Digby: Investigative Journamalism

I realize that there is a growing contigent of readers who find me guilty of innumerable crimes of bad judgment and hyperbolic swamp fever. (I'm not sure why this is only now becoming a problem --- I've always been this way.) In any case, here I go again:

I simply cannot understand why there is even a debate among Democrats, much less a public debate, about whether or not they should openly call for investigations if they win office. I realize that the Republicans are mau-mauing the hell out of them on this --- and the press is hungrily eating it up --- but it still makes no sense to me.

Billmon: Sharm El-Sheikh

Sharm is one of those Third World beach resorts specifically designed to be as far removed as possible from the gritty realities of how the other four-fifths of humanity actually lives. It's the Cabo San Lucas of Egypt, an incongruous little bubble of luxury and suntan lotion perched on the southern most tip of the Sinai peninsula, like a cheap piece of costume jewelry pinned to a mummy's desiccated earlobe. You can fly here nonstop from Frankfurt, spend a long weekend working on your tan, and be back in the office with Gunter and Hans without ever setting eyes on an Egyptian who wasn’t checking you into your room or serving you a Mai Tai.

If Sharm had existed when the Israelites were wandering Sinai around looking for the Promised Land, they would never have made it. They'd still be lounging by the pool ordering drinks and trying to put the tab on Moses’ room.

Billmon: In Cold Blood

When the Abu Ghraib horror show first aired on 60 Minutes, I remember wondering whether it would prove to be the Iraq War's version of the My Lai Massacre -- with the photo of the hooded man on his box, arms spread in a crucifix, as the enduring image of a military machine run amok, just as a photo of murdered Vietnamese women and children, sprawled in the middle of a muddy road, became the Americal Division's permanent badge of shame.

To a degree, that's what happened -- with the hapless sadists of the 184th Infantry Regiment serving as the collective stand-ins for Lt. William Calley, and Colin Powell reprising his earlier role as the bullshit artist telling everybody what they want to hear.

But now it appears that instead of a symbolic My Lai, we have the genuine article:

A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood," a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

Billmon: Land of Goshen

I'm off tonight for Egypt, where I will be attending the World Economic Forum's Middle East Summit, which this year is being held in Sharm el-Sheikh, the resort town at the very tip of the Sinai peninsula.

I'm not going as one of the paying guests, but rather as a staff writer, paid a modest stipend to sit in the sessions, take notes and then write up one-page summaries to be posted on the WEF's web site. The forum's house rules preclude me from blogging what I hear and see inside the sessions, but they won't prevent me from giving my overall impression of the meeting and the participants, their percieved state of mind, etc. Nor will it stop me from quoting from the summaries themselves, once they are posted.

Billmon: Sixteen Steps and a Stumble

Actually, the old Wall Street saying used to be three steps and a stumble -- meaning that when the Fed raised the Discount Rate three times, the stock market usually took it on the chin. But that was before the "new economy" changed everything.

Nobody pays much attention these days to the Discount Rate (what the Fed charges on overnight loans to member banks.) Now it's all about the Federal Funds Rate (what banks charge each other for overnight money) and the Fed last week completed its 16th policy move in the current tightening cycle, which began in June 2004. Quarter Point Al has given way to Quarter Point Ben.

Billmon: Non-Native Son

The Corner's John Derbyshire hears the approaching thunder of many, many brown feet, and is properly terrified:

Given that there has never in all of American history been an estimate of future immigration that did not under-estimate the numbers by an order of magnitude, my guess would be we're looking at a billion.

But what the hey — this is a nation of immigrants, right?

Well, yes, John, it is -- and some of us have been here quite a bit longer than others. It's amusing to hear all this talk about "we" and "us" and "ours" coming from someone who as late as 1992 was still identifying himself as a British citizen and sticking up for his native country's colonial past (that noble assumption of the white man's burden that gave the world such success stories as Iraq, Palestine and Zimbabwe):

As a British citizen, I take exception to Les Payne's ignorant and spiteful remarks about my country's history . . . Payne refers to Britain's "centuries of looting the ... wealth" of its former colonies . . . I defy Payne to name any colony that we left poorer, worse educated, less healthy or less populous than we found it.

A different "we," but the same basic idea: Wogs and civilization don't mix.

Paul Krugman: Coming Down to Earth

Friday, May 19th, 2006 by bill
From NY Times

Um, wasn’t the stock market supposed to bounce back after Wednesday’s big drop?

