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AWARE Call for Anti-War Resolution

AWARE calls on progressives to support its efforts to convince the Urbana City Council to pass a resolution calling for the end of the war and occupation of Iraq.

Mr. Al-Heeti, a local resident whose brother was kidnapped and murdered in Iraq recently, has asked for community groups to support this effort.  According to AWARE, most of the members of the Urbana City Council have engaged in discussions and are open to consideration of such a resolultion.  There are two members, however, who have expressed reluctance to consider such a resolution:  Heather Stevenson (Ward 6 and daughter of 15th Congressional District Representative Tim Johnson) and Lucy Barnes (Ward 7).  Please contact them and let them know how progressives view the war and our occupation of Iraq, and ask them to consider supporting such a resolution at the Urbana City Council.

There will be a Town Meeting, open to the public, to discuss the resolution on February 21, 2006 at 7 pm at the Urbana City Council Chambers.

9/11 versus Katrina--Time for a Katrina Victims Compensation Fund or Louisiana Recovery Corporation

After 9/11, the sympathy of the nation focused on the orphans and widows of the nearly 3000 victims of the al Queda attack.  Many of those victims were well-heeled--investment bankers' families who lived in multimillion dollar homes and had bank accounts, life insurance policies and other liquid assets, not to mention various valuables that could be sold, if needed, to finance a change.  But the nation did not think those families should suffer because al Queda had chosen them to bear the brunt of the attack.  Instead, the country very quickly put together a victim compensation fund that would provide hundreds of thousands, or sometimes millions, to each family to tide them over the difficult transition period.  See this entry in Wikipedia describing the fund.  Even families with huge assets got substantial funds.  Insurance and other programs, such as loan programs and small business assistance programs, helped as well. 

The average 9/11 payout from the fund, insurance and other aid was about $3.1 million per recipient, with families of first responders receiving an extra million, on average.  See this report of a Rand study breaking down the various sources of post 9/11 recovery funding and recipients.   The Rand study emphasized the concerns about fairness issues where families of high earners were compensated more than families of low earners.  Id.  It urged the nation to consider what kind of system should be used in the future to compensate victims of terrorist attacks.  Id.  Clearly, these same issues should be considered in responding to natural disasters such as Katrina, which can devastate entire metropolitan areas requiring billions of recovery funds for public services and more aid to resettle affected families.

Flash forward to 2005 and the Katrina disaster in New Orleans.  Many homes and lives were lost.  Much of the mayhem and destruction could have been prevented if the Bush administration had heeded the detailed warnings it received 48 hours before the storm hit.  See "White House Got Early Warning on Katrina" in the Jan. 24 Washington Post (noting that, in spite of this clear early warning, Bush claimed three days after Katrina that the scale of problems in New Orleans was unexpected, and suggested that nobody had anticipated the breach of the levees).   Those warnings predicting breaches of levees, utilities failures, and communication failures with loss of power to fire, police and emergency workers.  Putting adequate communication lines in place ahead of time could have made an enormous difference. It would have helped even more if the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had not been an incompetent crony appointed for his loyalty rather than for his brains or his skills. 

In part because the incompentence made the suffering even worse than necessary, the event, like 9/11, galvanized the entire country.  Like 9/11, we saw the devastation and vowed to make up for the losses.  Like 9/11, we realized the enormous burden borne by the victims who were even more vulnerable than most 9/11 victims' families had been.  On the entire nation's behalf, Mr. Bush appeared dramatically in Jackson Square at night to solemnly pledge the nation's attention to the disaster would be swift and mighty--we would reconstruct and rebuild those broken lives.

Five months later, Bush's promises resound with hollowness.  See this story's item by item accounting in the Washington Post. The huge Katrina tax bill mainly benefited big business, big oil, and big charities and their wealthy owners and contributors.  The poor of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast that so need and deserve our help have gotten almost nothing.  New Orleans is dying of the national neglect.  See this Washington Post story.  There is no victim's fund paralleling the 9/11 fund.

And we have to ask, why not?  Surely it would make sense to set aside the funds necessary to purchase each of the destroyed and damaged homes, in the Ninth Ward in particular.  We could take $30 to 40 billion and create a compensation fund for the 160,000 or so who lost their homes or lost loved ones. The fund could set a threshold price for damanged homes (say, $100,000) that would be paid to everyone, rich or poor.  That threshold cost would be a one-time amount of approximately $20 billion. There could be several additional brackets based on need (including education, mobility, disability, number of young children in the family, number of elderly adults in the family).  The neediest families might receive an additional $100,000, and the wealthiest families would receive no additional amount.  That additional amount could take as much as $10 billion. For a rather paltry $30 billion, we could pour needed cash into the Gulf Coast economy that would create jobs, keep businesses going and lay a foundation for civic renewal.  That is less than one-tenth the budget deficit that the country ran this fiscal year and less than half the cost of our occupation of Iraq for this fiscal year.  For that relatively small amount, every single family that was devastated by Katrina could be compensated and given a fresh start.  It would be up to each family how the funds would be used--education, to start a new life in their current new locations, to rebuild in New Orleans, or whatever.   A further $20 billion should be immediately appropriated and allocated among the hardest hit municipalities according to pre-Katrina populations.  That funding could ensure cleanup costs will be met, and help cities like New Orleans purchase some of the lands that are not safe for habitation without category 5 levees.  It would be a much more significant economic stimulus than the Bush program of tax cuts for the wealthy, since recipients could be expected to spend substantial amounts on shelter and food needs as they reestablish themselves.  it would be a jumpstart fund for jobs in the area, providing a multiplier effect as cities gained in tax revenues and used those further revenues for additional recovery projects.

