U.S. government alleges Iranian involvement in plot to assassinate Saudi ambassador. But something stinks.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As you've likely heard by now, it is being reported that Iran has been implicated in an assassination plot in the U.S.:

FBI and DEA agents have disrupted a plot to commit a "significant terrorist act in the United States" tied to Iran, federal officials told ABC News today.

The officials said the plot included the assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir, with a bomb and subsequent bomb attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, D.C. Bombings of the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Buenos Aires, Argentina, were also discussed, according to the U.S. officials.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in an announcement today that the plan was "conceived, sponsored and was directed from Iran" by a faction of the government and called it a "flagrant" violation of U.S. and international law.

"The U.S. is committed to holding Iran accountable for its actions," Holder said. 

Wait... what? Really? Iran? Terrorism? Against a high-value Saudi target in the U.S.? Something doesn't seem right.

As Max Fisher asks at The Atlantic -- and more people need to be asking this -- "would Iran really want to blow up the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.?"

Assuming that Iran is thinking rationally, the answer is obvious: No.

If they would go through all the trouble to organize a bombing attack on U.S. soil -- no easy thing to do -- why target someone so low-level? For that matter, why launch an attack on U.S. soil at all, something Iran has never done in the tumultuous decade since September 11? Why now, as opposed to, for example, during the height of the Iraq war? Why incur the wrath of the U.S. now, so soon after releasing the U.S. hikers detained in Tehran? (Their release was a modest and long overdue concession, but one that suggests the path of Iranian diplomacy.)

And why get involved with Mexican drug cartels? Is that really someplace where Iran has good contacts these days? As Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress asked, "Wiring money into US? Talking about plot on phone? Does that sound like an intel service to you?"

All that said, it really is possible that this is exactly what Holder says it is. Stranger things have happened, and Iran may have simply made an enormous, if out-of-character and obviously self-hurting, blunder. It's also possible that the two Iranian men really were planning to bomb the ambassador, but are either rogue members of the Revolutionary Guards or not really members at all. Clearly, there is much more information in this story that has not yet been made public. Maybe that information, if it ever comes out, will back up the official U.S. version -- which the White House already says it will use to escalate sanctions -- and maybe it will tell a different story. But, either way, the story as we now know it would have been unlikely to persuade Iran's leaders that this was a good idea.

It's just not in Iran's interests to be involved with something like this. And, indeed, there's no evidence -- at least no evidence that has been released publicly -- that Iran's government was behind this alleged plot:

The Justice Department statement notes that two men "have been charged in New York for their alleged participation in a plot directed by elements of the Iranian government to murder the Saudi Ambassador to the United States with explosives while the Ambassador was in the United States."

But what elements? What does that even mean?

One of the men is an Iranian-American. The other is "an Iran-based member of Iran's Qods Force, which is a special operations unit of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that is said to sponsor and promote terrorist activities abroad." Okay, but does this mean the plot was officially sanctioned -- and that therefore Iran needs to be held accountable "for its actions," as Holder put it?

The statement notes that there are "Iran-based co-conspirators." Okay, maybe, but it seems far more likely that these two men and whatever shadowy co-conspirators they had in Iran had gone rogue, perhaps with rogue elements of Qods supporting them, than that this was some officially sanctioned operation. Indeed:

Senior Obama administration officials said the U.S. currently does not have any information indicating that either Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad necessarily knew about the assassination plot and said the U.S. will pursue a path of response that would not include the possibility of an armed conflict with Iran. 

So, then, what? Other countries with whom the U.S. has been on generally good terms (e.g., Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) have rogue elements operating within "the government." Iran just happens to be... well, not a friend, and so an easy target. (And let's not forget that the U.S. even kills its own citizens without anything resembling due process. President Obama has made assassination a core component of his ongoing war on terror.) 

As Steve Clemons writes, "[t]his alleged assassination plot simultaneously may indicate both the intensity of anti-Saudi passion among Iran's senior leaders and a greater aggressiveness by Iran against the U.S." But what if there's much less to it than Holder and the U.S. government would have us believe? Even it's not true that the story is pure fabrication, as Iran suggests -- there may very well have been some sort of plot, after all -- what if the allegations are being trumped up for political reasons? Bush-Cheney did that all the time. Do we really think Obama is above such things?

(What possible political reasons? To suck up to the Saudis? To suck up to Israel? -- especially important given 2012, and Obama has already vetoed Palestinian statehood. To vilify Iran even more? For Obama to show that he and his administration are tough on terrorism? Who knows.)

Think Progress has a couple of updates:

-- "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview with the AP that the alleged terror plot, which she said 'crosses a line,' also 'creates a potential for international reaction that will further isolate Iran.' The U.S. is in discussions with other countries about potential diplomatic moves to hold Iran to account." 

But shouldn't there be more evidence to justify any such international moves?

-- "'One thing that's important to remember,... these are serious allegations but at this point they are just allegations,' said CNN's Reza Sayah, 'And if you look at this regime's history, it doesn't fit their M.O. Is it possible that they were involved? Certainly. Do these allegations need to be proven, do we need to see more details? I would say certainly before jumping to conclusions.'"

Yes, exactly, allegations. But jumping to conclusions is what people are doing, and how could they not? The Justice Department statement is somewhat qualified in its claims, but the public message is that Iran was directly behind the plot. And the media, needless to say, are running wild with it. Sexy stories like this don't come around every day, after all, and they're in the business of selling fear, not nuance, of engaging in idle speculation, not rational examination of the facts.

