on the torture bill now being debated in Congress.  John McCain thinks that "the president wants to work this out."  Hold up here.  How can there be any "working out" of a difference between a position that views inhumane treatment as abominable and off limits for all US personnel of whatever status and a position that thinks that sometimes it is okay to commit torture?  There is no sometimes-it's-ok-to-torture position.  It is especially hard to see how that difference can be "worked out" when the United States is a signatory to conventions that ban torture for any reason, making that ban on torture the law of the land.

That same report in the Journal revealed more of the wheeling and dealing that is the death of a true democracy.  Senate Republicans passed a bill permitting oil drilling in the Arctic, but the House stood up to the Big Oil lobby and rejected Arctic drilling.  Senator Stevens from Alaska, a buddy of Vice President Cheney and the Big Oil industry, swears that Arctic oil drilling must take place.   The Republicans are thinking about getting some of the Democrat weak sisters in the Gulf Coast to come along with the vote by voting to give them a greater share of oil royalties from drilling in the offshore waters of their own states.  Money seems to be the only thing that talks frankly in the corridors of this Congress and White House.

Then there's the FDA and its handling of the morning-after pill.  Studies show that easy access to the pill can significantly reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.  See here.   Politicization of the approval process at the FDA was clearly evident, in that the top political people at FDA decided not to approve the pill well before the scientific review committees had done their work (and recommended approval).   See here and here.   It appears that this is another case where the Bush Administration's particular religious views are forcing scientific policy decisions.

Meanwhile, the bungling of the US intelligence agencies continues apace.  Sunday papers revealed that officials at the FBI had mishandled a Florida terror inves