Why hasn't Congress yet passed such a program of victim assistance?  (They could call it the Katrina Aid and Jobs: Unleashing New Synergies (KAJUN) Act, and make political hay out of rescuing the popular tourist area of the Gulf Coast.)  It appears that Congress is too busy, instead, passing budget reductions that dismantle the social safety net we put in place after World War II and handing out largesse to wealthy taxpayers and corporations like Halliburton that charge for services never provided.   

The Louisian delegation proposed something that would cost the government even less--establishment of a "Louisiana Recovery Corporation" that would buyout damaged homes at 60% of homeowners' equity.  Not unsurprisingly, given this White House's record of uncaring unconcern for the poor, the idea has been shafted by Bush National Economic Council director Allan Hubbard.  See this story in USA Today. 

The rationale provided by Hubbard is unconvincing.  He says that recovery programs should be funded through the "normal" appropriations process in order to be more "accountable" and "transparent."  This is the government that has funded more pure pork barrel projects through its regular appropriations channels than any in recent history. Those projects are neither accountable nor transparent, but rather buried deeply in complex bills, frequently with obfuscating language.  Furthermore, this government has routinely funded its "pet" projects--the invasion and occupation of Iraq--through supplemental appropriations, so that it does not have to account for them or make "transparent" the funding and its impact on the deficit and its relation to the tax cuts for the wealthy.  Accountability and transparency are apparently only advisable qualities for programs that the administration does not care to see passed.

Of course, given the current hypocritical "deficit reduction budget bill" goal of the two Republican-dominated houses of Congress who intend also to pass a tax cut bill that dwarfs the so-called deficit reductions, getting any reasonable aid package for Katrina victims will be well nigh impossible.  The Republicans are busy increasing Medicare premiums for our elderly so that the wealthy pharmaceutical companies can get a bigger share of the federal health care dollars. (The further incompetence of this administration in administering the prescription drug benefit, and the elderly sick and poor who are finding themselves unable to afford their medication, are topics best left for another day.)  They're not adding funds to help Katrina victims pay for their education--they're planning to reduce funds available for student loans for those who were not born to silver spoons.  They are not likely to find any room in their hearts for a program that assists primarily African-American, Democratic, anti-Bush voters who are still frustrated by the incompetence of Bush's cronies.

What a shame that we cannot do justice in New Orleans for the hundreds of thousands of desperately poor Americans who were harmed by Katrina, when we can have such solicitude for the few thousand mostly well-off Americans who were hurt by 9/11.  It says something about our racism, our classism, and our lack of human decency and charity, and what it says is not good.

Alito Nomination

As we approach the vote in the Senate on the Alito nomination, America stands at a crossroads. It is just slimly possible that Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court of these United States of America can be stopped by a filibuster when the vote comes on Monday, if enough senators will stand up for principle against confirming a Justice whose core values support principles that are inimical to a sustainable democracy.

Alito's radical right-wing views are well known.  He has described himself in job applications and talks, and there is a significant body of judicial opinions from which to judge what kind of Justice he would be.  In particular, Alito's known positions on unconstrained presidential powers, lack of protection for individual privacy rights, lack of protection for the environment and favoritism towards entrenched corporatist views of government and wealthy/corporate control of government will mar our country's democracy for decades to come if he is confirmed.

The New York Times has it right in its January 26 editorial, Senators in Need of a Spine.  Here's an excerpt.

Judge Samuel Alito Jr., whose entire history suggests that he holds extreme views about the expansive powers of the presidency and the limited role of Congress, will almost certainly be a Supreme Court justice soon. His elevation will come courtesy of a president whose grandiose vision of his own powers threatens to undermine the nation's basic philosophy of government - and a Senate that seems eager to cooperate by rolling over and playing dead.

It is hard to imagine a moment when it would be more appropriate for senators to fight for a principle. Even a losing battle would draw the public's attention to the import of this nomination.

Pollution, Mess, and Murder

The news from Iraq doesn't get very good.  In spite of the Army's paying $40,000 bonuses to get new active-duty recruits and up to $90,000 to get active-duty soldiers to re-enlist and the plan to decrease the number of troops deployed in Iraq, the Army may still not meet its recruitment targets.  It could be that some of those would-be troops are having second thoughts because the money just doesn't make up for all the other missing incgredients.  What's missing?  Safe equipment for those who are sent to Iraq and must do with second-rate body armor and armorless vehicles because the military (which manages to whisk top brass around in very safe vehicles) just couldn't get the right equipment to the foot soldiers.  Or it could be the news that Halliburton provided contaminated water to troops and civilians at Camp Junction City in Iraq.  See here.  Charging for twice the number of meals that are actually delivered, another Halliburton stunt in Iraq, is bad enough (the company claims that wartime makes it too hard to track accurately the work it does but sys it should be paid in full nevertheless).  But charging for contaminated water that can make people sick, and not telling people about it immediately does real (not just fiscal) harm to individuals.  Why is it that Halliburton is still treated as a trusted bidder on military contracts, rather than having its feet held to the fire until it corrects the numbers errors it has already made in contracts?