Look, I'm not saying there wasn't a plot, and, if there was, I'm not saying Iran wasn't involved in it. Maybe it was, if not officially at least through rogue elements with ties to terrorism, rogue elements either acting on their own or with the unofficial blessing of someone higher up the food chain.

But something stinks here, and it wouldn't surprise me if this just faded away, political points having been made.

A muffin does not cost $16

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So you remember those $16 muffins, the ones served at a DOJ conference a couple of years ago, the ones conservatives are using as yet more evidence of government bloat, of government spending run wild?

A complete and utter myth. There were no $16 muffins.

Thanks to Kevin Drum for pointing this out -- though, of course, the myth has already become part of the right's anti-government narrative.

Wherein, of course, the truth has no place whatsoever.

Obama's recess appointments and the faux outrage of Republicans

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Republicans are outraged -- outraged, they scream at us! -- over President Obama's recess appointments (six on Wednesday alone!). How dare he? Is he a tyrant or something? A Republican president would never ever ever do such a thing. Never ever!

(Ahem... John Bolton... ahem. And, no, I did not scream bloody murder when Bush appointed him. While I vehemently opposed Bolton, I recognized Bush's move as perfectly legal. As you may remember, Bolton was never confirmed and ended up resigning several months after his appointment.)

And, of course, all Republicans care about is bipartisanship. They just want to help out, to work productively with Democrats to get things done. They'd never ever ever act in a partisan way. Never ever!

Or am I to believe that WaPo's "Right Turn" columnist, Jennifer Rubin, is just full of shit?

On Wednesday, Obama shed any pretense of bipartisanship in making six recess appointments. As were his previous recess appointments, this batch included two individuals whose records are so controversial that they could not obtain confirmation even with 59 Democratic senators.

Thankfully, our good friend Steve Benen has taken the time to wade into the muck to set the record straight:

President Obama nominated six qualified officials to fill a variety of executive branch vacancies. These nominations were considered in the respective Senate committees, and approved by committee members. If brought to the floor, each of the six would have been confirmed, most with more than 60 votes. (When Rubin claims they were too "controversial" to "obtain confirmation," this has no relation to reality. She's simply wrong.)

Knowing this, conservative Republicans, who've engaged in obstructionist tactics unseen in American history, placed anonymous holds on the nominees. They could have simply voted against the nominees and urged their colleagues to follow suit, but that wasn't good enough -- Republicans had to shut down the advise-and-consent process altogether.

This, in turn, left the president with a choice: (a) leave the positions vacant until a Senate minority agreed to let the chamber vote up or down; or (b) fill the vacancies with qualified nominees who enjoyed the support of a Senate majority. He wisely chose the latter.

In other words, Rubin is indeed full of shit.

Plain and simple, this is about Republican obstructionism (a partisan effort by the disloyal opposition to prevent Obama from being able to govern effectively), and Obama's response to it, not Democratic partisanship or a presidential abuse of power.

And these supposed Constitution fetishists of the right ought to read the Constitution, along with some history:

Every president since George Washington has used recess appointments; it's a power explicitly given to the president in the Constitution.

Game. Set. Match.

**********

The appointment Rubin most objects to is James Cole as deputy attorney general. She points to his supposed "controversial stance on the War on Terror" as justification for blocking him. Rep. Peter King (R-NY), that loathsome and utterly hypocritical supporter of terrorism, called his appointment "absolutely shocking."

Really?

As David Waldman points out at Daily Kos, Cole supports civilian trials for terror suspects. Republicans do not, of course, but Cole's "stance" is hardly all that "controversial," and certainly not so beyond the pale that he doesn't deserve a high-ranking job in the Justice Department -- which, of course, is a political job, and one should expect the person who holds it to have some views that the other side may not agree with. And, again, he was only blocked because a senator put a hold on him, not because he didn't have solid support in the Senate.

Waldman also notes that Cole has targeted political corruption, including among Republicans, most notably Newt Gingrich. But that can't have anything to do with it, right?

Because Republicans are so very honest, so very helpful, so very bipartisan. They say so themselves!!!

**********

Yes, the shit stinks. And there's a lot of it.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free... oh, and your Nazis too

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This certainly gives new meaning to what comes next in "The New Colossus" -- that is, to "wretched refuse":

A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a "safe haven" in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad...

Perhaps the report's most damning disclosures come in assessing the Central Intelligence Agency's involvement with Nazi émigrés. Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the C.I.A.'s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.

The Justice Department report, describing what it calls "the government's collaboration with persecutors," says that O.S.I. [the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, "created in 1979 to deport Nazis] investigators learned that some of the Nazis "were indeed knowingly granted entry" to the United States, even though government officials were aware of their pasts. "America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became — in some small measure — a safe haven for persecutors as well," it said. 

(Read the whole piece for specific details.)

Obviously, the U.S. wasn't pro-Nazi, but it is rather troubling that the CIA provided such aid and comfort to Nazis (regardless of what those Nazis provided in terms of intelligence). And this wasn't just back in the 50s. Nazis were being protected well into the '80s.

Hypocrisy? Sure, although the U.S. played nicely with right-wing dictatorships throughout the Cold War, so it hardly comes as much surprise that it would also protect Nazis. And of course it's much worse than hypocrisy or a failure to abide by America's supposed principles and values.

No, the U.S. wasn't overtly pro-Nazi, but it certainly found common cause with Nazis after the war, and was more than willing to work closely with (or use) Nazis (ex- or otherwise) to advance its objectives.

It was a time of widespread anti-Soviet paranoia, but America's priorities were clear, and they had nothing to do with bringing significant figures in Hitler's regime to justice or with ensuring that the truth would come out.

