A Blue View

OOOH

CIA Director Rejects Pelosi's Charge CIA Lied

From the Wash Post:

CIA Director Leon Panetta yesterday rejected  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's charge that the agency misled her about its use of coercive interrogation methods, escalating a controversy that has dogged the speaker for weeks and intensifying a debate over Bush administration policies that the Obama administration has tried to avoid.

Panetta, whom President Obama tapped to lead the CIA this year, reasserted the agency's claim that it told congressional leaders about the use of such methods during a closed-door briefing in September 2002.

Pelosi (D-Calif.) has acknowledged attending the briefing but says she was told only that the CIA was considering the use of waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning.

"It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress," Panetta said in a message meant to shore up employees of his agency, which is at the center of a relentless political firestorm over Bush policies and the Iraq war. "Our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of [terrorism suspect] Abu Zubaida, describing the 'enhanced techniques that had been employed.' "

The dispute over Pelosi's knowledge of the interrogation techniques leaves the Obama administration caught between the speaker, a strong advocate of the president's agenda on Capitol Hill, and the CIA, an agency Obama has defended even as he has described its interrogation methods as torture and released Justice Department memos that drew more focus on those methods.

The president, however, has also strongly resisted calls for the creation of a truth commission, something Pelosi has vocally supported. Such a panel, Obama has said, would devolve into partisan finger-pointing.

The White House saw no value in weighing in on Pelosi and the CIA yesterday. Spokesman Robert Gibbs declined to comment at his daily briefing, telling reporters, "I appreciate the invitation to get involved, but I'll decline to RSVP."

Meanwhile, an administration ready to tackle campaign priorities such as health care and climate change remains mired in issues left over from the Bush administration. Besides the debate over interrogations, Obama continues to wrestle with how to handle detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a facility he ordered closed by next year. This week he drew fire from the American Civil Liberties Union and others after reversing his support for the release of additional photos of prisoner abuse, and for his announcement yesterday that he will retain and revamp the system of military tribunals to try detainees.

Some liberal activists have said the controversy over what Pelosi knew illustrates the need for a commission to investigate alleged abuses of the Bush administration.

Dick Cheney Hangs Around

Obama To Pick Utah Gov. Huntsman As China Envoy

A Blue View readers should be familiar with Jon Huntsman as I've written about him a bunch (for instance, this from 14 March: Dems Need To Watch This Guy - He Could Be Trouble). So is this a brilliant or dumb move for both? From the NY Times:

A Republican governor whose name has come up as a potential challenger to President Barack Obama in 2012 intends go to work for the president as ambassador to China, a source close to the governor said.

Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who is fluent in Mandarin Chinese from his days as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan, has accepted the appointment, said the source, who would speak only on condition of anonymity ahead of a White House announcement expected Saturday.

Huntsman, 49, is a popular, two-term governor who served in both Bush administrations and has made a name for himself advocating a moderate agenda in one of the nation's most conservative states.

He made headlines recently for encouraging the Republican Party to swing in a more moderate direction if it wanted to bounce back from the 2008 elections, angering some conservatives.

Obama's 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe, said Huntsman is a Republican who ''seems to understand the party has to adjust -- not stubbornly believe that everything is OK and it is the country that has to change.''

Huntsman's positions on the environment and other issues have led some to consider him a potential contender for president in 2012.

He signed an initiative that would set a regional cap-and-trade effort to reduce global warming. In a 2006 speech at Shanghai Normal University, Huntsman spoke of the need for China and the U.S. to work together on environmental issues.

''The United States and China must be good examples and stewards of the Earth. We must match economic progress with environmental stewardship. The effects of industrialization are felt worldwide,'' Huntsman said then.

Throughout his tenure as governor, Huntsman's background as a diplomat has been evident. He preferred to win over opponents in private meetings rather than using his bully pulpit to give rousing speeches.

One of his most significant achievements was loosening the state's restrictive liquor laws over the objections of many in heavily Mormon Utah in an effort to make the state more appealing for visitors. It was a feat many here didn't think would be possible in Huntsman's lifetime.

However, Huntsman has drawn the most attention for stating he favors civil unions for gay couples even though he backed a state constitutional amendment passed in 2004 that prohibited same-sex marriage.

Huntsman's comments on civil unions drew the ire of conservatives in Utah and elsewhere.

Officials in Michigan last month canceled a GOP county fundraiser where Huntsman was to speak; they said he had abandoned important party principles.

Huntsman's career began as a staff assistant in the Ronald Reagan administration and he also served as ambassador to Singapore under President George H.W. Bush and as a deputy U.S. trade representative and U.S. trade ambassador under President George W. Bush.

Utah's only Democratic member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, said he was pleased with the appointment. ''It's a great bipartisan appointment by the president,'' he said.

Before becoming governor in 2005, Huntsman made millions serving as chairman and CEO of his family chemical company.

If confirmed by the Senate, Huntsman will succeed Clark Randt as U.S. ambassador to China.

Randt, a classmate of former President George W. Bush at Yale University, served as Washington's top envoy to Beijing from July 2001 until January, making him the longest-serving U.S. ambassador to China since the two nations established diplomatic ties.

Utah Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert would become governor until a special election in 2010.

Science And Religion

The Bush Admin Tortured Until Detainee Said What They Wanted To Hear: Iraq & Al Qaeda Were Linked. Then They Trumpeted The Lies To The World

More evidence that Bush Tortured For Political, NOT Security Reasons: To Link Al Qaida & Iraq from CNN. And we now learn that they tortured a detainee until he said what they wanted to hear, then deluded themselves it was the truth and trumpeted the lies to the U.N. and Congress:

Finding a "smoking gun" linking Iraq and al Qaeda became the main purpose of the abusive interrogation program the Bush administration authorized in 2002, a former State Department official told CNN on Thursday.

 The allegation was included in an online broadside aimed at former Vice President Dick Cheney by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. In it, Wilkerson wrote that the interrogation program began in April and May of 2002, and then-Vice President Cheney's office kept close tabs on the questioning.

"Its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda," Wilkerson wrote in The Washington Note, an online political journal.

Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said his accusation is based on information from current and former officials. He said he has been "relentlessly digging" since 2004, when Powell asked him to look into the scandal surrounding the treatment of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. "I couldn't walk into a courtroom and prove this to anybody, but I'm pretty sure it's fairly accurate," he told CNN.

Most of Wilkerson's online essay criticizes Cheney's recent defense of the "alternative" interrogation techniques the Bush administration authorized for use against suspected terrorists. Cheney has argued the interrogation program was legal and effective in preventing further attacks on Americans. Critics say the tactics amounted to the illegal torture of prisoners in U.S. custody and have called for investigations of those who authorized them ...

Wilkerson wrote that in one case, the CIA told Cheney's office that a prisoner under its interrogation program was now "compliant," meaning agents recommended the use of "alternative" techniques should stop. At that point, "The VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods," Wilkerson wrote.

"The detainee had not revealed any al Qaeda-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, 'revealed' such contacts."