Meanwhile, Megan Ambuhl, an American soldier who ended up participating in the torture of detainees in Abu Ghraib, has come clean with a story about the pervasive practices of abuse in the prison.  See this Washington Post description.   She admits being shocked when she first arrived and saw the treatment prisoners received, but went along when everyone there seemed to accept it and she understood it was part of her job.  While it is hard to know who in this mess to believe, it seems inescapable that the Administration has gone out of its way not to make a strong statement prohibiting torture in all its manifestations, and the evidence from Iraq suggests that shackling, waterboarding and other forms of cruel and inhumane treatment were widespread.  Privates and other low-status personnel would not have freely photographed themselves engaged in dubious practices if they were at all concerned whtat the top brass in the military installation might think.  Why is it that none of the top brass has been called on the carpet for this disgraceful blight on America's handling of war prisoners?  Can we rest assured that torture has stopped?  Congress should be pursuing these questions through an independent inquiry.  If it does not do so, then it behooves us as engaged Americans to demand that our country better address this problem.

Finally, the Army interrogator who killed a detainee by tying him up inside a sleeping bag and then setting on his chest was found guilty of negligent homicide.  See the New York Times story, here. Again, one suspects that these interrogators carried out these rough practices because they believed that they had been authorized to do so. Can we expect that others will be held responsible for the problems in the military's handling of the occupation of Iraq? Or will this interrogator have served primarily as the scapegoat?

CNN Cordiality

Part of the problem of the consolidated media giants that now monopolize broadcast and print news media is their tendency to define fairness, balance and decency in their own terms, which may well not comport with our own understandings of those requirements.  Take the news about CNN Headline News' hiring of radio talkshow host Glenn Back to host a new primetime show.  See CNN announcement, here.  Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting provided an analysis, linked here, of Glenn Beck's style that appears to refute his new boss's claim, reported here in Vanity Fair, that he is "cordial" and "not confrontational," "conservative", but "apolitical."

It certainly is hard to see how Beck is "apolitical."  As noted in this entry for Beck in Wikipedia, he "gloated" when Bush and the Republicans returned to office in the 2004 elections.  He may "hate politics", but in fact his right-wing politics makes him very similar to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

As the FAIR release explains, a number of specific statements made by Beck demonstrate his use of hate for entertainment value.

• Beck set up Clear Channel's pro-war Rallies for America before the Iraq War and commented hatefully about anti-war candidate Dennis Kucinich that "Every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames."  FAIR release, citing WABC-AM 3/16/03.
• Beck criticized a father whose son was beheaded in Iraq as a "scumbag" because of the father's criticism of Bush.  FAIR release, citing MediaMatters.org, 5/17/04
• Beck "fantasized about murdering anti-war filmmaker Michael Moore."  FAIR release, citing Mediamatters.org, 5/18/05
• Beck spoke derogatorily of Katrina victims as "scumbags" and declared his hate for 9/11 victims' families.   FAIR release, citing Mediamatters.org 9/9/05

CNN claims that Beck will provide "an unconventional look at the news of the day featuring Beck's often amusing perspective."  Does hate speech like that illustrated in these examples of Beck's style now count merely as  "unconventional" and "amusing"?  If you don't think so, you might want  to call Ken Jautz, Presideent of CNN Headline News, at 404-878-5633 and tell him that you think Beck's hateful humor does not belong on a news network.

Domestic Spying (2)

The February 9, 2006 New York Review of Books includes a letter to Congress from 14 constitutional law professors and former government officials (including David Cole, Walter Dellinger, Ronald Dworkin, Richard Epstein, and Kathleen Sullivan) expressing their assessment of the Justice Department's defense of the National Security Agency's domestic spying program.  See Curtis Bradley et al, On NSA Spying: A Letter to Congress, at 4.  The authors note that the Justice Department's defense "fails to identify any plausible legal authority for such surveillance.  Accordingly, the program appears on its face to violate existing law."  Id.  Their arguments are summarized, with some direct quotations, below.

1) The 1978 law enacted by Congress specifically to cover all domestic electronic surveillance doesn't permit the Bush spying program.

Congress clearly has authority to regulate domestic wiretapping by federal agencies under its Article I powers. Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978 after extensive deliberation as the comprehensive regulation of electronic surveillance in the United States.  Wiretapping is possible only on the basis of sufficent showings and approval by a court, with exceptions for warrantless domestic surveillance only during the first fifteen days of a war.  The act specifically establishes that it is the exclusive means for authorizing domestic electronic surveillance, and any such activity that is not authorized by statute is criminal.  FISA expressly prohibits the type of domestic electronic spying undertaken by the Bush administration.

2) The 2001 law enacted by Congress to authorize military force against al Queda after 9/11 doesn't permit the NSA domestic spying program.