(For more, see Jeff Kaye at FDL.)

Transparency, huh?

By Mustang Bobby.

Mark Thiessen, the Washington Post's newest columnist, defends Liz Cheney's witch-hunt of the Justice Department.

Would most Americans want to know if the Justice Department had hired a bunch of mob lawyers and put them in charge of mob cases? Or a group of drug cartel lawyers and put them in charge of drug cases? Would they want their elected representatives to find out who these lawyers were, which mob bosses and drug lords they had worked for, and what roles they were now playing at the Justice Department? Of course they would -- and rightly so.

Yet Attorney General Eric Holder hired former al-Qaeda lawyers to serve in the Justice Department and resisted providing Congress this basic information.

[...]

Yet for raising questions, Cheney and the Republican senators have been vilified. Former Clinton Justice Department official Walter Dellinger decried the "shameful" personal attacks on "these fine lawyers," while numerous commentators leveled charges of "McCarthyism."

This is McCarthyism in and of itself. In his opening sentence, Mr. Thiessen jumps to the conclusion that the attorneys defending the suspects are sympathetic to their clients' beliefs by comparing them to "mob lawyers" in charge of prosecuting mob cases. He carries on, citing an investigation by Fox News as his source of information that these attorneys are somehow unpatriotic, and compares the situation to the attacks when "fine lawyers like John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Jim Haynes, Steve Bradbury and others came under vicious personal attack" during the Bush administration. In other words, the men who basically said that the president has the power to do whatever he wants to get information out of suspects, up to and including torture and killing, were vilified for their positions. Aside from the fact that the two situations are in no way comparable, the attorneys defending the al-Qaeda suspects were doing what lawyers do and what the Constitution requires, whereas John Yoo and Jay Bybee were clearly skating out onto thin ice, both legally and morally. And to lump David Addington, the man who helped out Valerie Plame, in with them is, to be generous, a stretch of right-wing logic that doesn't even pass the laugh test. Since Mr. Thiessen's previous employment was as a speechwriter for George W. Bush, it's pretty clear that his acquaintance with the canon of ethics for lawyers and the interpretation of the rule of law is, to say the least, problematic.

Mr. Thiessen is also ignoring the fact that a slew of former Bush administration lawyers and the Hero of the Clinton Impeachment, Kenneth Starr, think it is McCarthyism.

"We consider these attacks both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications," wrote the 19 lawyers whose names were attached to the statement as of early Monday.

The statement cited John Adams's defense of British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre to argue that "zealous representation of unpopular clients" is an important American tradition.

The attacks on the lawyers "undermine the Justice system more broadly," they wrote, by "delegitimizing" any system in which accused terrorists have lawyers, whether civilian courts of military tribunals.

The one thing that's clear in Ms. Cheney's crusade and Mr. Thiessen's enabling of it is that neither of them give a flying rat's ass about "transparency" or the "right to know." It's a malicious attempt to tear down the Department of Justice for political gain. It's nothing new for the Cheneys, and Mr. Thiessen is just another one of their Wormtongues.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

WH considering military trials for 9/11 suspects

By Creature

If this comes to pass, and that's a big if, AG Holder should resign in protest. Someone needs to take a stand. It's a shame that that someone doesn't seem to be Barack Obama.

Civil rights, back on the agenda

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I tweeted on this last night, but I thought I'd link here to the NYT story:

Seven months after taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is reshaping the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by pushing it back into some of the most important areas of American political life, including voting rights, housing, employment, bank lending practices and redistricting after the 2010 census.

As part of this shift, the Obama administration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly.

It's about time. Anyone who thinks that discrimination against minority and other disadvantaged groups is a thing of the past is living in a dreamworld of delusion. And anyone who thinks -- as Bush and his underlings did -- that there's no need to enforce civil rights is essentially sanctioning bigotry.

Conservatives talk up equal rights for all, hence in part their opposition to "special" rights for some, but they don't believe in such fairness anymore than they believe in universal health insurance. Yes, it would be nice if there were no such thing as discrimination, and no need for a Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, but the reality is still quite different than the dream.

And, in opposing the enforcement of civil rights, conservatives are disregarding the plight of countless Americans who are still treated unfairly simply because of the colour of their skin or because of some other disenfranchising characteristic -- and not because they genuinely believe in equality, either in dream or reality, but because of their own partisan, ideological preferences, not to mention their own personal advantages.

Quote of the Day

By Creature

"This is an excellent day for those who believe in presidential adherence to the rule of law [...]" -- Digby, reacting to Obama's great pick of Dawn Johnsen to head the DOJ's Office of Legal Council. It's a sad day when we cheer presidential adherence to the rule of law, but such is the state Bush & Cheney have left us in.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)

Obama picks Eric Holder as attorney general (maybe)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff is reporting that "President-elect Obama has decided to tap Eric Holder as his attorney general, putting the veteran Washington lawyer in place to become the first African-American to head the Justice Department, according to two legal sources close to the presidential transition."

There is still the not-so-small matter of vetting to be done "before the selection is final."

Regardless, any "announcement is not likely until after Obama announces his choices to lead the Treasury and State departments."

By the way, Holder, an Obama friend and advisor, is the Clintonite behind the infamous Marc Rich pardon.

I must admit, I don't know much about him -- Holder, that is -- but I've never been terribly impressed.