Al-Libi's claim that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's government had trained al Qaeda operatives in producing chemical and biological weapons appeared in the October 2002 speech then-President Bush gave when pushing Congress to authorize military action against Iraq. It also was part of Powell's February 2003 presentation to the United Nations on the case for war, a speech Powell has called a "blot" on his record.

Al-Libi later recanted the claim, saying it was made under torture by Egyptian intelligence agents, a claim Egypt denies. He died last week in a Libyan prison, reportedly a suicide, Human Rights Watch reported.

Stacy Sullivan, a counterterrorism adviser for the U.S.-based group, called al-Libi's allegation "pivotal" to the Bush administration's case for war, as it connected Baghdad to the terrorist organization behind the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

And an Army psychiatrist assigned to support questioning of suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba told the service's inspector-general that interrogators there were trying to connect al Qaeda and Iraq.

"This is my opinion," Maj. Paul Burney told the inspector-general's office. "Even though they were giving information and some of it was useful, while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between aI Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between aI Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link ... there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

Burney's account was included in a Senate Armed Services Committee report released in April. Other interrogators reported pressure to produce intelligence "but did not recall pressure to identify links between Iraq and al Qaeda," the Senate report states.

Nancy Pelosi: C.I.A. Lied to Congress About Torture, Bush Admin Lied About Iraq

Dan Balz reacts:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's extraordinary accusation that the Bush administration lied to Congress about the use of harsh interrogation techniques dramatically raised the stakes in the growing debate over the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies even as it raised some questions about the speaker's credibility.

Pelosi's performance in the Capitol was either a calculated escalation of a long-running feud with the Bush administration or a reckless act by a politician whose word had been called into question. Perhaps it was both.

For the first time, Pelosi (D-Calif.) acknowledged that in 2003 she was informed by an aide that the CIA had told others in Congress that officials had used waterboarding during interrogations. But she insisted, contrary to CIA accounts, that she was not told about waterboarding during a September 2002 briefing by agency officials. Asked whether she was accusing the CIA of lying, she replied, "Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States."

Washington now is engaged in a battle royal of finger-pointing, second-guessing and self-defense, all over techniques President Obama banned in the first days of his administration. Both sides in this debate believe they have something to prove -- and gain -- by keeping the fight alive.

Both sides have champions and villains. Pelosi has become a lightning rod for criticism from conservatives, and a hero to the left, much as former vice president Richard B. Cheney has become a target of the left and the darling of many on the right.

The speaker's charges about the CIA's alleged deception and her shifting accounts of what she knew and when she knew it are likely to add to calls for some kind of independent body to investigate this supercharged issue, though Obama and many members of Congress would like to avoid a wholesale unearthing of the past at a time when their plates are full with pressing concerns.

Closing the books on the George W. Bush years has proven harder than anyone imagined -- certainly harder than Obama hoped. The intensifying argument over what the CIA told Pelosi and when comes on top of the debate over whether any Bush administration officials should face legal action for their roles in authorizing or implementing the interrogation policies and whether a national commission is needed to get to the truth ...

Conservatives say that, if Pelosi was so opposed to torture, she should have spoken out forcefully when she learned that these techniques were being employed. Her failure to do so then leaves her in a weakened position to protest now, they argue. An op-ed article by senior Bush White House adviser Karl Rove in yesterday's Wall Street Journal asked directly: "So is the speaker of the House lying about what she knew and when? And, if so, what will Democrats do about it?"

Pelosi gave some ground on the question of whether she had been informed that waterboarding was being used -- though by her account she did not learn about it until February 2003, rather than in 2002, and then only from her aide. Instead of registering her protest to the administration, she said, she set out to help Democrats win control of Congress and elect a Democrat as president.

But in attempting to defend herself, Pelosi took the remarkable step of trying to shift the focus of blame to the CIA and the Bush administration, claiming that the CIA accounts represented a diversionary tactic in the real debate over the interrogation policies. That amounted to a virtual declaration of war against the CIA at a time when the Obama administration already has rattled morale at the agency with the release of Justice Department memos authorizing the harsh interrogation techniques.

House Republican Leader  John A. Boehner (Ohio) was quick to challenge Pelosi. Within minutes of her contentious news conference, he emerged to question her accusations. He left no doubt that Republicans believe that the speaker has made a major misstep that will hurt her and perhaps her party as this controversy plays out.

The various parties all have their own priorities now. Pelosi not only wants to clear her name but also favors a truth commission to answer questions about how the interrogation policies came to be and whether they were as effective as Cheney and others claim. Cheney is determined to defend the policies he helped shape and to force the new administration into a different posture on its anti-terrorism strategy. Outside groups, and the grass-roots activists they speak for, are prepared to continue litigating the Bush presidency.

Fox News & Dick Cheney

The Congressional Oversight System Needs To Be Reformed

As Vicki Divoll argued in Nancy Pelosi ... Might Be More Stupid Than Hypocritical, the Congressional system to oversee the spy agencies, the one mandated by the Constitution, is completely broken. Marc Ambinder makes the same point:

Pelosi's own words argue for a [commission] that would look at how the Congress succeeds or fails in holding the intelligence community accountable and the whether the mechanisms in place are adequate to the task. Clearly, if Pelosi truly felt that she had no recourse in a briefing to object, then the entire briefing system itself is suspect.

CIA briefs Congress because Congress has an oversight function. If that function is neutered in the course of the oversight mechanism, then the mechanism needs to change.  The history of the CIA's relationship to Congress is fraught with misleading briefings, lies, Congresspersons who don't understand intelligence, intelligence officials who don't understand conference, misdeeds, omissions and distortions. And yet, aside from some vague promises by members of the intelligence community and some members of Congress, the system remains in place.

Obama Urges Congress To Reform Credit Card Regulations

Reaction To Obama's Decision To Not Release The Torture Photos

Andrew Sullivan:

Politicians are not saints. They cannot live in the pristine world of a blogger who can make abstract arguments with only a responsibility to keep telling the truth to his readers as best he can. The task of an intelligent critic is both to grasp the core issue without holding these guys to impossible standards of purity and truth in a flawed and miserable world. Obama's revisiting of his decision not to release the photos is a sign of a president able to re-think difficult stances. If it leads to a cover-up of serious crimes, then he deserves real opposition. If it is a measure to keep the ship of state afloat - and soldiers morale high - as the process of discovery and legal accountability continues, then give him some time and space.

A reader of Sullivan's:

The prosecutions you are asking for would simply swallow the Obama presidency whole.  It is the kind of energy draining, oxygen consuming drama that is the nightmare of every president. It would come to define his presidency in the same way the Hostage Crisis defined Carter’s and there is zero chance he will opt for this.

President Obama is making a realistic, cold, clear-eyed cost-benefit analysis. This is the choice: Does he fix the economy, fix healthcare, get a handle on the two wars he’s dealing with, or does he prosecute Bush era war crimes? He has chosen his agenda and is asking us to choose that too.