Congress enacted the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) on Sept. 18, 2001. It authorizes the President to use "all necessary and appropriate force against" al Queda. The Department of Justice (DOJ) argues that it is impliedly authorized to conduct domestic electronic surveillance as a fundamental incident of war under that authorization.  But there can be no implied authorization when there is an explicit statute directly on point that denies such authority (the only wartime spying without the court procedure is during the first 15 days of a declared war) and that has not been explicitly repealed. 

The principle that statutes should be interpreted to avoid serious constitutional questions also weighs against the interpretation advocated by the DOJ.  "The Supreme Court has never upheld such a sweeping power to invade the privacy of Americans at home without individualized suspicion or judicial oversight." Id.  It was those Fourth Amendment concerns that led Congress to enact FISA in 1978.  Nor would the "special needs" exception excuse the judical process and individualized suspicion requirements--it applies "only where those requirements are impracticable and the intrusion on privacy is minimal." Id. 

The Administration did not try to amend FISA because it thought Congress would reject the amendment.  DOJ cannot argue that it didn't amend FISA because Congress would reject such an amendment, yet claim that Congress impliedly included provisions equivalent to such an amendment in its approval of AUMF!  Id.

The Supreme Court's consideration of the case of Yusef Hamdi, which permitted the Executive Branch to detain enemy combatants captured on a battelefield abroad as a "fundamental incident of waging war", cannot be extended to cover this case.  That dealt with individuals who supported hostile forces and were engaged in armed conflict against the United States in Afghanistan, not domestic electronic surveillance.

3) Construing FISA to prohibit warrantless domestic wiretapping doesn't create constitutional problems, whereas construing AUMF to permit it does. 

The statutory scheme is not ambiguous, and the FISA limitations are consistent with the President's executive role.

"To say that the President has inherent authority does not mean that his authority is exclusive, or that his conduct is not subject to statutory regulations enacted (as FISA was) pursuant to Congress's Article I powers. ... As Justice Jackson famously explained ..., 'Presidental powers are not fixed but fluctuate, depending upon their disjunction or conjunction with those of Congress.' "  Id. (citing Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co.).

If the Attorney General's interpretation of FISA were to apply, the President would have extraordinarily broad reach to wiretap domestically, since a person who merely received a message from another person who was thought to have worked with an organization that is "supportive" of al Queda could be subject to wiretapping.  That is a 3rd or 4th order of removal from actual involvement or participation in a terrorist group, and could ensnare many innocent Americans without providing the protections required by the Fourth Amendment.

The letter concludes with a powerful statement regarding the limitations on executive authority in a constitutional democracy.

"One of the crucial features of a constitutional democracy is that it is always open to the President--or anyone else--to seek to change the law.  But it is also beyond dispute that, in such a democracy, the President cannot simply violate criminal laws behind closed doors because he deems them obsolete or impracticable."  Id.

Domestic Spying

Concern about an administration intent on creating an all-powerful executive that does not understand the important and co-equal functions of the courts or Congress continues to mount. Bush has defended his wiretapping program as a tool in the fight against terrorism that relies on inherent powers of the presidency to permit him to circumvent the secret court whose function it is to issue warrants in intelligence cases and additionally claims that it was implicitly authorized under the 2001 Congressional resolution that permitted military action against Al Queda.  See this Washington Post story about Gonzales' response to Congress' request for the legal rationale.

Bush's use of those two shaky legal authorities (the Commander-in-Chief function assigned to the President in the Constitution and the Congressional authorization for military action as a followup to the 9/11 terrorist attacks) are especially suspect because of new evidence that he authorized extralegal wiretapping before 9/11, in the early days of his administration.  See this article at TruthOut.

Al Gore gave a tremendously important speech to the American Constitution Society on Martin Luther King Day, available at this Alternet link.  As Gore noted, domestic surveillance has been used historically as a means to undercut political opponents.  Martin Luther King was illegally wiretapped as were various anti-war groups in a later era.  Gore expressed the concerns of all Americans committed to a sustainable democracy in the following paragraphs.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution -- our system of checks and balances -- was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."

An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution -- an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."  Id.

Regretably, the White House responded to Gore's speech with its typical gunslinger approach.   Caught redhanded violating the surveillance law after claiming in public that no surveillance was done without a warrant, the White House used their typical everybody-else-does-it defense.  Scott  McClellan accused Gore of hypocrisy, calling attention to warrantless searches conducted in the Aldrich Ames spy case during the Clinton administration.  See Washington Post story, White House Disputes Gore on NSA Spying.  What McClellan failed to say is that those were physical searches, not illegal wiretaps, and that physical searches were not included in the surveillance act until a change was enacted and signed by Clinton.  McClellan also arrogantly dismissed the ACLU and CCR suits as "frivolous", demonstrating that this White House does not understand the importance in a democracy of having the support of the people. Congress should recognize the gravity of these actions and immediately establish an independent investigation and in-depth analysis of the Bush Administration's wiretapping and data-gathering operations.

The ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights have already filed separate lawsuits calling for an injunction against the wiretaps.  See this story in the San Diego Post and this summary posted on the CCR website. CCR's complaint calling for injunctive relief is at this link.  The lawsuits assert that Bush exceeded his authority and violated the Fourth Amendment guaranteed against unreasonable searches and seizuers when he ordered National Security Agency domestic surveillance. 