**********

UPDATE:

1) Mark Halperin posts a release from the American Constitution Society (ACS). In a recent speech to that organization, Holder was impressive in his criticism of the Bush Administration's conduct of the war on terror (and in his argument for what is needed now):

Our needlessly abusive and unlawful practices in the "War on Terror" have diminished our standing in the world community and made us less, rather than more, safe. For the sake of our safety and security, and because it is the right thing to do, the next president must move immediately to reclaim America's standing in the world as a nation that cherishes and protects individual freedom and basic human rights.

2) Jeralyn Merritt notes, adding to the con side: "As U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., Eric Holder sought to raise marijuana penalties and restore mandatory minimum penalties for drug crimes." Not good.

3) Steve Benen writes that everything he knows of Holder is "positive," which may be an exaggeration. Still, he links to this fantastic speech Holder gave to the ACS in 2004.

On the strength of this speech alone, my estimation of Holder has risen immensely today. Consider, for example, this passage:

I believe that we have the capacity as a nation to meet all of these challenges. But the answers to these problems are not to be found in the conservative agenda that relies on what are already old proposals and tired rhetoric.

The solutions are contained within a new, dynamic, progressive movement that has the ability to inspire and motivate the people of this nation in the way that progressives have in the past.

I'm keeping an open mind at this point, but he may very well be the right person for the job.

Return to the rule of law? The horizon is yet obscure.

By Carol Gee

President-elect Barack Obama is a lawyer. He was for several years a popular teacher (rising to senior lecturer level), of constitutional law at The University of Chicago, and was also a community organizer. He has a good resume. What will that mean to his transition into the presidency, and subsequent efforts (we all absolutely assume) to restore the rule of law to his administration? McClatchy has the whole story.

• Department of Justice -- There will be a bevy of great candidates suggested for the Attorney General's position. In the meantime David Ogden, a Clinton administration veteran, is heading the DOJ transition team, according to TPM Muckraker. The post quotes the WaPo:
  
  

  "Democrats and interest groups have been developing "to do" lists for Justice, which had deemphasized antitrust, civil rights and environmental enforcement work under President Bush."
  
  

  Ogden's deputy on the transition will be Thomas Perelli, who, according to the Post, "supervised the government team suing cigarette makers and oversaw the Justice unit that defends federal agencies in complex legal disputes."

• "Confronting the other 'third rail' of politics -- Criminal Justice Reform" is from the ACLU blog. We have heard President-elect Obama talk about the huge numbers of people incarcerated in the United States. Can it be high on his agenda, given the economic crisis? To quote:
  
  

  . . . released this week . . . "Smart on Crime: Recommendations for the Next Administration and Congress." This transition guide for the Obama administration and the 111th Congress lays out in great detail all of the reforms, both major and minor, that should be undertaken to have a criminal justice system that protects public safety, but also honors our commitments to fairness and equality under the law for all. A coalition of more than 20 organizations (including the ACLU) comprised the 2009 Criminal Justice Transition Coalition that compiled these excellent, workable recommendations.



• Copyright czar -- In October, our current president Bush (OCP) signed a new law creating a cabinet-level position who is to be, to quote Wired-Threat Level, "charged with implementing a nationwide plan to combat piracy and "report directly to the president and Congress regarding domestic international intellectual property enforcement programs." Our next president (ONP) will no doubt make the first appointment.

What will an Obama administration be able to do to restore the rule of law in the face of extremely high expectations? How are we to feel about the bizarre news that there was a run to buy guns yesterday? Will OCP Bush close Guantanamo before he leaves office? Will ONP Obama seek to restore the right of Habeas Corpus if the question comes before the Supreme Court? We all have our own ideas. Looking to my civil liberties guru, Glenn Greenwald, who has often been skeptical of Obama's willingness to vote as a true liberal, says in his Saturday post:

(3). . . people [ ] start pressuring Obama now to pay attention to their political principles and agendas. And it's certainly likely that Obama will end up doing many, many things that warrant and provoke intense criticism. I have no doubt about that. But he's entitled to actually start doing things -- on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, civil liberties, the economy, and otherwise -- before judgments are formed.

"Like Lincoln and FDR, Obama faces nation in crisis," Yahoo! News headlined today (Sunday). To quote the article's conclusion, about which I wrote the night of the election:

Obama supporters who spontaneously flocked to the White House into the wee hours after his election Tuesday night were anxious for Obama to move forward. Gazing at the illuminated Executive Mansion where Bush slept, one waved signs that said: "Why wait? Evict Bush now."

For some, jubilation was tempered by recognition of the enormity of the tasks Obama faces.

"It's not just about him," said Rachel Reclam, of Olympia, Wash., an international affairs student at George Washington University. "He inspired people, but I'm not expecting miracles. The financial crisis, the war in Iraq, the health care crisis are not going to be over tomorrow."

Thousands -- or millions -- of us were moved to tears this past week. It happened to me when I realized that the people on the TV screen in the shadows were on Pennsylvania Avenue. That is where I would have chosen to be if I could have traveled last Tuesday. And my anger is not yet completely gone. Regret for the lost years is what the tears were about, that and utter relief that this era has come to an end and a new one has begun. As I have said before, it is a sea change. And, at the moment on this Sunday, it is entirely enough.

References:

1. Michael Rattner at Dandelion Salad -- video on Obama and civil liberties.
2. ACLU transition plan for the Obama administration: "Actions for restoring America."
3. Rising Hegemon posted a neat cartoon of Lincoln. H/T to "betmo" for this.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Exploring rights and wrongs

By Carol Gee

Knowing the difference between right and wrong . . . is at times a murky business. It is not always easy to see what is beneath the surface of reality.