We shouldn’t read too much into a couple of days’ movements in stock prices. But it seems that investors are suddenly feeling uneasy about the state of the economy. They should be; the puzzle is why they haven’t been uneasy all along.

The rise in stock prices that began last fall was essentially based on the belief that the U.S. economy can defy gravity — that both individuals and the nation as a whole can spend more than their income, not on a temporary basis, but more or less indefinitely.

Dingbat Billing Dust-up Shuts Down Security Clearances

By Justin Rood - May 17, 2006, 5:36 PM

A minor billing dispute between the Pentagon and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is threatening operations throughout the U.S. national security community.

Last month, OPM -- which currently handles background investigations and issues security clearances for the defense/intelligence community -- abruptly announced it was shutting down the clearance process for new employees.

Tax cuts lose more money than they generate, studies conclude

By Kevin G. Hall

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - When President Bush signed legislation Wednesday to extend lower tax rates for capital gains and dividend income through 2010, he suggested that his tax cuts are behind a surge of new revenue into the Treasury, and implied that it's enough to offset the revenue lost by these reductions.

At a ceremony on the White House lawn, Bush said his tax cuts had helped the economy grow, "which means more tax revenue for the federal Treasury."

Rents a Key Driver of Inflation

Housing increases account for nearly half the rise in the core consumer price index.

By Lisa Girion and Annette Haddad, Times Staff Writers
May 18, 2006

Like an uninvited drunken uncle, higher consumer inflation crashed the economy's growth party Wednesday. But it wasn't just higher energy prices that caused concern.

Rising rents and higher prices for a wide variety of consumer goods, including prescription drugs, swimsuits and school books, were key factors behind a higher-than-expected 0.6% increase in consumer prices in April.

Saving Secular Society

By Michelle Goldberg

May 16, 2006

Whenever I talk about the growing power of the evangelical right with friends, they always ask the same question: What can we do? Usually I reply with a joke: Keep a bag packed and your passport current. I don't really mean it, but my anxiety is genuine. It's one thing to have a government that shows contempt for civil liberties; America has survived such men before. It's quite another to have a mass movement--the largest and most powerful mass movement in the nation--rise up in opposition to the rights of its fellow citizens. The Constitution protects minorities, but that protection is not absolute; with a sufficiently sympathetic or apathetic majority, a tightly organized faction can get around it.

The mass movement I've described aims to supplant Enlightenment rationalism with what it calls the "Christian worldview." The phrase is based on the conviction that true Christianity must govern every aspect of public and private life, and that all--government, science, history and culture--must be understood according to the dictates of scripture. There are biblically correct positions on every issue, from gay marriage to income tax rates, and only those with the right worldview can discern them. This is Christianity as a total ideology--I call it Christian nationalism. It's an ideology adhered to by millions of Americans, some of whom are very powerful. It's what drives a great many of the fights over religion, science, sex and pluralism now dividing communities all over the country.

Judge throws out CIA torture lawsuit

CIA 'torture' lawsuit thrown out

A US court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a German citizen who says he was kidnapped and beaten by the CIA.

Khaled el-Masri aimed to sue former CIA chief George Tenet and other officials for their alleged role in the "extraordinary rendition" programme.

Mr el-Masri says he was picked up in Macedonia in 2003 and flown to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he alleges torture.

Pentagon report said to find killing of Iraqi civilians deliberate

By Drew Brown
Knight Ridder Newspapers

• Multiple wounds mark bodies of Iraqis killed in disputed U.S. raid
• Iraqi police report details civilians' deaths at hands of U.S. troops

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon report on an incident in Haditha, Iraq, where U.S. Marines shot and killed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians last November will show that those killings were deliberate and worse than initially reported, a Pennsylvania congressman said Wednesday.

"There was no firefight. There was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed those innocent people," Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said during a news conference on Iraq. "Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them. And they killed innocent civilians in cold blood. That is what the report is going to tell."

Watch Speaker Hastert Claim Families Making $40K A Year "Don't Pay Any Taxes"...

Think Progress | Posted May 19, 2006 12:10 AM

READ MORE: 2006

During a late session last night, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) made a stunning claim on the House floor:

Well, folks, if you earn $40,000 a year and have a family of two children, you don’t pay any taxes.

Tapped: Why Did Verizon and Bellsouth Issue Denials AFTER The Story Broke?