Cellphone call records for Sale?

The major newspapers around the country ran stories last July on something that hasn't seemed to make the local news--the ready availability of individuals' phone records for the right price.  See, for example, this story in the Chicago Sun-Times and this one in the Washington Post.

Some states are beginning to take action.  Illinois governor Blagojevich plans action, as noted in the Chicago Tribune, here, earlier this year.  And bloggers are urging further attention to the matter.  See this story on AMERICAblog.

This loss of privacy is a concern for us all, because once these records become easily accessible, commercial companies and nosy neighbors will be able to spy on every person.

But if that doesn't frighten you enough, what about the Defense department's goals.  Consider this story from CBS in 2003, regarding  DARPA's plans for a database that can track intimate details of individual's lives.  This Big Brother project has immense ramifications for privacy.  Then of course, there is DARPA's "Terrorism Information Awareness" (TIP) database.  See this Heritage Foundation article supporting creation of the DARPA database, this American Library Association site discussing the defunded program, and this 2003 story about Congress's effort to end the TIP program by cutting off funding.  They have said they are no longer developing it, but can we be confident that this database does not exist? 

Defense has already developed, with a private marketing firm, a database of high school and college  students, supposedly for recruiting purposes.  The database will include significant information about each students, including birthdate, social security number, subjects studies, grade point average and ethnicity.  The database could well be a small start to something much bigger, if the information is retained and added to over the person's lifetime.   See this June 2005 Washington Post story.  As the story notes, information on children is already required by law to be provided by schools to the military under the so-called "No Child Left Behind" Act.

Under the new system, additional data will be collected from commercial data brokers, state drivers' license records and other sources, including information already held by the military.

****

The system also gives the Pentagon the right, without notifying citizens, to share the data for numerous uses outside the military, including with law enforcement, state tax authorities and Congress.  Id.

These efforts have to be taken into consideration in connection with Bush's claims of "super-presidential" powers under the "unitary presidency" theory to override national laws when he deems it appropriate.  Claiming such powers, he has ordered warrantless spying on Americans outside the process for checks and balances.  Claiming such powers, he has held American citizens in military brig without due process rights.  What more may he have already done, or what more might he be planning?  These are issues of grave Constitutional concern for every single American citizen.

These growing efforts by the executive branch to compile personal information on individual citizens represent a grave threat to privacy.  Individuals may well feel concern about expressing dissent if they know that the military maintains a database that includes personal data about them and their loved ones.  Our local media should be writing and broadcasting about these serious issues every day.  To do less is to permit an unchecked presidency and the bloated military that supports it to gain enormous power that threatens our democracy.

Alito: Extreme Conservative

On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee may vote on the Alito nomination for the Supreme Court.  It is likely to be a party line vote, in which moderate Republicans like Arlen Specter vote to put on the bench a right-wing ideologue who will undoubtedly vote to turn back the clock on many of the advances in civil liberties and human rights made in the 20th century.  Altio apparently ascribes to the view that property is the only "liberty" right that the Constitution cares about.  His opinions in 311 court cases reveal a judge who tends to side with corporations against employees and intrusive law enforcement rather than protection of individual rights.  See this Independent Court website for specific information about Alito's opinions. 

Just as discouraging as his legal opinions are his memberships and statements in the past.  In his 1985 personal statement, Alito indicated his views on criminal procedure, church-state separation, federalism and abortion.  See excerpt of statement on FindLaw (scroll down to read the actual statement).   He mentions specifically two groups that he has joined, impliedly asserting that his membership in those groups evidences his "bona fides" as a die-hard Republican.  The right-wing Federalist Society has been funded by millionaires and is intent on putting an end to entitlements for the poor, scornful of individual liberty, argues for emasculating Congress (especially its powers under the Commerce Clause and under the civil war amendments) and beefing up the presidency so that privileged propertied classes can have greater power, disdainful, and against Roe v. Wade, which was a significant step in liberating women from gender role confines.  The even more radically right-wing Concerned Alumni of Princeton was organized in 1972 to fight the admission of more women to Princeton (the group wanted a favorable quota guaranteeing at least 800 male members of each class) and against affirmative action for minorities.  See this article from the 1974 New York Times.

Alito has pursued that vision of the country in his decisions.  See Alliance for Justice's discussion, here.

Perhaps the most worrisome aspect of Alito's philosophy is his acceptance of the "unitary presidency" theory which declares that the function of Commander-in-Chief gives the person holding that role the right to override any act of Congress deemed necessary for national security purposes.  Mr. Bush signed the anti-torture ban with a statement indicating that he would interpret it in light of the unitary presidency theory--in other words, reserving to himself the right not to follow the law making even more explicit the prohibition against torture that was already the law of the land.  One can be fairly confident that a Justice Alito will find no problem finding Constitutional Bush's executive overreach in ordering domestic wiretaps in violation of specific national law.

Let us hope that Democrats and moderate Republicans will have the courage to vote against Alito's confirmation. Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court would be a terrible blow to individual liberties in this country.