Fallout the so-called "war on terror" -- Telecommunications companies achieved immunity from lawsuits in the latest Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act revision. And insurance companies are exploiting terrorism fears as they set museum insurance rates. These items from my CQ Behind the Lines free e-mail newsletter, by David C. Morrison, of 8/15/08:

State and local: . . Vermont’s two-year investigation into allegations that telecoms released customer data to NSA snoops appears to be drawing to a close, The Barre Times Argus tells.

Kulture Kanyon: . . Since terror fears spiked seven years ago, insurance hikes have “threatened to strangle museums’ ability to present important art to the public,” a curator tells the L.A. Times’ Mike Boehm

"This is so wrong," -- is the headline about this item from the NYT in, "Police State USA" at Yes, I take it personally. My blog friend, "betmo's" link* describes how a man got caught up in an immigration sweep, was shuttled from facility to facility, and then died due to failure to receive even minimal medical care. The map at this site is also very revealing. To quote:

. . . fifteen years of an exemplary life in the U.S. only to get thrown into a detention center. . . detention watch network has put together this handy map...

Hate speech is flat wrong -- Conservatives have long called for the heads of prominent liberals. Looks like they got their wish. This story came from my friend Jon. It was posted by Steven D. at AlterNet, and titled, "The Tragic Arkansas Shooting and Conservative Hate Speech," taken from the Booman Tribune, August 14, 2008. To quote:

. . . there was no personal connection between the shooter and Bill Gwatney, and apparently there wasn't one. Instead, there are some initial eerie similarities between the shooter Timothy Dale Johnson, and the man who massacred members of the Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tennessee last month. Both, for example had just lost their jobs, and both were very, very angry about that fact

. . . It's past time for members of the the right wing wurlitzer to apologize for their hate speech and to renounce any further use of the language of extermination with respect to their political, religious and ideological adversaries, as well as their demonization of minorities.

Stealing the words of another to use as one's own is wrong. Jody Rosen posted an article* "Dude, You Stole My Article" -- How I investigated a suspicious alt weekly -- at Slate Magazine on Aug. 6, 2008, about someone at a Texas newspaper, The Bulletin, who plagiarized an article about Jimmy Buffett.

What is wrong with this picture, if anything? This item* came from World Changing: "Virtual Transgender Suit, Avatar Termination and Other Online World Tales," by Regine Debatty, August 15, 2008. To quote:

You might remember that a year ago Marc Owens designed the Avatar Machine, a system which replicates the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface.

. . . A study by psychologists at Nottingham Trent University has found that 54 percent of all males and 68 percent of all females "gender swap"--or create online personas of their opposite sex.

. . . Another of Owens' projects, Sabre & Mace - Second Death, was concerned more specifically with the online environment Second Life.

Collaborating with Tony Mullin, he created SABRE & MACE, a company that offers virtual characters the opportunity to experience death as a way to close their user account permanently. The project examines the notion of feeling sentimental toward a virtual character and examines the link between sentimentality and tangibility.

The ability to become invisible likely would never be allowed by our government's security apparatus. Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the FBI, the National Security Agency and many other government entities all want their full range of rights to search for terrorists and other suspicious people. This intriguing little blurb* is from The Raw Story, "Invisibility Cloak Now Within Sight: Scientists," 8/11/08. To quote:

The age-old fantasy of making yourself invisible has taken a step toward reality, with scientists saying they have created three-dimensional materials that can bend visible light.

*Thanks for these links from "betmo," who writes life's journey.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

When is a crime not a crime?

by Capt. Fogg

"Professionalism is alive and well at the Justice Department,"

says Michael Mukasey and I'm sure he's right, but just what is it that the Bush Action Team is professional about? Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association, the Attorney General said

"not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime."

So when is breaking the law not a crime? I think we know: not when the professional lawbreakers do it.

Mukasey has announced, according to USA Today, that "former Justice Department officials will not face prosecution for letting improper political considerations drive hirings of prosecutors, immigration judges and other career government lawyers."

Not that it's not against the law and it's not as though there is no evidence and testimony that the law was broken. It's just that certain people are above laws meant for the proletariat. Certain people belong to the class of übermenschen. Just ask the Nazis Bush administration.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

When the Law breaks the law; or, the politicization of Justice

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Here's another sordid chapter of Bush's presidency -- and of Bush's legacy -- not to mention of the history of the Republican Party and its various conservative organs:

Former Justice Department counselor Monica M. Goodling and former chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson routinely broke the law by conducting political litmus tests on candidates for jobs as immigration judges and line prosecutors, according to an inspector general's report released today.

Goodling passed over hundreds of qualified applicants and squashed the promotions of others after deeming candidates insufficiently loyal to the Republican party, said investigators, who interviewed 85 people and received information from 300 other job seekers at Justice. Sampson developed a system to screen immigration judge candidates based on improper political considerations and routinely took recommendations from the White House Office of Political Affairs and Presidential Personnel, the report said. [emphasis added]

Indeed, just to drive the point home, one of the questions Goodling asked applicants was this: "What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?"

Which would be funny if, say, Stephen Colbert were uttering the line, but when two top Justice officials act like they're serving Stalin, well, that ain't so amusing.

But it's just government-as-usual under Bush, who, along with his minions and underlines, has been spent much of his presidency picking away at the the very foundations of American democracy.

Gee, here's a surprise!

By Carl

Political patronage in the Justice Department? Who'da thunk?

WASHINGTON - Scores of highly credentialed young lawyers and law students were denied interviews for coveted positions at the Justice Department because of an illegal screening process that took political and ideological views and affiliations into account rather than merit, Justice Department investigators concluded in a report released Tuesday.