WHY DID VERIZON AND BELLSOUTH ISSUE DENIALS AFTER THE STORY BROKE? Here's another thing about the denials that doesn't quite add up. As we've seen, both Verizon and Bellsouth have more or less denied the USA Today story saying that the NSA has been secretly collecting their phone records. USA Today appears to be sticking to the story, though the paper's statement seems to carefully avoid a total commitment to it, instead saying that the paper's "confident" in its reporting.

But something doesn't quite make sense. Why are Verizon and Bellsouth only denying these allegations after the story broke?

Oil Diplomacy

Robert Dreyfuss
May 18, 2006

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a contributing editor at The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone.He can be reached through his website: www.robertdreyfuss.com

Nothing the Bush administration ever does is about oil. It didn’t invade Iraq because that country might have more oil than Saudi Arabia. It isn’t threatening Iran because Iran has a tenth of the world’s oil and one-sixth of its natural gas. And the United States isn’t cozying up to autocrats in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan because the Caspian Sea is a mini-Persian Gulf in the middle of Central Asia, either.

So it stands to reason, doesn’t it, that Washington isn’t making a fuss over Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez because that country is a major supplier of oil to the United States? And that it isn’t making nice to Libya’s erratic Colonel Gadhafi because of oil, either?

Still up to no good

Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Bad news for Republicans: The Know-Nothing faction of the party base has already forgotten the “war” on Christmas and other chimerical dangers. As memories of 9 / 11 fade, they may even be losing vigilance in the “war” on terror. The latest threat to the purity of our precious bodily fluids is brown-skinned Meskins. If we’re not vigilant, those swarthy fellows mowing your neighbor’s yard are apt to rise up and sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Spanish. But wait. Hasn’t it been reported that President Bush campaigned with a mariachi band doing precisely that ? Yes, although the White House denies that the National Anthem was performed in Spanish at Bush’s inauguration. That was “America the Beautiful,” they say. Big difference.

The 9/11 Story That Got Away

By Rory O'Connor and William Scott Malone, AlterNet. Posted May 18, 2006.

In 2001, an anonymous White House source leaked top-secret NSA intelligence to reporter Judith Miller that Al Qaida was planning a major attack on the United States. But the story never made it into the paper.

On Oct. 12, 2000, the guided missile destroyer USS Cole pulled into harbor for refueling in Aden, Yemen. Less than two hours later, suicide bombers Ibrahim al-Thawr and Abdullah al-Misawa approached the ship's port side in a small inflatable craft laden with explosives and blew a 40-by-40-foot gash in it, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39 others. The attack on the Cole, organized and carried out by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida terrorist group, was a seminal but still murky and largely misunderstood event in America's ongoing "Long War."

Two weeks prior, military analysts associated with an experimental intelligence program known as ABLE DANGER had warned top officials of the existence of an active Al Qaida cell in Aden, Yemen. And two days before the attack, they had conveyed "actionable intelligence" of possible terrorist activity in and around the port of Aden to Gen. Pete Schoomaker, then commander in chief of the U.S. Special Operation Command (SOCOM).

Bush's Wreckage

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted May 18, 2006.

The minimum we should expect of Bush in return for dropping the issue of impeachment (or not) is that he cease breaking the law.

Looking at the wreckage of the Bush administration leaves one with the depressed query, "Now what?"

The only help to the country that can come from this ugly and spectacular crack-up is, in theory, that things can't get worse. This administration is so discredited, it cannot talk the country into an unnecessary war with Iran as it did with Iraq. In theory, spending is so out of control it cannot cut taxes for the rich again; the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bushies is already among its lasting legacies.

Is Bush a Lunatic?

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted May 17, 2006.

Insane immigration policies, a new $70 billion tax cut for the rich, and increasing ineptitude in Iraq all indicate that this administration has lost its marbles.

I hate to raise such an ugly possibility, but have you considered lunacy as an explanation? Craziness would make a certain amount of sense.

I mean, you announce you are going to militarize the Mexican border, but you assure the president of Mexico you are not militarizing the border. You announce you are sending the National Guard, but then you assure everyone it's not very many soldiers and just for a little while.

How the Right Stole the '60s (And Why We Should Get Them Back)

By Astra Taylor, AlterNet. Posted May 19, 2006.

Conservatives are winning the battle over how the 1960s are remembered. But their version is far from the truth.

It wasn't until I got to college that I heard that the 1960s had "failed" and that all the Baby Boomers went straight and sold out.