Torture and Responsibility

Those stark images from Abu Ghraib, with detainees placed in humiliating positions, come to mind.  Yet no high-level military brass has been held responsible for either Gitmo or Abu Ghraib abuses, or indeed for any of the murders of detainees or torture of detainees in those prisons or others around the world and in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Two soldiers, however, are now under court martial for their use of dogs in connection with interrogations.  And Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the person who handled much of the arrangements at Gitmo before moving on to export them to Abu Ghraib, was called to testify.  Gen. Miller pleaded the Fifth, an unusal occurrence in military situations where officers are encouraged to think cooperatively.  Read more about this story, from the Washington Post article, here.

It is unlikely that any procedures could be so widespread as the use of shackling, dogs, and waterboarding have been found to be in Iraq and Afghanistan, without at least tacit approval  from the Secretary of Defense and President.  It is too bad that Gen. Miller was not willing to come forward and testify as to his understanding of these issues.

At any rate, the media-whether local or national, broadcast or print--need to be covering these stories better than they are.  Americans cannot afford to become complacent and accepting of torture and other inappropriate conduct towards its prisoners.  If we do so, we also become complicit in immorality.

EPA and Pesticide Testing

YOu may want to listen to this story on NPR radio about the EPA's position on pesticide testing in humans.  Chemical companies want to test their pesticides directly in humans, including children, like they did back in 1998 when volunteers were paid several hundred dollars to swallow a capsule of pesticide.  This will save companies money, rather than doing tests first on laboratory animals and then adjusting dosages downward from there to compensate for the uncertainty whether human responses would be the same.

This is another one of those stories that has legs, if only the regular media would cover it.

"A Life, Wasted"

The Washington Post ran an  Op-Ed by Paul E. Schroeder, "A Life, Wasted," on January 3, 2006 regarding the death of Schroeder's son "Augie" in August 2005. The father notes that the Marine Colonel's telling him that his son "is a true American hero" does nothing to assuage the grief.  Augie's sister comments that "being a patriot doesn't make his death okay."  The father adds that

"The words 'hero' and 'patriot' focus on the death, not the life.  They are a flag-draped mask covering the truth that few want to acknowledge openly:  Death in battle is tragic no matter what the reasons for the war.   The tragedy is the life that was lost, not the manner of death."  Id.

Mr. Schroeder goes on to say that he sees more and more Americans who oppose the Iraq war but who are not willing to talk about it openly.  He steps out to make a clear statement about the futility of the war.

"I am outraged at what I see as the cause of his death."  For nearly three years, the Bush administration has purused a policy that makes our troops sitting ducks.  ...Augie complained that the cost in lives to clear insurgents was 'less and less worth it' because Marines have to keep coming back to clear the same places."

"President Bush says those who criticize staying the course are not honoring the dead.  ...Though it hurts, I believe that [my son's] death--and that of the other Americans who have died in Iraq--was a waste.  They were wasted in a belief that democracy would grow simply by removing a dictator--a careless misunderstanding of what democracy requires.  They were wasted by not sending enough troops to do the job needed in the resulting occupation--a careless disregard for professional military counsel."

Clean Elections or Abramoff-Style Politics--Which Shall It Be?

The continuing corruption scandal involving Jack Abramoff and his Republican "K Street Project" (see this story by Anne E. Kornblut in the New York Times) has toppled or threatens to topple various Republican members of Congress, such as Randy Cunningham, Robert Ney and Tom DeLay.   It is an incredible story of greed and power-lust, one that illustrates the worst fears of special interest groups that control so much wealth and power that they can essentially buy legislation.  As the Times story notes, the goal of Alexander Strategy Group, a lobbying firm established by DeLay's close personal friend and former chief of staff Edwin Buckham, was "for Republican lobbyists to harness the power of their corporate cleints to help keep the party in power for years to come."  Id.  DeLay's rise in power meant money for the firm--$8.8 million dollars in 2004.  Delay was known to "respond[] more quickly to calls from Alexander Strategy than any other firm."  Id.

Abramoff has now pled guilty to three felong counts and become the star witness against others involved.  As Newt Gingrich told a Rotary Club in Washington, "You can't have a corrupt lobbyist unless you have a corrupt member (of Congress) or a corrup staff.  This was a team effort."  The News-Gazette, Jan 8, 2006, at B1.

Yesterday's New York Times ran a lengthy feature article by Todd Purdum, Go Ahead, Try to Stop K Street,  that compared power-lobbyist Jack Abramoff's operation to the rampant influence peddling in Ulysses S. Grant's 1870s administration.  Back then, he notes, Republican elders claimed that Grant had "used the public service of the government as a machinery of corruption and personal influence...and shown himself deplorably unequal to the task imposed on him by the necessities of the country."    Id.  The report goes on to show how the K Street Project has increased Republicans' ability to garner huge sums from corporations.  Since 1999, spending by lobbyists has increased 46%, to more than $2 billions annually, while the number of reigstered lobbyists (there are lots that are not registered) has doubled from 14, 690 in 1999 to 32,890 in 2005.  Id.  The revolving door has worsened as well.

"Since 1998, ... more than 2,200 former federal employees had registered as federal lobbyists, as had nearly 275 former White House aides and nearly 250 former members of Congress."  Id.

