Politics

by hilzoy

Today the Attorney General went into more detail about what he takes to be the legal authorization for the administration’s program of secret surveillance. And his explanation is really quite extraordinary. Yesterday I said that, as far as I could tell, the administration’s reasoning would allow the President to do literally anything in time of war:

“Does he want to imprison a United States citizen indefinitely, without a warrant, and habeas corpus be damned? Fine! Does he want to tap our phones and read our email, also without a warrant, in defiance of the FISA statute and the Fourth Amendment? Also fine! As far as I can see, on this reading of the Constitution, there’s no reason he couldn’t decide that his war powers extended to levying taxes without Congressional approval (wars cost money, you know), or throwing Congressman Murtha in jail to prevent him from sapping our troops’ morale, or suspending the publication of all newspapers, magazines, and blogs on the same grounds, or making himself President For Life on the grounds that we need the continued benefit (cough) of his awesome leadership skillz to successfully prosecute the war on terror.”

I was hoping (though not expecting) that I’d be wrong, and they would turn out not to be making the world’s most ludicrous legal argument. But no: they are.

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by hilzoy

[Update: The ‘this’ that I want to be true is: the story immediately following, about Fitial flipping. Not, of course, the facts I describe later, which I very much wish were false.]

Via TPM again, from Pacific Magazine:

“The Marianas Variety Online reports that Governor-elect Benigno R. Fitial says he will cooperate with federal authorities in the ongoing investigation of Rep. Tom Delay and former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whom he once described as his “close friends.” House leadership spokesman Charles P. Reyes Jr. said Speaker Fitial “will comply with all the legal requirements asked of him.””

If Fitial cooperates, he will have quite a tale to tell, and I hope he tells every word of it, and can document the whole thing. Start with how he became Speaker:

“Two former top aides of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s brokered a political deal here five years ago that helped land island government contracts worth $1.6 million for a Washington lobbyist now the target of a federal corruption probe.

Using promises of U.S. tax dollars as bartering chips, Edwin A. Buckham and Michael Scanlon traveled to these remote Pacific islands in late 1999 to convince two local legislators to switch their votes for speaker of the territory’s 18-member House of Representatives. They succeeded.

Once in office, the new speaker pressed the governor of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands to reinstate an expired lobbying pact with Jack Abramoff, now under grand jury and congressional investigation.

Within months of the visit, Abramoff’s law firm had a contract paying $100,000 a month from the Marianas government. Also, the island districts of the legislators who switched sides soon won federal budget benefits from Congress, apparently supported by DeLay.”

Abramoff had had a contract with the Northern Marianas, but it had been suspended because the islands were having fiscal problems. DeLay’s aides (one of whom had moved on to lobbying, and one of whom was still on the federal payroll) travelled to the islands, met with the house members, both of whom claimed afterwards that the aides had promised them federal support for projects in their districts. Others deny this, but in any case, Fitial became speaker, Abramoff’s contract was reinstated, and, by a curious coincidence, money for the projects was suddenly given priority and appropriated by committees DeLay served on.

That would be our tax dollars DeLay’s aides felt so free to toss around.

So: why did the Northern Marianas have to hire a lobbyist? Well:

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by hilzoy

From the Washington Post:

“A onetime congressional staffer who became a top partner to lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiring to bribe a congressman and other public officials and agreed to pay back more than $19 million he fraudulently charged Indian tribal clients.

The plea agreement between prosecutors and Michael Scanlon, a former press secretary to then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), provided fresh detail about the alleged bribes. The document also indicated the nature of testimony Scanlon is prepared to offer against a congressman it calls “Representative #1” — who has been identified by attorneys in the case as Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio).

Scanlon, a 35-year-old former public relations executive, faces a maximum five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, but the penalty could be reduced depending on the level of his cooperation with prosecutors. His help is expected to be crucial to the Justice Department’s wide-ranging Abramoff investigation, which began early last year after the revelation that Scanlon and the lobbyist took in tens of millions of dollars from Indian tribes unaware of their secret partnership to jack up fees and split profits.

Investigators are looking at half a dozen members of Congress, current and former senior Hill aides, a former deputy secretary of the interior, and Abramoff’s former lobbying colleagues, according to sources familiar with the probe who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Because of his central role in much of Abramoff’s business, Scanlon could be a key witness in any trials that arise from the case.”

This is really, really important.

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by Edward

UPDATE: Apologies to Hilzoy for not realizing earlier I was using the same article she deconstructed in her excellent post here to illustrate my point.

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What any thinking person watching the debate over the veracity of how the Iraq invasion was sold must conclude at this point is that, as Wolfowitz suggested, what we’re really debating is a matter of emphasis. If you believe all the talk of mushroom clouds is fair rhetorical game, then you’ll probably insist the President didn’t lie. He merely overdramatized the case. If on the other hand, you believe sending troops into battle is not something a president has the wiggle room to be "technically" or "arguably" correct about, but rather should aspire to a much higher standard, then you’ll probably insist the President did lie. He knew he was overselling the case, but did it anyway.