In 2006, some applicants for sought-after jobs in the department's honors program and summer intern program were rejected because they were members of the American Constitution Society or Planned Parenthood or because they expressed concern about gender discrimination in the military, the report found.

Other students or graduates who were brushed aside included a University of Alabama law graduate, ranked sixth in the class, who had written a paper on the detention of aliens under the USA Patriot Act, a Yale Law School graduate who was fluent in Arabic and a Georgetown law student who had worked for Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign.

In another case, a Harvard Law student was passed over after criticizing the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

Believe it or not, this does not overly concern me. In an administration as overtly partisan and hostile to Democrats and moderates (they call them "liberals" to boot!) as the Bush administration, there are bigger fish to fry than whether a few summer interns were passed over for less qualified candidates because Daddy gave to the wrong party.

What we SHOULD be focusing on is that party ideology became so blatant as to create an atmosphere that forced even Republicans already working for the DoJ to deny their own sense of equity and equanimity and tow a biased and unfair politicized agenda.

It's one thing to seek out an agenda-driven department, Presidents do that all the time, even with "nonpartisan" panels, it is another thing entirely to treat a department of professionals like it was just another commando unit in a far greater army of oppression and injustice.

When your own partisans, in other words, think something is a bad idea, rather than dispose of them, it might make sense to keep even their timid and modest objections in mind when fomenting policies and executing same. Just a thought, altho this administration is long on tales of people forced out, Colin Powell and John O'Neill being the marquee names, for moderation in anything.

You get bad apples in all administration and the truth is, Alberto Gonzalez was an unabashed failure as Attorney General of the United States. This is just another example of his fraudulent oversight of the department.

But keep in mind, as Joe Conason points out, that Gonzalez used the tool made available to him by someone who ought to know better, Arlen Specter:

But that wholesome safeguard was breached in December 2005, when the Senate renewed the Patriot Act. At the behest of the Justice Department, an aide to Sen. Arlen Specter slipped a provision into the bill that permitted the White House to place its own appointees in vacant U.S. attorney positions permanently and without Senate confirmation. So silently was this sleight of hand performed that Specter himself now claims, many months later, to have been completely unaware of the amendment's passage. (Of course, it would be nice if the senators actually read the legislation before they voted, particularly when they claim to be the authors.)

The staffer who reportedly performed this bit of dirty work is Michael O'Neill, a law professor at George Mason University and former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. As the Washington Times explained when O'Neill was appointed as the Senate Judiciary Committee's chief counsel, many observers believed that Specter had hired him to reassure conservatives of his loyalty to the Bush White House. Right-wing distrust had almost ousted the Pennsylvania moderate from the Judiciary chairmanship, and appointing O'Neill was apparently the price for keeping that post.

Evidently O'Neill rewarded Specter by sneaking through legislation to deprive him and his fellow senators of one of their most important powers, at the behest of an attorney general intent on aggrandizing executive power. The results of this backstage betrayal -- now playing out in a wave of politicized dismissals and hirings -- were perfectly predictable and utterly poisonous.

Specter, by dint of his politically moderate (in Republican perspective, dangerously liberal) positions, was forced to accept a situation whereby he had to genuflect to the more adamantine hearts of his oberfuhren.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Tortured thinking, Part III -- the last witnesses

By Carol Gee

The House Committee on the Judiciary/Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, held an important hearing on "Detainee Interrogation Rules" May 6. Today's post wraps up a series detailing what I think are the most significant aspects of that hearing.

What we learned is that, from very early on the lawyers at the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and the Office of Legal Counsel were tasked by their bosses to figure out how the law could be construed to immunize interrogators of U.S. detainees from torture charges. That is a serious accusation, but that seems to be what went on shortly after the first suspect was captured and was discovered to be uncooperative. Many in the administration, if not most, were convinced that another attack was imminent, and they were desperate to prevent that. Unfortunately that desperation seemed to mean "at almost any cost" to the integrity to the U.S. rule of law.

The first two posts in my recent series were:

1. Tortured Thinking, Part I -- the Players focused on the committee members and the hearing agenda. The hearing was chaired by New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler. His House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Democrat John Conyers of Michigan, sat in and skillfully supported the very pointed questioning from all members. I also covered the way the Republican Members generally approached the agenda with considerable seriousness, and a relative minimum of politics. The agenda was to find out more about the various memos defining extreme interrogation (what many of us call torture), written by Bush administration officials during the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.


2. Tortured Thinking, Part II -- the Witnesses focused on two of the four witnesses' sworn testimony, that of British law Professor Phillipe Sands and Georgetown Professor David Luban. Sands has spent a year interviewing almost all of the people involved in this emerging scandal for his excellent historical analysis book, "The Green Light." He wrote a fascinating related article published in this month's Vanity Fair, referenced below. David Luban specializes in legal ethics; he pulled no punches in his testimony.
   

The last two witnesses, whose testimony is covered here, were former Reagan and Bush administration Counsel's Office lawyer David B. Rivkin and Professor Marjorie Cohn, President of the National Lawyers Guild. Their approaches to questions stood as contrasting bookends within the judgments of the four witnesses. Cohn used the term "war crimes" as opposed to Rivkin's statement, ". . . attorneys were subjected to great criticism, villified, even though the Supreme Court has upheld the key tenets of the policy saying that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to members of al Qaeda."

Professor Cohn:
Witness prepared statement: Marjorie Cohn
Professor of Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
President of National Lawyers Guild.