The ethical rules are particularly conducive to the kind of scandal that has broken out.  Former members of Congress have floor privileges, and exercise them to buttonhole their old friends to try to get them to vote for their clients' interests.  One can bet that those interests do not coincide with the greatest public good.  The Times article goes on to note:

"Entrenched industries--and extrenched incumbents of both parties--can be expected to resist change that would threaten the way they know how to do business."

The best solution is to increase transparency around the money and the power.  Congress should enact legislation that would require every member to publicly disclose every contact (phone or in person or by email) with lobbyists.  Lobbyists should likewise have to post their contacts with any member of the government on a single government-run site that is easily available for all Americans and easily searchable by name of the lobbyists, topic of the meeting, and name or title of the person lobbied.  Congress must act to make influence peddling harder to do and more damaging for members of Congress when they are found out.

Wiretaps, the Patriot Act, and Judge Alito

Bush is now engaged in a media blitz to bolster his call for renewal of the so-called Patriot Act, which he claims is necessary to assist the military and intelligence agencies in the effort to reduce the risk of terrorist attacks in the United States.  He brought 19 federal prosecutors into the Roosevelt Room last week to claim that "the enemy has not gone away--they're still there. And I expect Congress to understand that we're still at war and they've got to give us the tools necessary to win this war."  See this story by Elisabeth Bumiller in the New York Times.

Similarly, in response to the outcry over the illegal wiretapping of Americans revealed two weeks ago by the New York Times, Bush claimed that the exposure of his authorization of extralegal wiretapping was shameful and would put Americans at risk by revealing our espionage approaches to the enemy.  See David Sanger, In Address, Bush Says He Ordered Domestic Spying, NYTimes, Dec. 18, 2005.

It is hard to accept this claimed need for perpetual extraordinary powers to combat a threat of terrorism that has been a part of human civilization since the beginning.  In particular, the White House cries of concern about the exposure of the illicit wiretapping sound more like a diversionary attempt.  As Frank Rich notes in an op-ed (The Wiretappers that Couldn't Shoot Straight, NYTimes, Jan. 8, 2006, at WK 15), terrorists can be expected to be as cunning as ordinary television show writers, who easily imagined even prior to the leak about the illegal wiretaps that a cellphone conversation may be monitored.  The existing program for warrants from the special national security court provided for full secrecy, so it is simply ridiculous for Bush to assert that revelation of a secret wiretapping program could give anything away to terrorists.

The broadcast media should be covering this story on a daily basis.  If they do not, they will have failed to keep ordinary Americans informed of the way their government is conducting itself--and the way it is slowly encroaching on the most basic fundamental rights of its citizens. 

Economic inequality, CIA spying, and Presidential Power

Let me start by quoting at length from a book by Suzanne Mettler about the post-war transition from Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation.

"As the United States entered the 1970s, the nation seemed ever closer to becoming the fully inclusive and highly participatory democracy implicit in its highest ideals.  At that very juncture, however, circumstances coalesced that rattled the very underpinnings of the American polity.  Beginning with the first oil shock in 1973, the economy, which had been growing at a rapid pace throughout the postwar decades, slowed considerably.  Jobs that had long guarnteed strong wages and benefits to less highly educated workers began to disappear.  Over the next couple of decades, lower-and middle-income families saw little real growth in their incomes, while the wealthiest reaped considerable advantage.  At the same time, a conservative political coalition began to gather steam, advancing a political philosophy that treats government itself as the problem.  Thus, by contrast to those who governed in the middle of the twentieth century, public officials of recent decades have been largely unwilling to use public socialprovision to ameliorate growing inequalityh.  Many public programs have been left to wither, and government has become considerably less present in the lives of ordinary Americans, particularly the young.  As a result, economic inequality, which had remained relatively low since about 1950, began to escalate and has continued to do so, returning American society to the disparities that marked the Gilded Age.  Further, the fault lines of the new inequality have reinforced manyof the old racial and gendered cleavages that the rights revolution had meant to eradicate.  Granted, today women and African American men who are highly educated professionals occupy positions in society that would not have been conceivable in the postwar era.  For the vast majority, howegver, growing economic inequality has sharply curtailed hopes of equality."

The last five years have exacerbated those trends, with tax cuts designed to benefit the wealthiest 20 percent of the income distribution and program cuts designed to cut into the safety net for the remaining 80 percent.  Not unsurprisingly, the United States is falling behind in programs that it should be excelling in, because we are not devoting adequate resources to basic public goods such as education.  See, e.g., Fareed Zakaria, We All Have a Lot to Learn, Jan.9, 2006 Newsweek, at 37 (noting that China has increased spending on colleges and universities tenfold in the past 10 years, with Peking University having created state of the art semiconductor fabrication facilities that "outshine anything in the United States"). 

"Unless [an American is] comfortably middle class or richer, ...you get an education that is truly second-rate by any standards.  Apart from issues of fairness, what this means is that you never really access the talent of poor, bright kids.  They don't go to good schools and, because of teaching methods that focus on bringing everyone along, the bright ones are never pushed. ... The good news for Ameirca is that the peaks are getting higher.  But the valleys are getting deeper, and many of them are also in the United States."  Id.