The White House has recently taken to saying that the "Democrats have lied" (video) about Bush lying in the lead up to the war. This lets them turn the charge around in a short, pithy sound bite. Whether it will play or not remains to be seen. But since the White House itself has started calling people liars, let’s look at whether calling Bush a "liar" is libel or simply calling them like we see them?

We’ve beaten selling the war to death, with most folks who support Bush insisting it’s time to move on and win the war (although I’d still love to hear what that will look like). But we’re still fighting the war, so both sides should agree that how we’re fighting it is fair game for debate. I’d hope both sides would also agree that whether the President is lying about how we fight it is important as well.

A report by ABC out today suggests what any thinking person watching must conclude at this point is that no manner of emphasis will clear the President from charges that he lied to the public about whether or not the US tortures people:

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–by Sebastian Holsclaw

It has become increasingly clear that the current administration has taken a disturbingly permissive attitude toward torture.  (See here or here for further exploration of the topic).

Though it is crass to quote yourself, I’m going to reprint most of my open letter to my party, the Republican Party, from here anyway.  Then I’m going to discuss more recent developments:

There has been a drip, drip, drip that we have mostly ignored.  It does us no credit to continue.  There are many sources for this information, but the New Yorker has an excellent overview.  The Bush administration has engaged in a very troubling pattern of legitimizing torture by dramatically expanding the practice of "extraordinary rendition".  This practice essentially amounts to sending people to other countries to be tortured.  An excellent blog source for information on this practice is available on a section of ObsidianWings.  It has gotten to the point where it is obvious that this is more than a bad agent or two and it has expanded to far beyond just a few of the most hardened and obvious Al Qaeda operatives. 

I wish I could just mention the program and assume that I didn’t have to argue against it.  Unfortunately I’m not entirely sure that is true.  So before I get to what Republicans should do to stop it, I’m going to briefly outline why we should act to stop it:

Torture is wrong.  The practice of extraordinary rendition began as a classic Clintonian hairsplitting exercise in the mid 1990s to avoid the clear letter of the laws which prohibit America from using torture.  This is the kind of avoidance of the law and ridiculous semantics that we decried when employed by the Clinton administration.  It has gotten no more attractive just because Bush has decided to continue the program. 

We are torturing non-terrorists.  Perhaps some people would be willing to torture Al Qaeda members.  I’m not one of them, but perhaps some are.  The problem with that mindset is that we aren’t just torturing Al Qaeda members.  It is becoming completely obvious that some of the people being tortured are innocent.  See especially the ObsidianWings link above.  That is crazy.  There isn’t any information we are getting that could possibly justify the torture of innocent people. 

Torture is ineffective.  Torture isn’t ineffective at getting information per se. It is ineffective at getting useful information.  That is because the victim either snaps completely, or starts trying to mold his story to fit what the torturer wants to hear.  There is evidence that we have relied on information obtained through torture, only to find that it was very wrong. 

Torture also opens us up to the legitimate criticism that we are acting out the very barbarism that we want to fight.  I think as Republicans we have heard that charge so many times employed against practices where the analogy was completely inappropriate, that we have become inured to the charge when properly employed.  This is a case where the charge has force.   Go watch the Nick Berg Beheading Video and then imagine the blood pouring from his neck being just like the blood oozing from the fingers of an innocent torture victim sent to his fate by the CIA.  That is the barbarism we are fighting, and that is the barbarism we must not become a part of.  I know we have heard the charge that we are acting "just like them" thrown at us over trivial concerns like suggesting that we pay a bit more attention to visa-holders from other countries.  This is NOT THAT CASE.  This is the case of saying we are acting just like them because we are torturing people–acting just like them. 

Therefore extraordinary rendition is a moral sinkhole, which is being employed on people we are not sure are guilty, and which doesn’t even get good information.  It cannot be continued.

The Republican Party has spent so many years in the minority that sometimes I think we have not adjusted to the fact that we are in power.  We are in power now.  We control both Houses of Congress and we have our people throughout the administration.  We don’t need to wait for the Democrats to raise this issue.  We can’t hide behind the worry that exploring our practices is going to get a President elected who is going to retreat from Iraq.  We are the party which leads the most powerful country in the world.  And lead it we must.  President Bush must be shown that the Republican Party is not willing to stand for the perversion of our moral standards.  The Republican-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House can close the loophole which allows for extraordinary rendition and can loudly reaffirm that torture is not something we do.  We are the majority party, and we claim to be a party that cares about the moral health of the nation.  We are damning ourselves if we sit back and let it continue.  This practice is foolish in the proverbial sense of the word–it perverts our moral core and gains us nothing but the illusion of doing something important.

Since I wrote this, we have more proof that torture isn’t effective at getting good intelligence, and can in fact obtain dramatically misleading misinformation.  This is especially true because we have been copying the torture techniques of Communist countries:

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