Professor Cohn was asked by Chairman Nadler about criminal prosecution for a lawyer's giving his client advice. She posited that "conspiracy involves a common plan of wrong-doing." She added that this law does not have a statute of limitations. That statement must have put the professor in the spotlight with Republican committee members, who questioned her repeatedly. I paraphrase and summarize the most significant of the interchanges, in my opinion:
To Ranking Rep. Franks' assertion that water-boarding is "controlled and only for a short time, and that some of our own soldiers were water-boarded," Cohn replied that the statutes regarding handling techniques involve the severest things we can do and that torture is illegal. She added that the information given by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaida was useless. Cohn asserted that relationship-building yields better results in the long run.
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California stated that he supported a ban on torture, and that "I do want to get this right and move on with that bipartisan decision made earlier" [later vetoed]. Issa asked Cohn if it is fair to lie to prisoners. She stated that interrogators cannot lie with threats against those close to the prisoner, "killing their wives, for example."
Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa asked Professor Cohn if there had ever been a case of successfully saving lives through relationship building and gaining the trust of a prisoner. She named "Saddam Hussein, a rich source of information, who was treated with kindness by admirable soldiers, not interrogators who were mercenaries."
Bobby Scott, D-VA, asked Professor Cohn about the power of international law. It was pointed out that the Supreme Court has referred to ratified treaties in opinions. Cohn said, "There is no justification for torture under three different U.S. ratified treaties. There is no retroactive immunity allowed for torture, even when good information is obtained."
Mel Watt, D-NC, asked Professor Cohn to explain the concept of universal jurisdiction among nations over prosecutions of foreigners for heinous crimes around the world, such as the prosecution of Adolf Eichman. She encouraged foreign prosecutions for torture, if the U.S. does not.

David Rivkin
Witness prepared statement: David B. Rivkin, Jr.
Partner, Baker & Hostetler, LLP.
Former Reagan administration attorney David Rivkin also worked for the Bush White House. As such he received almost as many questions as Professor Sands and regularly interceded during the hearing with counter arguments to the other three witnesses' testimony. What follows is what struck me about Rivkins' testimony:
To Rep. Franks' interchange with Professor Cohn [above] regarding the effectiveness of severe interrogation vs. relationship-building with prisoners, Rivkin characterized it as "naive, a moral cop-out. Coercive techniques need to be debated, but nobody wants to define them. What about psychological coercion? And there is a temporal element to pain and suffering -- 10 minutes and 10 hours are different. It just can't be protracted pain. There is plenty of case law on this."
Chairman Conyers, D-MI, commended all the witnesses, "This is a good way to get at the truth. We will use the legislative coercive process of subpoena to get others to testify." He asked Rivkin to submit a "pain" definition for the record.
Republican Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana made the point to Rivkin about "keeping all this secret so terrorists can't train to resist us." The attorney posited that "Psychological coercion might work. Unlawful combatants are different. Coercive techniques do work. And this needs to be decided in the light of day." After Professor Sands comments about the Brits' conclusions regarding how to fairly treat members of the IRA, Rivkin asserted that, "Some Brits disagree. Actually the Brits 'squeezed out' 700 IRA operatives, and the British lawyers were not prosecuted." Rivkin finished this discussion by defining al Qaeda as an "existentialist threat" as contrasted with the IRA.
Another southern Democrat, Artur Davis, debated with Rivkin's assertions, using as examples the different lawful methods used in Vietnam, and Israel under the Geneva Conventions. Davis defined torture as "medieval, barbarous, and from the terrorists. Torture is illegal in Israel, even if they are under daily siege and face an existential threat." Rivkin responded that "Israel made the decision to take very high risks." Davis asked Rivkin about a presidential pardon for members of the administration and the attorney answered "he may need to consider the reasons to do so, perhaps a blanket pardon."
Republican Darrell Issa wanted to know about the fairness of lying to prisoners to obtain information. David Rivkin said that the Supreme Court has ruled it is OK to lie to them "that their partner has already confessed, or to make threats of widening the arrest net. " Rivkin mentioned that "Andrew Fastow [Enron] was subjected to threats -- horrible pressure."
Rep. Keith Ellison, D-MN, wanted Rivkin to explain to him "what works?" Rivkin said that with coerced information,"In most situations, you can check out their claims. You usually have time to check out false leads." Ellison asked him for an example of a successful intervention involving the "ticking time bomb theory." Rivkin attempted the example of capturing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as noted in a National Review article by Stewart Taylor, calling it "as close as you can get." Rep. Ellison did not buy his argument, nor did Professor Cohn.
Rep. Mel Watt, D-NC, asked Attorney Rivkin, "What should the committee do next?" Rivkin urged him to"just find out the narrative of what happened, exercising prosecutorial discretion." He termed Congress' pursuing prosecutions, "madness, given the facts involved."

In conclusion, Chairmen Conyers and Nadler are absolutely on the right track. The committee has issued a number of subpoenas for those more directly involved in this episode. David Addington, VP Cheney's Chief of Staff, has been ordered to appear at the next hearing on June 26. Stay tuned.

References:

• The Gavel -- Speaker Pelosi's excellent blog hearing summary: "Judiciary Hears Expert Testimony on Administration Torture Policies" (May 6, 2008, by Jesse Lee).
• South by Southwest: "Extreme Interrogation, revelations gain momentum."
• " The Green Light" is Professor Phillipe Sands' wonderful new article this month (should be required reading) in Vanity Fair Magazine.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Whose authority?