David Ignatius:

Is this a “Sister Soulja” moment on national security, like bill Clinton’s famous criticism of a controversial rap singer during the 1992 presidential campaign -- which upset some liberal supporters but polished his credentials as a centrist? We’ll have to wait and see, but certainly military officers I spoke with this week were pleased -- even as the ACLU was indignant.

Spencer Ackerman:

If the photos are “not particularly sensational,” then they wouldn’t, as Obama went on to say, “further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.” How can unsensational photographs put troops in danger? Furthermore, at some point, the photos are going to come out — whether in the near future, as the ACLU is going to press its Freedom of Information Act request, or decades from now, when the time limit on their classification expires. When they’re released, will Obama really want to stand by describing their contents as “not particularly sensational”?

Glenn Greenwald:

For all of you defend-Obama-at-all-cost cheerleaders who are about to descend into my comment section and other online venues to explain how Obama did the right thing because of National Security, I have this question: if you actually want to argue that concealing these photographs is the right thing to do, then you must have been criticizing Obama when, two weeks ago, he announced that he would release them. Otherwise, it's pretty clear that you don't have any actual beliefs other than: "I support what Obama does because it's Obama who does it." So for those arguing today that concealing these photographs is the right thing to do: were you criticizing Obama two weeks ago for announcing he would release these photographs?

Uncle Sam's Checkup

N.H. On Verge Of Marriage Equality

From the Boston Globe:

Governor John Lynch, appearing to pave the way for same-sex marriages in New Hampshire, announced yesterday that he would sign a bill legalizing the unions as long as the state Legislature made it clearer that religious groups would not be forced to conduct "marriage ceremonies that violate their fundamental religious beliefs."

Lynch's announcement sets New Hampshire, once viewed as a conservative enclave in a liberal region, on course to become the sixth state in the country - and the fourth in the last six weeks - to allow same-sex couples to marry. It would leave Rhode Island as the sole New England state to prohibit gay marriage.

Lynch, a Democrat, had loomed as a possible obstacle in New Hampshire. The governor had supported civil unions but consistently opposed gay marriage. But his thinking changed, he said yesterday.

"Throughout our history, our society's views of civil rights have constantly evolved and expanded," Lynch said in a nearly 600-word statement. He cited New Hampshire's tradition of landing "on the side of individual liberties and protections," adding, "That is what I believe we must do today."

While Lynch warned he would veto the bill if lawmakers do not add his language to the legislation, activists and politicians on both sides of the issue said they viewed Lynch's proposed language as a subtle, technical adjustment, making legalization of same-sex marriage in New Hampshire all but a done deal. The Senate president and House speaker announced quickly that they thought the changes would be made ...

Lynch made his announcement amid a flurry of gains for same-sex marriage in the region. Last month, Vermont lawmakers overrode a governor's veto to legalize gay marriage; last week, Governor John E. Baldacci of Maine signed a similar bill after it passed his state's Legislature.

The laws take effect Sept. 1 in Vermont and in mid-September in Maine, though conservative groups there are trying to collect 55,000 signatures in three months to challenge the law at the polls. The bill progressing in New Hampshire would allow same-sex couples to marry starting Jan. 1, 2010 ...

Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, the Boston-based advocacy group that has pushed for three decades to end discrimination against gays and lesbians. "It's really exciting." The group's lawyers waged the court cases that led to gay marriage in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and its staff has worked to build support across the region. Last fall, the organization announced a campaign to legalize same-sex marriage throughout New England by 2012.

What had seemed to be an optimistic goal is now almost complete. The organization will now turn its attention toward Rhode Island.

When Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004, New Hampshire seemed unlikely to follow, even with its "Live Free or Die" motto and history of individual liberty. Republicans had enjoyed virtually uninterrupted control of both houses of the Legislature since the late 19th century.

Tick, Tick

Obama Planning To Keep An "Improved" Military Commission System For Detainees

I'm not sure what to think about this?  How about you? From the NY Times:

President Obama has decided to keep the military commission system that his predecessor created to try suspected terrorists but will ask Congress to expand the rights of defendants to contest the charges against them, officials briefed on the plan said Thursday.

Mr. Obama will ask for an additional 120-day delay in nine pending hearings before commissions so the administration can revamp the procedures to provide more due process to detainees, the officials said. The new system would limit the use of hearsay, ban evidence gained from cruel treatment, give defendants more latitude to pick their own lawyers and provide more protection if they do not testify.

The decision, to be announced Friday, could set off more criticism from civil libertarian and liberal groups that have increasingly complained that Mr. Obama has not made a sharper break from former President George W. Bush’s terrorism policies. During last year’s presidential campaign, Mr. Obama called the military commission system put in place by Mr. Bush “an enormous failure” and vowed to “reject the Military Commissions Act.”

But aides pointed out Thursday that he never rejected the possibility of using military commissions altogether if they could be made fairer, and they pointed to legislation he supported as a senator in 2006 intended to do just that. They noted that some defendants would continue to be tried in American civilian courts and said they were trying to create a “durable, multilayered option,” as one put it ...

When he took office, Mr. Obama froze military commissions until May 20, and many observers thought that would spell the end of the system. But as his advisers deliberated, they concluded that trying all detainees in civilian courts was not workable and that the commissions could be fixed along the lines of the 2006 proposal.

Even with the additional rights Mr. Obama is proposing, defendants would still not enjoy the same protections as in civilian courts. Hearsay, for example, is generally not allowed in American courts. In Mr. Bush’s military commission system, it was allowed unless the defendant could prove it was unreliable. Mr. Obama’s plan would shift the burden, allowing its use only if the prosecution can prove its reliability.

Finance Charges

Why Obama's Reversal On Torture Photo Release Is A Very Bad Decision

While I am sympathetic to the fact that Obama has to walk a fine line on how he handles this torture stuff (he releases the memos which pisses off the right, now he flip-flops and doesn’t release the photos which pisses off the left), and I understand and agree with his desire to look forward, not back and preserve political capital for the critical fights ahead on health care, energy & education, I think his decision to argue in court that the torture photos not be released is a horrible decision that might haunt him and the country for a long time.

Here is the justification for the reversal the President offered yesterday:

The publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals. In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in danger.

Saying it was a small number of individuals, implying a few bad apples, was Rumsfeld's line. And we now know, thanks to Obama's releasing of the DOJ's torture memos, that this is a lie. Humiliation and torture was a coordinated policy designed at the top and enforced by the chain of command. Making it even worse, torture was not done to protect the country but to protect Bush & Cheney's political hides.

As quoted on 22 April in Bush Tortured For Political, NOT Security Reasons: To Link Al Qaida & Iraq 

The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime ...

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration ...

"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."

Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said ...

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

This CNN clip is interesting in itself and highlights another probem with Obama's reversal. The intro presents a nice summary of what has happened (is Obama, by changing his position, demonstrating his promise to listen to different opinions and choose the best one or is he caving into pressure from the military or worse, Dick Cheney). Then Anderson Cooper does a good job playing devil's advocate to the two folks representing each side of the debate. 