One effect of this growing economic inequality is growing political and social powerlessness.  The poor and increasingly the true middle class are disparaged and left without government protections.  In this Republican-controlled government, groups with money are able to buy legislation, as super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff now admits doing, see story here and here, in his high-flying days as a lobbyist and power broker.   Legislators revel in luxurious restaurants and golfing trips to Scotland, paid for by lobbyists' money, and then follow through by providing political services for the lobbyists' clients.  Such cozy relationships between legislators, lobbyists and their corporate cronies, apparently at stake in the case of DeLay of Texas and Ney of Ohio, corrupt the political process and prevent Congress from acting as a check against the power of the executive.  The obstruction of justice charges against Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libbey (and the involvement of Bush right-hand man Karl Rove in the outing of Plame as a smear campaign against Wilson) were, it seems, just the tip of the iceberg.  There is a climate of corruption that views liberty rights of individuals as meaningless against the backdrop of ambitions for power.  (Fitting this trend, recently it was revealed that various administrative agencies track users activities, some even inserting "cookies" in users' computers.  See story here.  The NSA claimed that its use of cookies was unintentional.)

These changes, and the tightening vise of the neo-conservative ideology on government, have coincided with the development of a "fear society" that has permitted an executive branch obsessed with restoring status to the presidency to grab unprecedented power, cloak government actions in secrecy, and stifle the deliberative dialogue that is the core of democracy.  As more information comes out about the covert eavesdropping authorization, it is clear that this White House sees no bounds on its ability to assume power during a time of war, even one of its own creation under misleading rationales.  Further, it equates the ever-present struggle against terrorism, which has accompanied human civilization in one form or another since its founding, with nation-to-nation war, and seeks to justify radical departures from civil protections as wartime powers under the Commander-in-Chief authority provided in the Constitution. 

The Washington Post reports that the spy programs authorized by Bush have "grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics."  Dana Priest, Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor.  The administration relies on a small group of legal advisers and refuses to consult broadly with Congress on actions.  It claims that "the battlefield is worldwide, and that everything it has approved is consistent with the demands made by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001 when it passed a resolution authorizing 'all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks.' "

With this thin claim of support in the law, this administration has authorized illegal secret prisons, extraordinary rendering of prisoners to countries that torture, illegal interrogation techniques like waterboarding and sleep deprivation that constitute torture, and illegal eavesdropping on domestic telephone calls that violate the FISA provisions for protection of U.S. citizens from government spying, and illegal assassinations.  The Post article indicates that George Tenet was permitted to decide if someone should be killed--e.g., assassination of an Al Queda leader with a missile fired from a remote-controlled drone--an action banned by law in this country, except that White House lawyers decided that it could be classed as self-defense and not assassination.  Id.  And various people targeted as al Qaeda officials (and bystanders) have been taken out in that way.

"Time and again the administration asked government lawyers to draw up new rules and reinterpret old ones to approve activities once banned or discouraged under the congressional reforms beginning in the 1970s."  Id.

"The Bush administration did not seek a broad debate on whether commander-in-chief powers can trump international conventions and domestic statutes in our struggle against terrorism." Id.

For a sobering commentary from John Dean, Nixon's legal counsel who first warned of the "cancer on the presidency" that grabs for power and coverups represent, see George W. Bush as the New Richard M. Nixon: Both Wiretapped Illegally, and Impeachably.

This series of abuses of power must stop, and they must stop through a deliberative process in which Congress investigates and receives information about the details of the administration's actions here and abroad.  It is time for the Congress to act to rein in this imperial presidency.  Congress should impeach Mr. Bush, else we will be saddled with an executive that acknowledges no bounds to its powers under the Constitution or the statutes.   

White House Pressure on Media

Howard Kurtz reported in the Washington Post on December 25, 2005, Bush Presses Editors on Security, that Bush has summoned editors to the White House in an attempt to prevent revelation about his authorization of domestic eavesdropping and the secret "black site" prisons around the globe.  Both sides agreed to keep the sessions secret, but sources revealed their taking place to Kurtz.  This pressure has been going on for some time, since it has been revealed that Bill Keller kept the story about secret prisons from appearing a year ago, before the 2004 elections.

These revelations are worrisome in two ways.  First, although the executive editors did not agree to withhold these two stories at this time, they are vulnerable to pressure and may withhold stories in ways that affect the political process.  Bill Keller of the Times has admitted that he withheld the secret prison story for more than a year, preventing the story from coming out before the 2004 elections.  Second, these stories demonstrate the degree to which this White House will go to keep stories that are relevant to decisionmaking in a democracy under ultra-secret wrap.  That means that it is very hard to have the kinds of discussions that are necessary to consideration of difficult issues.  It further limits our ability to trust this government, since we now must ask what other programs are being carried out behind the veil of secrecy, and what other laws Mr. Bush has decided that he can violate under the guise of acting in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. 

The media should not cave in to the White House pressure to keep its secrets.  It is important that these activities be made public and that the White House be forced to account for its actions.  That will only happen if the media reports the news rather than covering up the news.  Kudos to these two executive editors for running these stories now.