Yet such sweeping proclamations never quite rung true. Those weren't the people I knew when I was a kid: the aging organic farmers, the people living on and running a commune founded long before I was born, the self-sacrificing teachers and social workers, the lawyers who gave up a big paycheck for a good cause, or my friends' parents, who managed the local Kinko's and were anything but wealthy. Those weren't the adults I later met who sometimes struck me as more radical in their ideals and extreme in their political convictions than my college classmates. Maybe these folks weren't the vanguard of the revolution, but neither were they getting rich from selling it out. Instead, they were just regular people trying to make ends meet and live by their principles.

How Bush Destroyed the CIA

By Sidney Blumenthal, AlterNet. Posted May 19, 2006.

In Porter Goss, the Bush administration found the perfect hatchet man to drive the CIA into the ground. Hayden, the former NSA chief, may oversee its liquidation.

The moment that the destruction of the Central Intelligence Agency began can be pinpointed to a time, a place and even a memo. On Aug. 6, 2001, CIA director George Tenet presented to President Bush his presidential daily briefing, a startling document titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Bush did nothing, asked for no further briefings on the issue, and returned to cutting brush at his Crawford, Texas, compound.

In Bush's denial of responsibility after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the search for scapegoats inevitably focused on the lapse in intelligence and therefore on the CIA, though it was the FBI whose egregious incompetence permitted the plotters to escape apprehension. Bush's intent to invade Iraq set up the battle royal that followed.

Medicare Advantage plans not always a good deal

Beneficiaries in poor health can pay more out of pocket for care in Medicare Advantage (MA) managed care plans than in traditional Medicare with Medigap supplemental coverage, a new Commonwealth Fund report finds. The report says beneficiaries in poor health can spend up to $2,195 more in annual out-of-pocket costs for their care in 19 out of 88 plans than they would have in fee-for-service Medicare with Medigap supplemental coverage.

Wal-Mart equals higher poverty rates

A study published in the latest issue of Social Science Quarterly is the first to examine the effect of Wal-Mart stores on poverty rates. The study found that nationwide an estimated 20,000 families have fallen below the official poverty line as a result of the chain's expansion. During the last decade, dependence on the food stamp program nationwide increased by 8 percent while in counties with Wal-Mart stores, the increase was almost twice as large at15.3 percent.

Echidne: The Little Drummerboy

The new role David Brooks has taken in his most recent columns is drumming for the return to something that almost sounds like fascism:

Psychologists joke that two sorts of people need therapy: those who need to be loosened up and those who need to be tightened up. Now, in the political world, we're moving from what you might call loose conservatism to tight conservatism. We're seeing a conservatism that emphasizes freedom give way to a conservatism that emphasizes authority. Many of George Bush's problems come from the fact that he's awkwardly straddling the transition point between the two.

Digby: Ain't Misbehavin'

In our regular Joe Klein is an idiot report, please find Joe decrying Karl Rove's plan to use racism to win the election in the fall by highlighting the potential horror of negroes with subpeona power --- and then decrying the horror of negroes with subpoena power.

In fairness, Klein argues that Democrats should not have have allowed these chairmen to be chairmen because they are tainted by being too hot-headed and indiscrete and well ... inappropriate. They are more of those horrible 60's liberals, who "cry" victimization and racism at the drop of a hat.

Digby: Final Solution

Dear God. Crooks and Liars caught the World Net Daily making explicit arguments that the US should use the example of Nazi Germany to expel illegal immigrants:

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

Digby: The Enemy Within

Following up on my post below featuring Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, I see that Josh Marshall made a similar argument, without the historical context, today also:

I think part of the issue for many people on the administration's various forms of surveillance is not just that some of activities seem to be illegal or unconstitutional on their face. I think many people are probably willing to be open-minded, for better or worse, on pushing the constitutional envelope. But given the people in charge of the executive branch today, you just can't have any confidence that these tools will be restricted to targeting terrorists. Start grabbing up phone records to data-mine for terrorists and then the tools are just too tempting for your leak investigations. Once you do that, why not just keep an eye on your critics too? After all, they're the ones most likely to get the leaks, right? So, same difference. The folks around the president don't recognize any real distinctions among those they consider enemies. So we'd be foolish to think they wouldn't bring these tools to bear on all of them. Once you set aside the law as your guide for action and view the president's will as a source of legitimacy in itself, then everything becomes possible and justifiable.