The most telling exchange happens at about the 7:30 minute mark when Coooper asks the GOP spokesman

Do you think we already know all there is to know

and he replies,

We can only go by the evidence we have

That is exactly the point, isn't it? We can only know whether these were "enhanced interrogation techniques" (and therefore legal) or torture (and illegal acts that require investigation and punishment) based on the evidence. And suppressing evidence is therefore, by definition, hiding or covering up what the Bush administration did.

While I do think Obama is considering his general's advice to not release the photos (I'm sure, however, they were offering the same opinion 3 weeks ago and he planned on releasing them anyway) I think the real reason he changed his mind is for a darker reason: the photos would inflame opinion and increase pressure for a independent prosecutor to investigate.

As I wrote on 24 April in Thank You ACLU: Pentagon To Release Images Of Prisoner Abuse,

These images, if powerful enough, might make a Torture Panel inevitable; whether Obama wants one or not," ...

"These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib," Amrit Singh, staff attorney with the ACLU, said in a statement. "Their disclosure is critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such abuse."  

Rachel Maddow & Jonathan Turley expand this argument:

I do believe the photos will ultimately come out ... our system cant allow the government to with hold as a matter of national security stuff simply because it embarrasses us. If you really want to shut down our enemies it's not with holding a few more pictures to add to the library of existing pictures.  If you want to shut them down you have to show that we're not hypocrites that we're not hiding our past sins and we're not hiding from responsibility.  Instead what Obama did today is reaffirmed what Al Qaeda has been saying ... we only adopt principle when we apply it to other people.

I think that the ACLU will ultimately prevail, and maybe that's what the Obama administration wants politically, is to be forced to release these photos as a political measure, but by doing this, by putting in this fight, by reversing it's earlier statement to the court, it makes a mockery of the system, it makes a mockery of this country.

Finally, here's Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) on Obama's national security policies:

“The difference between the last administration and this one is the difference between night and dawn. But we’re looking for day.”

The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime ...

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration ...

"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."

Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said ...

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

Take The Dick Cheney Credibility Quiz

Does he pass the credibility test?

While "Dick Cheney is as popular as Britney Spears at a Sunday school teacher convention" & Hurts The GOP, Did He Influence Obama's Photo Decision?

From the Wash Post:

Today Cheney is the most visible -- and controversial -- critic of President Obama's national security policies and, to the alarm of many people in the Republican Party, the most forceful and uncompromising defender of the Bush administration's record. His running argument with the new administration has spawned a noisy side debate all its own: By leading the criticism, is Cheney doing more harm than good to the causes he has taken up and to the political well-being of his party?

His defenders believe he has sparked a discussion of vital importance to the safety of the country, and they hold up Obama's reversal of a decision to release photos of detainee abuse as a sign that Cheney is having an effect. But there is a potential political price that his party may pay in having one of the highest officials in an administration repudiated in the last election continue to argue his case long after the voters have rendered their decision.

Cheney entered the arena this winter in a politically weak position after that election. His personal favorability ratings were and are still low. A Gallup poll in late March found that 30 percent of respondents gave him a favorable rating, while 63 percent rated him unfavorably.

That is why his high-profile defense of controversial Bush administration policies has caused queasiness among Republican political strategists. But Cheney remains powerful enough that most of his GOP critics are not willing to take him on in public. "The fact that most people want to talk [without attribution] shows what a problem it continues to be," said one Republican strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid. "Cheney continues to be a force among many members of our base, and while he is entirely unhelpful, no one has the standing to show him the door" ...

"This isn't about partisan politics, it's about what's right for the country," said Liz Cheney, the former vice president's daughter and a former State Department official. "Every American, whether you're a Republican, Democrat or independent, would agree that before critical decisions are made about national security of the nation, we ought to have a full and fair debate."

Cheney's daughter was among those who pointed to yesterday's White House reversal on the detainee photos as evidence that a vocal, public debate over the new administration's policies can make a difference.

Another GOP strategist, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, pointed out the conundrum for Republicans over the former vice president's current role. "Even if he's right, he's absolutely the wrong messenger," this strategist said. His main worry, he added, is that Cheney keeps the public focused on the past, rather than the future. "We want Bush to be a very distant memory in the next election. The more Cheney is on the front burner, the more difficult it's going to be."

"He's perfectly entitled to make his case, and given that Dick Cheney is as popular as Britney Spears at a Sunday school teacher convention, we hope he continues to be the face of the Republican Party," said Hari Sevugan, national press secretary for the Democratic National Committee. "His continued presence reminds people that the GOP is unwilling to put forward new ideas or leadership, and so long as he continues to be the voice of the Republican cause, he ensures that the Republican Party will remain the party of the past."

President Obama's ASU Commencement Speech (full version)

Part II and III.

The Wash Post's report on the "controversy" over his not being awarded an honorary degree:

Obama's appearance at the university followed a minor controversy that erupted when the school decided against conferring an honorary degree on the new president during today's ceremony. Despite having given such an honor to many politicians, the school spokesman said initially that Obama had not established a "body of work" that would qualify him for a degree.

Obama, a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law Scool, is the country's first African American president, a fact that many critics of the school say should have immediately made him a candidate for the honorary degree.

The school's president stuck to the decision, but said the school has had a policy since 2003 of not giving honorary degrees to sitting politicians. Instead, the school will name its largest scholarship program after Obama.

Obama joked about the controversy:

"I have to tell you, I really thought it was much ado about nothing, but I think we all learned an important lesson," he said. "I learned to never again pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA bracket. It won't happen again. And President Crow and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS."

The Two Sides Of The GOP

Obama Reverses Himself On Torture Photo Release

From the Wash Post:

A month after making public once-classified Justice Department memos detailing the Bush administration's coercive methods of interrogation, President Obama yesterday chose secrecy over disclosure, saying he will seek to block the court-ordered release of photographs depicting the abuse of detainees held by U.S. authorities abroad.

Obama agreed less than three weeks ago not to oppose the photos' release, but he changed his mind after viewing some of the images and hearing warnings from his generals in Iraq and in Afghanistan that such a move would endanger U.S. troops deployed there.

"The publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals," Obama said yesterday. "In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in danger."

Civil liberties and human rights advocates said the reversal would serve to maintain the Bush administration's legacy of secrecy. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Obama's shift was "deeply disappointing."

"Even given that the photos will undoubtedly generate outrage in the region, the best way to dampen that outrage is to hold those responsible accountable," Roth said.

The photos were assembled as part of about 200 criminal investigations conducted before and after the disclosure in 2004 of widespread prisoner abuse by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib, the former Iraqi prison that the U.S. military turned into a detention and intelligence-gathering center... no commanding officers or Defense Department officials were jailed or fired in connection with the abuse, which the Bush administration dismissed as the misbehavior of low-ranking soldiers ...

Gibbs said Obama has seen a representative sample of the photos, which the president described yesterday as "not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib."

But one congressional staff member, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the photos, said the pictures are more graphic than those that have been made public from Abu Ghraib. "When they are released, there will be a major outcry for an investigation by a commission or some other vehicle," the staff member said.