By Carol Gee

The United States Department of Justice is the nation's highest center of law enforcement. And the Attorney General inevitably sets the tone for how the laws are enforced in Washington, D.C. and around the country. Under what authority can the Attorney General mislead Congress?

Attorney General Michael Mukasey was confronted by House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers for making false claims regarding foreign intelligence gathering. According to Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, last week Mukasey "acknowledged (because he was forced to) that the call he claimed originated from an "Afghan safe house" into the U.S. was fictitious, but he nonetheless vaguely asserted that his underlying point -- that FISA unduly restricted pre-9/11 eavesdropping and prevented detection of those attacks -- was somehow still accurate." The FBI is under the authority of the DOJ. The FBI Director, however, has a degree of independence because he is appointed for a set term of 10 years.

FBI Director, Robert Mueller, was confronted by members of the House Judiciary Committee on the question of the legality of torture. Evidently, the FBI did not have the authority to enforce the laws within the executive branch, if a "higher authority?" had intervened. Such interrogation techniques were approved by the Justice Department and used by the CIA. The current Director of the CIA, General Mike Hayden, claims that those techniques are no longer practiced by the CIA. Lara Jakes Jordan covered this story for the AP yesterday: " FBI: Interrogation tactics might be inappropriate." To quote from the story:

FBI Director Robert Mueller on Wednesday recalled warning the Justice Department and the Pentagon that some U.S. interrogation methods used against terrorists might be inappropriate, if not illegal.

FBI protocol "wouldn't engage in torture," said Rep. Stephen Cohen, D-Tenn. "But if you find out that other agencies may engage in torture, that you believe is illegal — does your protocol include informing those agencies that you believe their actions are illegal?"

"Yes," Mueller answered.

"Who did you inform?" Cohen asked.

"At points in time, we have reached out to DoD, DoJ, in terms of activity that we were concerned might not be appropriate, let me put it that way," Mueller said. DoD refers to the Department of Defense and DoJ to the Department of Justice.

. . . Asked how the Justice Department and Pentagon responded to the FBI's advice, Mueller declined to discuss it publicly, citing concerns about releasing classified information. He also referred to the Justice Department's legal guidance at the time that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods were legal as long as they did not result in organ failure or death.

Former head of the Justice Department, Attorney General John Ashcroft was confronted by DailyKos' "Elsinora", a co-ed member of his Knox College audience, on the question of the legality of torture. He bristled at having his authority questioned by a young female recently and rather came unzipped for all to see. To quote the author,"Earlier today, I promised you Kossacks an eyewitness account of John Ashcroft's speech on "Leadership in Troubled Times" at Knox College this evening, which I just got back from attending. So, while it's still fresh in my mind, here's how it went--including the question I asked that made him lose his cool completely. " (Hat tip to Blue Texan at Firedoglake).

"Operation Sudden Impact" was confronted here at The Reaction Monday by my co-blogger Libby Spencer on the question of our emerging police state. The FBI leads Joint Terrorism Task Forces in over 100 cities around the country. Recently three states conducted massive sweeps. To quote:

Radley Balko . . . tells us, "Last week, federal, state, and local police in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas conducted a massive sweep, including raids of businesses, homes, and boats; traffic roadblocks; and personal body searches."

. . . So in other words, our law enforcement authorities spent at least tens of thousands of dollars on a quasi-military sweep and busted a few low level drug users and a whole bunch of bad drivers. No terrorists were reported to be injured or arrested in the shakedown. This is how 9/11 changed everything. Our own government terrorizes us to "keep us safe" under the aegis of "fighting terrorism." But here's what should raise alarm bells with every civil libertarian:

Even though Memphis hasn't suffered a terrorist attack, the city is using federal grants to fight crime, which might lead to the discovery of a terrorist suspect. Other cities are using federal money with similar programs.

This is just the beginning of a new trend in domestic law enforcement. As far as they're concerned, we are all terrorists now. To paraphrase the old saying, just because you haven't done anything wrong, doesn't mean they won't come looking for you.

Libby was echoed here today by Michael, who confronted the question of a recent SCOTUS ruling foreshadowing "The United Police State of America." To quote from the latter:

Now, the ruling was technical insofar as the case involved the relationship of state law to the Fourth Amendment, a relationship that is muddled. Still, what is clear is that the Supreme Court has pushed the United States ever closer to being an authoritarian state in which the police, and those who rule, have the "prerogative" to search and seize as they please.

Another sudden impact -- Blogger "profmarcus" (hat tip to betmo) confronted the question of a recent set of mass surprise raids on Pilgrim's Pride poultry plants in five states. Headlined "'Papers, please' -- getting people used to the idea of suprise law enforcement raids and 'disappeared' people," the post begins and ends with these chilling paragraphs:

news flash... it ain't just about immigration... first of all, note the first paragraph... that's right... it's now expanded to include identify theft and document fraud... you don't have the proper papers...? what a shame... it's off to the detention center for you... what's that you say...? your children are in daycare and there'll be no one to pick them up or care for them...? what a shame... it's off to the detention center for you...

[snip]

just wait... your turn is coming... the horror of the "disappeareds," a tactic pioneered and tested by the u.s. in latin america (see "los desaparecidos" and operation condor), is coming back home... i've posted on this many times before (see here), but it's important to realize that we are being slowly but surely led to an acceptance of such treachery in our very own country... make no mistake... it IS happening...!

Until something changes, the United States appears too frequently to be a nation of men above the law if they choose to be, rather than a nation of laws under which all men must operate. The current news does not bode well for a positive trend towards protection of the people rather than those in power over the people.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)