Digby: Same As It Ever Was

In light of today's predictable revelations that the administration is spying on the press, Rick Perlstein has given me permission to publish an excerpt from his forthcoming book "Nixonland".

The trust in President Nixon might have been shaken somewhat on Day 101, when the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee repeated something he first said in October of 1966: time to declare victory and go home. "Common sense should tell us that we have now accomplished our purpose as far as South Vietnam is concerned," Vermont's George Aiken proclaimed. It was time for an "orderly withdrawal." It might have been shaken more on May 9, when after six straight days with nothing on the front page of the New York Times about the fighting in Vietnam, a tiny item in the bottom right corner obscured by a feature on Governor Rockefeller's collection of primitive art revealed that bombing was taking place in Cambodia.

Billmon: Plumber's Helper

Earlier I referred to the ongoing revelations about the Cheney administration's domestic spying operations as an Orwellian strip tease act, and now it looks like the pasties are finally coming off: senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

Billmon: Fools and Liars

I'd call them crooks and liars, but that brand name is already taken:

A year after Bush administration claims about Iraqi ''bioweapons trailers'' were discredited by American experts, U.S. officials were still suppressing the findings, according to a senior member of the CIA-led inspection team.

At one point, former U.N. arms inspector Rod Barton says, a CIA officer told him it was ''politically not possible'' to report that the White House claims were untrue. In the end, Barton says, he felt ''complicit in deceit.''

This is hardly the first time the Cheney Adminstration's culpability -- not to mention legal liability -- in the case of the mythical mobile bioweapons labs has been aired in public.

Billmon: Main Course?

Paul Krugman: D for Debacle

--The New York Times, May 15, 2006

Today is the last day to sign up for Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit. It appears that millions of Americans, confused by the array of competing plans or simply unaware of the cutoff date, will miss the deadline. This will leave them without drug coverage for the rest of the year, and subject to financial penalties for the rest of their lives.

President Bush refuses to extend the sign-up period. "Deadlines," he said last week, "help people understand there's finality, and people need to get after it, you know?" His real objection to extending the deadline is probably that this would be an implicit admission that his administration botched the program's start-up. And Mr. Bush never, ever admits mistakes.

But Part D's bad start isn't just another illustration of the administration's trademark incompetence. It's also an object lesson in what happens when the government is run by people who aren't interested in the business of governing.

A muckraker's day in the sun

By Liz Halloran

Posted 5/15/06

Washington investigative journalist Murray Waas, 47, has been around awhile. As a teenager, he left George Washington University well shy of a political science degree to start his reporting career working for legendary muckraker Jack Anderson. And he's been ruffling official feathers since the Clinton Whitewater/Lewinsky imbroglio, when his stories on Salon.com took a prodigious swing at dismantling special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's $40 million investigation.

Yet the slightly disheveled Philly native has always managed to remain well under the public's radar – refusing to appear on television, toiling independently as a freelancer until recently joining the respected National Journal, and always working the phones and a network of sources from his Northwest Washington home.

The Medicare and Social Security Hoax

By Dean Baker
BeatThePress.com

Friday 12 May 2006

Medicare and Social Security costs are projected to soar over the next decade as the baby boomers retire. Medicare and road maintenance costs are projected to soar over the next decade as the baby boomers retire.

Health care costs in the United States are out of control, with per capita health care costs rising at rate that is more than 2 percentage points more rapid than the rate of growth of per capita income. If this pattern continues, health care costs will have a devastating effect on the private economy and also on the federal budget because of government health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid. The obvious policy response to the projections of exploding health care costs would be to find some way to fix the US health care system (no other country has a problem of the same magnitude). It is dishonest to portray the issue as a problem of aging - we can afford the costs associated with aging - the problem is our health care system.

Budget Cut Would Shutter EPA Libraries

By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 15, 2006; A15

Proposed budget cuts could cripple a nationwide system of Environmental Protection Agency libraries that government researchers and others depend on for hard-to-find technical information, library advocates say.

The $2 million cut sought by the White House would reduce the 35-year-old EPA Library Network's budget by 80 percent and force many of its 10 regional libraries to close, according to the advocates and internal agency documents.

That, in turn, would dramatically reduce access to certain EPA reports, guidance and technical documents that are used by the agency's scientific and enforcement staff as well as private businesses and citizens, they say.