Human rights officials said Obama's decision to oppose the release of the photos is less consequential than his pending decisions on restoring modified Bush-era military commissions to try detainees and on whether to allow a wide-ranging investigation -- followed by possible prosecutions -- into interrogation methods.

"This essentially renders meaningless President Obama's pledge of transparency and accountability that he made in the early days after taking office," said Singh, the ACLU lawyer. The Obama administration "has essentially become complicit with the torture that was rampant during the Bush years by being complicit in its coverup."

The Pelosi Position

Nancy Pelosi's Torturous Parsing Of Her Torture Stand And Why, In The End, She Might Be More Stupid Than Hypocritical

While this isn't particularly funny, this Daily Show montage does highlight her unbelievable attempts to explain away her hypocrisy:

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Typical politician: choosing the safe position when it's politically expediant (not objecting to torture at the time) and then switching to another safe position when the circumstances change (e.g. after Obama's courageous position on upholding the rule of law during the campaign helped change what the safe position is).

Vicki Divoll, a former general counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee in a Times Op-Ed, actually widens the issue from Pelosi to the agreement that updating just 4 members is the same as the notification of Congress. Reading this has got me to thinking that Pelosi's fundamental problem wasn't her hypocrisy (though she was) but her not realizing that the notification agreement was a really bad idea:

JUST four members of Congress were notified in 2002 when the Central Intelligence Agency’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” program was first approved and carried out, according to documents released by the agency last week. They were Senators Bob Graham and Richard Shelby and Representatives Porter Goss and Nancy Pelosi, then the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House intelligence committees — the so-called “Gang of Four.” Each was briefed orally and it was understood that they were not to speak about the program with anyone, including their colleagues on the committees.

It’s logical to ask, so what if it was only four members? If they objected to the program, why didn’t they take steps to change it or stop it? Maybe they should have tried. But as a practical matter, there was very little, if anything, the Gang of Four could have done to affect the Bush administration’s decision on the enhanced interrogation techniques program. To stop it, they needed the whole Congress.

The framers of the Constitution gave aggregate, not individual, powers to the legislative branch. For the Gang of Four to have waved their arms and yelled at mid-level C.I.A. briefers, or written harsh letters to the president and vice president, would have been useless. Four members do not have the ability, on their own, to bring the great weight of the constitutional authority of Congress to bear ...

Of course, the real reason that notifying four members of Congress was better than 40 to the Bush White House is crystal-clear — to eliminate political pushback. Check the box that Congress was informed just in case, someday, the program becomes public and things get rough. But do so in a way that the legislative branch is not in a position to cause any trouble ...

 The framers of the Constitution never intended for small numbers of legislators to be culled from Congress and expected to act as a check on the excesses of the executive.

Same-Sex Marriage

 

Cap & Trade Moving Through Congress

Via compromise with opponents, the Cap & Trade bill looks to soon be coming out of committee, according to the Wash Post:

House Democrats said last night that they would scale back some of the most aggressive provisions of a bill to cut greenhouse gas emissions, a compromise designed to win the votes of fellow Democrats whose states rely on coal or heavy industry.

Such a deal would give a crucial boost to a measure that is a key priority for both President Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill. It had run aground amid concerns that it would cost too much, or weigh too heavily on states in the Midwest and West.

 Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), one of the bill's architects, said that the compromise should ensure rapid passage in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Waxman chairs the committee, and he vowed weeks ago to get the bill to the House floor by Memorial Day. "I'm optimistic we're going to pass it by the end of next week," Waxman said, calling last night's changes "the basis for an agreement that will bring us the votes."

The basic structure of the bill remains unchanged: It calls for a "cap and trade" system, in which the federal government sets a national limit on greenhouse gas pollution and ratchets that limit down over time. The "trade" part of the system would allow some polluters to buy pollution credits, from the government or from others, to cover their emissions.

But the changes do lower some aims of the bill, and they also fill in some details left out of the original draft. That first draft called for a 20 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Under the new agreement, the goal would be a 17 percent reduction.

Also, the bill originally called for all states to get 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025. Under the new version, the standard would be lowered to 15 percent by 2020, plus a requirement to reduce energy use by 5 percent by then through improved energy efficiency, Hill staffers said.

Democrats from states that get most of their electricity from coal -- which has particularly high emissions -- had warned that the 25 percent standard could force them into a rapid, costly shift.

The changes also clarified some details of how the government will parcel out pollution credits. Some environmental groups had called for all such credits to be auctioned off, with the money funneled to energy-efficiency projects or back to taxpayers. But last night's compromise said that some of the credits would be given out free -- and that 35 percent of those would be given to local electricity-distribution companies ...

At the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has pressed for caps on emissions, Daniel Lashof said that the changes were acceptable. "Overall, it sounds like an agreement that is going to move this forward. And that's a good thing," said Lashof, the director of the organization's climate center.

A spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, which represents power utilities, said the organization would support the agreement. Spokesman Dan Riedinger said he was pleased to hear that some allowances would be given for free.

MSNBC Debates Discrimination-Favoring Miss California

While the MSNBC folks have a lively debate:

Jon sums it up best: "a completely made up s*storm":

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Lessons From Obama: A Post-Feminist, Speak-Softly-But-Carry-A-Not-Obvious-Big-Stick Approach Works

In two separate posts yesterday about higher education and the FDA regulating cigarettes, I pointed out an intriguing new phenomenon: corporations that historically (and often vociferously) have opposed something Obama is now pushing suddenly decide to switch and work with him. Here's part of what I wrote:

So are these two just smarter, more astute companies better able to see which way the political winds are blowing. Or are they just trying to get in front of the wind so that they have a better chance of blowing it in the direction they want?

Yes and yes is the answer I think.

And then, earlier today I posted, More Industries Want To Be Part Of Obama's Solutions Not Part Of The Problems, in which I found a third example of this trend, and it's a doozy: the insurance and drug companies that opposed health care reform in the 90's now want to be part of Obama's health care solution!

As I wrote in Obama Brilliant Legislative Strategy Now Applies To All 3 Of His Top Goals, the President has a low testosterone approach to politics and statecraft; a speak softly but carry a [not obvious] big stick strategy if you will. When it comes to Congress and getting education, health care and energy/environmental reforms enacted, he doesn't confront Republican or Democratic opponents head on, instead he creates situations that practically force them into negotiations on his terms.

In the case of today's news of the 90's health care opponents now sitting down at the negotiating table, the "situation" he's created is the CW impression that the health care reform train is leaving the station and that if they want to have any say whatsoever in the outcome, they better publicly state they are on board (even if everyone understands the majority of their bodies are still hanging off the train).  

So Sorry Dick Cheney, Obama is once again proving the lesson most of us learned in the schoolyard: that bluster, bullying, punching and yelling that you have the biggest stick around:

1. almost always backfires
   
2. rarely gets you what you want
   
3. usually means you don't

Charlie And The MBTA

 

After coming up with a title for this cartoon I was gripped by a wave of nostalgia ... so enjoy the song being played on the T:

A One Man Firing Squad

From Eugene Robinson:

For the final act of his too-long public career, Cheney seems to have decided to become an Old Faithful of self-serving nonsense. His latest in a series of eruptions came Sunday on "Face the Nation," when he continued to press his revisionist case for torture -- and, for good measure, counseled his beloved Republican Party to marginalize itself even further from public opinion and common sense.

... I do know why Cheney gets asked to appear on talk shows so regularly. Unrestrained by protocol or objective reality, he's pretty much guaranteed to say outrageous things. He requires no prompting or coaxing. As far as he's concerned, issues have just one side -- his -- and anyone who disagrees must secretly wish to deliver our nation to al-Qaeda ...

This is the crux of Cheney's "argument," and I put the word in quotation marks because it isn't really a valid argument at all. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration approved programs and methods that previously would have been considered illegal or unacceptable: arbitrary and indefinite detention of terrorism suspects, waterboarding and other abusive interrogation methods, secret CIA prisons, unprecedented electronic surveillance. Since 2001, there have been no new attacks on what the Bush administration creepily called the "homeland." Therefore, everything that was done in the name of preventing new attacks was justified.

The fallacy lies in the fact that it is impossible for Cheney to prove that anti-terrorism methods within the bounds of U.S. law and tradition would have failed to prevent new attacks. Nor, for that matter, can Cheney demonstrate that torture and other abuses were particularly effective ...

"Well, if I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh, I think," Cheney said. "I think my take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican."

Let's see: Given a choice between a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state who has given to his nation a lifetime of exemplary public service or an entertainer who brags about how much money he makes from bombast and bluster, Cheney would go with the gasbag. This is advice that's supposed to help the Republican Party?

Click the picture to watch the Telnaes animation:

 

Meet The GOP

A new Web ad from the DNC:

Obama's Selection Of Egypt Fraught With Peril & Opportunity

From the NY Times:

President Obama’s decision to deliver a speech here next month has given significant encouragement to a once powerful ally that has grown increasingly frustrated over its waning regional influence and its inability to explain to its citizens why it remains committed to a Middle East peace process that has failed to produce a better life for Palestinians.

After eight years in which Egypt felt unappreciated and bullied by the Bush administration, Egyptian officials were gleeful about Cairo’s selection last week for the president’s address to the Muslim world. They said that it proved Egypt remained the capital of the Arab world and that it eased concerns that Washington might undermine its Arab allies in exchange for a grand deal with their rivals in Iran ...

Still, President Obama’s decision to address a deeply skeptical Arab audience from Cairo is fraught with potential land mines, according to political analysts, human rights advocates and government officials. He has selected an authoritarian state where political and economic reform has stalled under President Hosni Mubarak, 82, who has been in power for nearly 30 years.

Those factors will put some pressure on Mr. Obama to at least address the issue of democracy and human rights. The Egyptian government bristles at outside pressure, and the general population often sees hypocrisy when Western leaders call for democracy, then partner with authoritarian leaders.

“America’s standing alongside authoritarian regimes is what created terrorism in the Arab world,” said Ayman Nour, a former presidential candidate who was recently freed after more than three years in prison here on what were widely seen as politically inspired charges. “It is what strengthened the thorn of extremism in the Arab world.”

Even before the issue of human rights is raised, though, Egyptian leaders and activists will be looking for Mr. Obama to address their first priority: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. If Mr. Obama wants to improve United States relations with the Muslim world, that is the first step, many here said.

The Horror! Socialist Sweden

Part I:

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Part II:

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More Industries Want To Be Part Of Obama's Solutions Not Part Of The Problems

Today in the NY Times, I find a third example of the trend I first pointed out in yesterday's Are These Companies Smart Enough To Read The Writing On The Wall Or Are They Continuing To Game The System?, and it's a doozy: the insurance and drug companies that opposed Hillarycare in the 90's want to be part of Obama's health care solution!

President Obama engineered a political coup on Monday by bringing leaders of the health care industry to the White House to build momentum for his ambitious health care agenda.

Mr. Obama pronounced it “a historic day, a watershed event,” because doctors, hospitals, drug makers and insurance companies voluntarily offered $2 trillion in cost reductions over 10 years. The savings, he said, “will help us take the next and most important step — comprehensive health care reform” ...

The event was significant. There was something in it for Mr. Obama, and something for the industry — though not necessarily the same thing. Their interests overlap but do not coincide.

For Mr. Obama, the White House meeting was an opportunity to showcase his consensus-building approach, in contrast with the confrontational style of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who at this point in her husband’s first term attacked “price gouging, cost shifting and unconscionable profiteering” by the industry in a speech to union members.

Mr. Obama is not cracking the whip on the health care industry so much as wooing it, just as he said he would in the campaign.

For the health care and insurance executives, the savings initiative helps them secure a seat at the table where many decisions about their future will be made in the next year. They also ingratiated themselves with Democrats in the White House and Congress who are moving swiftly to reshape the nation’s health care system ...

Said David H. Nexon, senior executive vice president of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, one of the six health care industry groups that promised to lower costs. “Health care reform is moving very fast. We want to make sure it comes out in a way that’s workable and sustainable” ...

The consensus-building approach has already yielded some results. Insurance executives have offered to end certain underwriting practices, like refusing to cover individuals with pre-existing conditions or charging women higher rates than men, and they have invited Congress to impose stringent, uniform federal regulation on their industry. But even as insurers and health care providers stand shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Obama in vowing to slow the growth of health spending, they oppose him on other fronts. For example, insurance companies are opposed to a new government-sponsored health plan, which Mr. Obama supports but insurers fear could drive them out of business ...

Drew E. Altman, the president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, offered a historical perspective spanning nearly four decades.

“Neither managed care, nor wage and price controls, nor regulation, nor voluntary action nor market competition has had a lasting impact on our nation’s health care costs,” Mr. Altman said. “Reformers should not overpromise.”

Another (!) Dijon Mustard Cartoon

#3 (see the other two in Fox News & Its Base):

 

Are These Companies Smart Enough To Read The Writing On The Wall Or Are They Continuing To Game The System?

It's funny how sometimes interesting trends are revealed by happenstance. Earlier this morning I posted Major Opponent Of Obama's Plan To Increase College Aid Switches Sides, an entry about a major corporate opponent of increased government funding of college loans suddenly deciding to support Obama's position. Now there's this story about the leading cigarette manufacturer's change of heart over FDA regulation of their industry: all of a sudden they support this historic step (still opposed by all other cancer stick manufacturers).

So are these two just smarter, more astute companies better able to see which way the political winds are blowing. Or are they just trying to get in front of the wind so that they have a better chance of blowing it in the direction they want?

Yes and yes is the answer I think. Here's the FDA about-to-regulate cigarettes story from the Wash Post:

After 15 years of debate, tens of millions spent on lobbying and a roller-coaster legislative history, public health advocates say they believe Congress is finally ready to regulate tobacco -- and their opponents privately agree.

This week, a Senate committee will take up its version of a bill that passed the House by a comfortable margin last month. Supporters say they have more than the 60 votes needed to make the legislation filibuster-proof when it reaches the Senate floor sometime after Memorial Day.