ABC News: Federal official says US tracking calls made by ABC News, New York Times, Washington Post

RAW STORY
Published: Monday May 15, 2006

ABC News' press office just sent out this release to news organizations, RAW STORY has learned. The story has been posted at the ABC NEWS blog (Read here).

#

ABC's Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

Anti-Gay leader to mobilize legions of "values voters" for Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio

Phil Burress' Cincinnati, Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values goes statewide

On May 2, 2006 Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's controversial Black conservative Secretary of State defeated current Attorney General Jim Petro in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Phil Burress, the head of an Ohio-based political action committee called Citizens for Community Values Action (CCVA), observed that Blackwell -- the candidate his organization backed -- won because of his longtime support for "family values," particularly his backing of Ohio's anti-same sex marriage amendment which passed in 2004. Burress expects Blackwell to defeat his Democratic challenger, Congressman Ted Strickland, and to help get that done he intends to mobilize legions of "values voters."

A few weeks earlier, members of a Cincinnati, Ohio-based group called Equal Rights Not Special Rights (ERNSP - a 501(c)(3) charity), another of Phil Burress' enterprises, marched into the office of Joe Gray, the city's finance director, carrying some 14 to 15 thousand signatures -- twice the number necessary -- from city residents on petitions calling for the repeal of the city's new lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality ordinance. According to a recent report in Gay People's Chronicle, the "city council passed the ordinance last month" but the intervention by ERNSP -- just before it was scheduled to take effect on April 14 -- will force the ordinance onto the November ballot.

Myths and falsehoods on the NSA domestic call-tracking program

Summary: Media Matters documents the misleading or false claims advanced by media figures and Bush administration supporters in the wake of news that the National Security Agency had since 2001 been secretly collecting records of phone calls made by millions of Americans.

On May 11, USA Today reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) had since 2001 been secretly collecting records of phone calls made by millions of Americans. The article reported that the NSA, in cooperation with three major phone companies, "reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans -- most of whom aren't suspected of any crime" and uses the data "to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity."

The public disclosure of the domestic call tracking program provoked bipartisan criticism and calls for a full congressional investigation. Further, it revived the contentious debate over the NSA's warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. residents' international communications. As The New York Times revealed last year, the president authorized the agency to conduct such surveillance shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which requires court approval in order to conduct domestic electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes.

Jonathan Chait: Bankrupted by voodoo economics

While Republicans tax-cut and spend, research shows increases lead to reduced government.

May 14, 2006

IF YOU REMEMBER the 2000 election, you probably remember President Bush's warning about why we needed to cut taxes: If we did not return the surplus to the taxpayers, Washington would spend it. Well, we all know what happened next. Bush returned the surplus to taxpayers — and Washington spent the money anyway.

Conservatives have a number of analogies to explain why tax cuts will lead to spending restraint: Cut your child's allowance. Starve the beast. But the analogies are all wrong. The child has a credit card. The beast has a private meat locker. Washington can spend whatever it wants, regardless of how much it taxes.

Abramoff cohort spent millions on Sussex home

As a Rehoboth lifeguard last year, he made $11.35 an hour

Update 6:13 pm

By CRIS BARRISH
The News Journal

05/14/2006

Anthony Wiles became suspicious four years ago when a lifeguard named Michael Scanlon offered to pay cash for Wiles' $4.8 million home in Dewey Beach.

Wiles insisted that the baby-faced 31-year-old prove he could afford the 7,000-square-foot oceanfront compound built in the 1940s by philanthropist Alexis Felix du Pont Sr.

So Scanlon produced a bank statement showing he had "around $10 million," Wiles recalled.

An Apology Ffrom a Bush Voter

By Doug McIntyre

Host, McIntyre in the Morning

Talk Radio 790 KABC

There’s nothing harder in public life than admitting you’re wrong. By the way, admitting you’re wrong can be even tougher in private life. If you don’t believe me, just ask Bill Clinton or Charlie Sheen. But when you go out on the limb in public, it’s out there where everyone can see it, or in my case, hear it.

So, I’m saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he’s the worst President, period.

The Right Kind of Paranoia

How the NSA could fix its data-mining program.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, May 12, 2006, at 5:00 PM ET

We have hit the point where paranoia is a proper frame of mind for assessing nearly everything this administration says or does.

The moment arrived Thursday, when USA Today revealed that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone records of tens of millions of Americans, with the aim of creating "a database of every call ever made," to people not only abroad but also within our borders.