The sponsors,  Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and  Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), with help from party leaders, have pushed the legislation onto a fast track. And President Obama, himself a smoker who has struggled to quit, has said he intends to sign the bill -- a reversal from President George W. Bush, who sought to kill it.

The legislation would give the Food and Drug Administration broad powers over the manufacturing and marketing of tobacco, a product used by 20 percent of Americans yet largely unregulated.

The very idea of tobacco regulation strikes some as nonsensical: Take a product that, if used as directed, will kill a third of those who use it and place it under the control of an agency charged with protecting public health. But advocates say FDA oversight is the best hope for reducing the 400,000 deaths each year from tobacco use ...

For the first time, the $89 billion tobacco industry would have to disclose the ingredients in its products. Under the measure, the FDA could ban the most harmful of the estimated 6,000 chemicals used in cigarettes, cigars and other tobacco products. And it could reduce the amount of nicotine, perhaps to a point where tobacco is no longer addictive and smokers who want to quit can break free more easily. The bill stops short of allowing the FDA to ban tobacco or reduce the amount of nicotine to zero.

The legislation would require tobacco companies to expand the size of warning labels from 30 percent to 50 percent of the package. The Senate bill mandates that graphic images of the health effects of tobacco consumption be included.

Advertising and promotion would be restricted. Tobacco manufacturers would be unable to use the terms "light," "mild" and "low" unless they can scientifically prove that the product so labeled is less harmful than standard tobacco. The bill would also create a tobacco center within the FDA funded by fees from the industry that are estimated to reach more than $500 million annually by 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The FDA first tried to regulate tobacco in the 1990s, but the industry battled it to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5 to 4 in 2000 that the agency had exceeded its statutory authority. It called on Congress to amend the law.

But during that legal battle, the political climate surrounding the issue shifted rapidly enough that by the time the Supreme Court rendered its decision, a curious thing had happened: Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro and the largest tobacco company in the country, said it would accept some government oversight.

Dick Cheney: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Go Dick!  Keep spewing the belief that the GOP's problem is not its unpopular principles, it is just how those unpopular principles are communicated (Republicans In The Wilderness: Is The Party Over?). And certainly keep attacking any Republican moderate who dares question your party's orthodoxy and inability to fix itself. That's the way to keep the Democrats in power for years and years and years.

From the NY Times:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday that he preferred Rush Limbaugh’s brand of conservatism to former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s, saying Mr. Powell had abandoned the Republican Party when he endorsed Barack Obama for president last year ...

Mr. Powell, a retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, identified himself as a Republican only after retiring from the military. Last week, Mr. Powell said the Republican Party was in “deep trouble” and needed to find a way back to the middle of the political spectrum and away from polarizing leaders like Mr. Limbaugh and Ms. Palin.

His view, if not a new one, came after Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched to the Democratic Party and as Republicans debated where the heart of the party lay. In response, Mr. Limbaugh suggested that the moderate Mr. Powell should leave the party.

“What Colin Powell needs to do is close the loop and become a Democrat, instead of claiming to be a Republican interested in reforming the Republican Party,” Mr. Limbaugh said on his talk show ...

Mr. Cheney said he did not want to drive moderates from the party, but did not want the party to move left. “I think there is room for moderates in the Republican Party,” he said. “I think partly it’s a semantic problem. I don’t think the party ought to move dramatically to the left, for example, in order to try to redefine its base. We are what we are.”

Fox News & Its Base

They're trying to bring their elitist theme from the campaign back: this is the second mustard cartoon (here is the other one) since the buger run video came out. Wow!

Military Spending Shift Faces GOP Opposition

It seems this LA Times analysis I quoted in Gates Mastery Of Congress & Defense Appropriations,

In a carefully orchestrated campaign, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates appears poised to push through what many consider a historic remaking of the military with relative ease, averting an expected battle royal with contractors and lawmakers.

might have been a bit premature. At least according to the NY Times:

Mr. Gates predicted more of these messy, unconventional wars, and he argued that this kind of conflict requires America to shift spending to items like mine-resistant vehicles, surveillance drones and medical-evacuation helicopters, at the expense of tanks, bombers and aircraft carriers.

But as Mr. Gates returned to Washington on Saturday for what will mostly likely be a lengthy, detailed and often hostile series of Congressional budget hearings this week, opponents of his risk assessment are attacking the spending plan as rendering America unprepared for traditional war.

They say the proposal goes too far in shifting money to unconventional warfare from the weapons needed to deter and defeat an enemy nation. And Mr. Gates’s focus on counterinsurgency training, they say, means that troops have not spent enough time honing their skills for conventional conflict.

Mr. Gates has slashed money for the Army’s future combat vehicle because its flat-bottom design made it vulnerable to roadside bombs. Here in Afghanistan, he examined a fleet of angular, heavily armored mine-resistant vehicles sent as part of the multibillion-dollar crash program he ordered to counter the insurgents’ weapon of choice ...

Mr. Gates has proposed eliminating money for the new, high-tech presidential helicopter and capping purchases of a top-of-the-line jet-fighter — but here he also met with the crew operating 10 medical-evacuation helicopters ordered from the Nevada desert to be on standby in the deserts of southern Afghanistan. Mr. Gates had been angered by how long it took to move the wounded, so he increased the number of helicopters here, plus three more field hospitals ...

The defense industry, which makes what Mr. Gates wants as well as what he does not, has chosen to mute its complaints on the proposed spending plan. But on Capitol Hill, champions of programs in jeopardy are preparing to do battle this week.

The proposed spending plan “is taking us down a path that leads to a weaker military that is poorly equipped,” said Senator James M. Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma.

“Are the forces being provided to our commanders in the field postured to counter the full spectrum of threats both in the near and far term?” he asked during a speech on the Senate floor. “Are we providing our troops the best and most capable equipment available? We are not today.”

Others, like Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, cite the threats posed by nations around the world that remain true adversaries — or at least are competitors to American interests.

In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy center in Washington, Mr. Cornyn said that China was upgrading and expanding its navy to challenge American warships, that Russia was striving to intimidate its neighbors and re-establish a sphere of influence, and that North Korea and Iran continued to expand their missile arsenals while pursuing nuclear weapons ...

Mr. Gates explained during troop visits in Afghanistan that half of his budget proposal remained committed to conventional warfare, while 40 percent paid for weapons that can be applied to both traditional and unconventional conflicts.

His attempt to rebalance military spending, Mr. Gates said, shifts only 10 percent of the budget to buying in the specialized tools of unconventional and counterinsurgency warfare.

Many of those most directly involved in today’s war say that the Gates budget proposal sets the priorities right, and that the complexities and rigors of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq have created the most capable American military in the nation’s history.

Pakistan President Zardari

Major Opponent Of Obama's Plan To Increase College Aid Switches Sides

A surprising turnaround in the push to get 1 of the 3 key Obama reforms enacted:a major opponent (and lobbying force) has come around to Obama's plan to increase aid to college students. I wonder if the health insurance companies are paying attention. From the Wash Post:

For the past two decades, every attempt to overhaul the $85-billion-a-year student loan industry by eliminating subsidies to lenders has faced insurmountable opposition from one of the most powerful institutions in the business: Sallie Mae, the world's largest student loan company.

But in a dramatic reversal, the lending behemoth now supports President Obama's efforts to kill the subsidies it has tried to protect for so long. Instead, the company has offered a proposal that calls for the government to hold on to the loans and pay private companies for originating and servicing them.

Sallie's plan is still slightly different from the one advanced by the administration, which entails the government originating loans itself. But the company's turnaround, which surprised many in the industry, could make it more likely that the administration will succeed in transforming the way that millions of students pay to attend college.

The story of how Sallie Mae came to jettison its 20-year support of federal subsidies provides a look at how an industry powerhouse worked to navigate the changing political tides of Washington, overcome a financial crisis that devastates its business model and break with its traditional allies to craft legislation that could ultimately leave it more powerful than ever.

Texas School Board Votes On The Age Of The Universe

Why are scientific questions being voted on by a bunch of politicians?  They are not a matter of opinion ...

Next up, a motion to declare pi equal to exactly three, because that's what God said it was in the Bible.

No Returns On Specter

This cartoonist reacts as I did to Better Quickly Start Acting Like You Switched Teams Specter:

 

Change Comes To Anti-Trust Enforcement

From the NY Times:

President Obama’s top antitrust official this week plans to restore an aggressive enforcement policy against corporations that use their market dominance to elbow out competitors or to keep them from gaining market share.

The new enforcement policy would reverse the Bush administration’s approach, which strongly favored defendants against antitrust claims. It would restore a policy that led to the landmark antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft and Intel in the 1990s.

The head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Christine A. Varney, is to announce the policy reversal in a speech she will give on Monday before the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy research organization. She will deliver the same speech on Tuesday to the United States Chamber of Commerce.

The speeches were described by people who have consulted with her about the policy shift. The administration is hoping to encourage smaller companies in an array of industries to bring their complaints to the Justice Department about potentially improper business practices by their larger rivals. Some of the biggest antitrust cases were initiated by complaints taken to the Justice Department.

Ms. Varney is expected to say that the administration rejects the impulse to go easy on antitrust enforcement during weak economic times. She will assert instead that severe recessions can provide dangerous incentives for large and dominating companies to engage in predatory behavior that harms consumers and weakens competition. The announcement is aimed at making sure that no court or party to a lawsuit can cite the Bush administration policy as the government’s official view in any pending cases.

In the speeches, Ms. Varney is expected to explicitly warn judges and litigants in antitrust lawsuits not involving the government to ignore the Bush administration’s policies, which were formally outlined in a report by the Justice Department last year. The report applied legal standards that made it difficult to bring new cases involving monopoly and predatory practices.

As a result of the Bush administration’s interpretation of antitrust laws, the enforcement pipeline for major monopoly cases — which can take years for prosecutors to develop — is thin. During the Bush administration, the Justice Department did not file a single case against a dominant firm for violating the antimonopoly law.

Many smaller companies complaining of abusive practices by their larger rivals were so frustrated by the Bush administration’s antitrust policy that they went to the European Commission and to Asian authorities.

Ms. Varney’s new policy more closely aligns American antitrust policy on monopolies and predatory practices with the views of antitrust regulators at the European Commission.

Sunday Afternoon Relaxation

The President, at the annual White House Correspondents' dinner, is pretty funny as he makes fun of the GOP, Hillary and himself (entire video below):

Wanda Sykes, the main entertainer, was also very good (and a good deal more biting):

The Right To Bare Arms

An essay from Sally Quinn, on Mother's Day & Michelle Obama:

... Michelle Obama's arms, we determined, were transformational. Her arms are representative of a new kind of woman: young, strong, vigorous, intelligent, accomplished, sexual, powerful, embracing and, most of all, loving.

Today is Mother's Day. Today we should celebrate Michelle Obama's arms as the arms of a mother.

This is a woman who has the courage to say "I am mom in chief" and make her children and her family -- unapologetically -- her No. 1 priority. She is able to do this because she is so intelligent and accomplished that she doesn't have to prove anything to anyone. She is healthy enough to be able to say, this is who I am, these are my values and my priorities.

She has come under attack for exposing her arms. They are toned and muscular, burnished and beautiful. That has to be threatening to some. For some men, often, a strong woman makes them feel diminished. For some feminists, the idea of an educated woman not taking on a full-time serious job is a frightening throwback.

They are wrong. Nothing could be more empowering than to see a woman with all of the attributes of Michelle Obama embrace her children the way she does. She loves those girls, and she is giving them a role model for the kind of strong woman that she wants them to be. A woman should have the right to choose. In every respect. Having a great education, a job, a career is fulfilling. She has a Harvard Law degree and had a powerful job herself. She will take on projects in the White House that will ultimately prove to be transformational. And she likely will return to her career one day when her children are older.

Marriage Equality Cartoons

 

 

 

 

57% Do Not Want Congress To Investigate Torture

Depressing results from a CNN poll:

A national poll indicates that most Americans don't want to see an investigation of Bush administration officials who authorized harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists, even though most people think such procedures were forms of torture.

Six in 10 people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Wednesday believe that some of the procedures, such as waterboarding, were a form of torture, with 36 percent disagreeing. But half the public approves of the Bush administration's decision to use of those techniques during the questioning of suspected terrorists, with 50 percent in approval and 46 percent opposed.

"Roughly one in five Americans believe those techniques were torture but nonetheless approve of the decision to use those procedures against suspected terrorists," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "That goes a long way toward explaining why a majority don't want to see former Bush officials investigated."

Fifty-seven percent of those questioned don't want Congress to investigate Bush officials who authorized those harsh interrogation procedures, with 42 percent calling for action by lawmakers. Fifty-five percent also don't want a similar investigation by an independent panel.

Investigations of the military and intelligence personnel who actually used those techniques during interrogations are even less popular. Nearly two out of three Americans don't want Congress to investigate the who carried out those procedures. Fifty-five percent don't want a similar investigation by an independent panel ...

"The Obama administration's recent decisions not to launch an investigation into these matters may sit well with the public overall but not with members of Obama's own party," Holland said. "Most independents and Republicans don't think it's a good idea to investigate Bush officials involved in these decisions. But about two-thirds of Democrats support such investigations."

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted April 23-26, with 2,019 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The Bristol Pallin Center

Sarah Palin's Popularity At Home Dives

From the Wall St Journal:

Once billed as the most popular governor in America, Alaska Republican Sarah Palin has seen her popularity take a dive.

According to a recent Hays Research poll, 54% of Alaskans have either a very or somewhat positive view of the governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee while 42% have a very or somewhat negative view.

The results are vastly different than a similar poll taken by Hays Research about a year ago which gave Palin an 86% positive rating and a 9% negative rating.

Certainly one factor: stupid moves like The Bristol Pallin Center.