The Spies Who Shag Us

Friday, May 12, 2006

by Greg Palast

I know you're shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that George Bush is listening in on all your phone calls. Without a warrant. That's nothing. And it's not news.

This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.

Italian Pay-off From Niger Forgery?

By Jeffrey Klein and Paolo Pontoniere, New America Media. Posted May 15, 2006.

What did the Italian government, under then-Prime Minister Berlusconi, get in return for providing Bush with a smoking gun to attack Iraq?

Italian journalists and parliamentary investigators are hot on the trail of how pre-Iraq War Italian forged documents were delivered to the White House alleging that Saddam Hussein had obtained yellowcake uranium ore from Niger.

New links implicating Italian companies and individuals with then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi now raise the question of whether Berlusconi received a payback as part of the deal -- namely, a Pentagon contract to build the U.S. president's special fleet of helicopters.

White House Blocks Investigations Into Spying

By John Nichols, TheNation.com. Posted May 15, 2006.

The Justice Department claims that its attempt to investigate Bush's eavesdropping programs has gone nowhere because its staff was denied security clearance.

With news reports exposing the National Security Agency's previously secret spying on the phone conversations of tens of millions of Americans, what is the status of the U.S. Department of Justice probe of the Bush administration's authorization of a warrantless domestic wiretapping program?

The investigation has been closed.

The Daily Show affects young voters

I'd say this is an instance of 'fake news' contributing to realism.--Dictynna

Research reported in SAGE's American Politics Research

According to a recent study published in the May issue of SAGE Publications' journal, American Politics Research, researchers conclude that young Americans' political views are negatively impacted by watching the popular The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which airs late night on Comedy Central as a 'fake-news program.'

Kevin Drum: The Latest Intel....

Did CIA officer Mary McCarthy leak agency secrets to journalists? No one knows. But several of her friends talked to the Washington Post recently about what she had discovered in the past year regarding detainee policy and prisoner abuse:

A CIA employee of two decades, McCarthy became convinced that "CIA people had lied" in [a congressional] briefing, as one of her friends said later, not only because the agency had conducted abusive interrogations but also because its policies authorized treatment that she considered cruel, inhumane or degrading.

Digby: The Retreads Strike Again

Yesterday when reading Jason Vest's interesting historical post about the young Dick and Don agitating for executive infallibility back in the 70's, I clicked over to this story in Mother Jones and read this article about how Dick n' Don also had been in favor of "privatising" government functions back in the 70's:

In 1969, President Richard Nixon appointed Rumsfeld, a 37-year-old congressman from Illinois, to head the Office of Economic Opportunity, which was responsible for overseeing the War on Poverty. Nixon wanted the agency restructured, and Rumsfeld, with the assistance of his chief aide, Cheney, quickly began bringing in management contractors to do the work of the agency's top civil servants.

Digby: Private Lessons

I'm a big believer in privacy as people can probably gather from the fact that I guard mine so zealously. It's a matter of temperament as much as anything. But it has also been my experience that busy bodies, witch hunters and authoritarians always find good reasons for not minding their own business:

It all seemed darkly funny at first.

Eric Haskett was merely taking a nap in a car when he roused suspicion in a rural Frederick County neighborhood. A neighbor traced Haskett's license plate to an address once used by a registered sex offender.

Poputonian for Digby: History Rhymes

Guest Post by poputonian

Boston attorney James Otis was especially offended. The British were free people. When he argued in 1761 against the Writ of Assistance, that scurrilous document which allowed the British government access to a citizen's home and personal records -- without having first obtained a court issued warrant -- Otis used the British constitution as evidence that the writs were illegal.

He did not make any claims that Americans were unique and deserved special freedoms, but instead asserted the rights of the British citizen, of which he and the others in Massachusetts Bay colony were one. There was no thought of rebellion or independence. At trial on February 24, 1761, Otis argued against his own government that the writs were…

"…the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law-book. I will to my dying day oppose, with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery and villainy as this Writ of Assistance is."

Some background on the players.--Dictynna

Feds raid ex-CIA official's home

Foggo's office also searched in probe tied to Cunningham case

By Dean Calbreath and Onell Soto
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS

May 13, 2006

VIENNA, Va. – Federal agents raided the home and office of former CIA Executive Director Kyle “Dusty” Foggo yesterday in the widening investigation of his ties to a defense contractor linked to the bribery case of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

As outgoing CIA director Porter Goss announced the raids in an internal e-mail to staff, he formally removed Foggo from his post as the agency's third-highest official.

Digby: Leadership

Leading Democrats tell the New York Times that it would be better if the party doesn't win in the fall --- and if it has the sad misfortune to do so, it would be better off not holding any investigations into the Bush administration.

And if, somehow, the party does unfortunately win and "the loud left" insists that the party holds Bush responsible for his misdeeds against the wishes of these wise men, we already know Democrats will be like the Republicans in 1996 who lost seats because they shut down the government and like Republicans in 1998 because they impeached Bill Clinton. (Lord knows the Republicans have suffered in the wilderness ever since then.)

Liberated Frank Rich column: Will the Real Traitors Please Stand Up? (in Digby's comments)

WHEN America panics, it goes hunting for scapegoats. But from Salem onward, we've more often than not ended up pillorying the innocent. Abe Rosenthal, the legendary Times editor who died last week, and his publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, were denounced as treasonous in 1971 when they defied the Nixon administration to publish the Pentagon Papers, the secret government history of the Vietnam War. Today we know who the real traitors were: the officials who squandered American blood and treasure on an ill-considered war and then tried to cover up their lies and mistakes. It was precisely those lies and mistakes, of course, that were laid bare by the thousands of pages of classified Pentagon documents leaked to both The Times and The Washington Post.

This history is predictably repeating itself now that the public has turned on the war in Iraq. The administration's die-hard defenders are desperate to deflect blame for the fiasco, and, guess what, the traitors once again are The Times and The Post. This time the newspapers committed the crime of exposing warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security Agency (The Times) and the C.I.A.'s secret "black site" Eastern European prisons (The Post). Aping the Nixon template, the current White House tried to stop both papers from publishing and when that failed impugned their patriotism.

Billmon: Market Update

Intrade -- my favorite on-line bucket shop -- has been making contracts on the odds that the Dems will win back the House and Senate in November. I noticed this evening that the House contract,

which pays a buck if the Republicans win, has fallen below the 50 cent mark. Last price: 48.5 cents.

In other words, the market (meaning the London bookmakers) is now putting better than even odds on the Dems winning the House back in November.

I don't know if this has anything to do with Rover's reported indictment (please Santa, I promise I won't ask for anything else this Christmas) but it certainly conforms to the picture of a regime in political meltdown. On the other hand, the Intrade Senate contract is still trading at around 80 cents (80% chance GOP holds the upper chamber) so somebody still thinks there's life in the diseased old floozy yet.

Billmon: Vox Pollsteri

One of the things that I find frustrating about the current debate over the surveillance state is the constant bickering about what the polls show. One side cites the latest Washington Post poll, showing that most people are OK with having their phone records swept up by government computers; the other waves the latest Newsweek poll, which says the people believe the information warriors have gone too far.

On balance, I think the characterization given by Carroll Doherty of the Pew Center (attached to the end of my last post) is probably correct:

"A solid plurality, around 50 percent" continues to say they would rather the government went too far in restricting civil liberties than not going far enough in protecting the country.

But I get a little crazy in the head when I hear people (usually on the authoritarian right) citing the latest poll numbers as a political justification for their own position.

The whole point of having civil liberties is that they are not supposed to be subject to a majority veto.

Billmon: Leviathan

This NSA dominated program of ingestion, digestion, and distribution of intelligence raises profound questions about the privacy and civil liberties of all Americans. Though there is no evidence that the new harvesting programs have been involved in illegal activity or have been abused to reach into the lives of innocent Americans, an all-seeing domestic surveillance is slowly being established, one that in just a few years time will be able track the activities and "transactions" of any targeted individual in near real time.

William Arkin
NSA's Multi-Billion Dollar Data Mining Effort
May 12, 2006

It appeareth plainly, to my understanding, both from reason and Scripture, that the sovereign power . . . is as great as possibly men can be imagined to make it. And though of so unlimited a power men may fancy many evil consequences, yet the consequences of the want of it, which is perpetual war of every man against his neighbor, are much worse.

Thomas Hobbes
The Leviathan
1651

If someone would just translate The Leviathan into modern colloquial English – or even better, turn it into a comic book – I think Shrub might discover a new favorite philosopher. Maybe not on same plane as Jesus Christ (and certainly not as politically advantageous) but a thinker even more in tune with his own ideas about the power and majesty of the unitary executive.